Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

AaronCapenBanner Gregory La Cava directed this comedy/drama that stars Katharine Hepburn as rich socialite Terry Randall, who has dreams of breaking onto Broadway as an actress without the assistance of her father, who nonetheless has plans to back a play she may appear in... Ginger Rogers plays Jean Maitland, who is interested in a play directed by a notorious womanizer(played by Adolphe Menjou) that she isn't interested in romantically ...Lucille Ball also stars as another of the many women staying in the all girls theatrical boarding house. Mediocre film is passable,and more successful as comedy than drama, with both Rogers & Ball more interesting than Hepburn!

M. J Arocena In fact this film version of a stage play by Edna Ferber and George S Kaufman, directed by Gregory La Cava is 70 years old and although it may show a wrinkle here or there - like having Adolph Menjou as the romantic lead - the youthful energy in the acting and dialog has surfed the waves of time unscathed. The bunch of girls populating the Footlights lodgings is a smashing crowd. Katharine Hepburn, brisk and Hepburnish already to the hilt. Ginger Rogers drinks, scratches and dances a duet with Ann Miller. Eve Arden, as usual, delivers the best one liners and Lucille Ball seems ready for a startling career. Andrea Leeds got an Oscar nomination and Constance Collier plays an over the hill actress that becomes Hepburn's minder, just like in real life. The film moves at an incredible speed and I defy you not to tear up when Hepburn makes her entrance with the Calla Lillies in bloom.

n_r_koch They should have called this one "Upstaged Door", since what I saw was Ginger Rogers, one of the overlooked comediennes of the 1930s (see "Gold Diggers of 1933"), more or less blowing Katherine Hepburn out of the movie. Calla lilies? She did so despite the fact that the script is written around the "Hepburn" character and gives her the big speech at the end, and that the plebeian "Rogers" is the more cruelly satirized of the two, especially in Act I. Hepburn plays herself, as she did in every role after Alice Adams. Rogers, a teetotaler in real life, plays a mean drunk scene, among other things. She mocks a posh accent. She wears great-looking gowns like she was born in them. She plays the ukulele! La Cava wisely nips the ukulele business in the bud. He doesn't let her sing or dance much, either. (Hepburn doesn't sing or dance at all, even though she's living with two dozen chorines.) The haste with which the film was adapted from the play is obvious in the many "staged" entrances and exits. Everyone gets some snappy lines, but some of the support only get a few things to say. Constance Collier, as the washed-up old actress who carries her notices around in her purse, is the best of them. They are all but uniformly great except for Andrea Leeds. Leeds was a pretty, sensitive girl who didn't like Hollywood much. She was also a mediocre actress. This is evident the instant she has to trade lines with anyone. And she was given an Academy Award nomination for this role! That says something about both Hollywood self-loathing and Hollywood self-congratulation. The subplot built around her character, who is barely introduced, feels jury-rigged and maudlin and just doesn't work at all. The idea appeared to be to add "depth" to a plot that was doing fine without any. This mistake knocks the movie down from a 9 to, say an 8. It's still 10 times funnier than most of what's playing now. Don't miss it!

moonspinner55 Terrific cast in middling comedy-drama adapted from the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman concerning would-be actresses living in a New York boarding house, each vying for parts on the Great White Way. Katharine Hepburn's solid performance as a socialite trying to make it on her own merits is the acting highlight here, and her bits alongside roommate Ginger Rogers are sharp and funny. Andrea Leeds received a Supporting Oscar nomination for her effective work as a troubled young woman who can't seem to find a job, but Adolphe Menjou keeps popping up as if he were the only show-producer in the city. On the whole, only marginal, but certainly worth a look for that female ensemble, which includes Lucille Ball, Ann Miller and the incomparable Eve Arden, who might have benefited from more scenes. *** from ****