From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Ball Snaps and Calla Lillies, and a game.
Date: 31 Aug 1992 17:58:56 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <p9cqsi0@fido.asd.sgi.com> 
pauli@uniblab.asd.sgi.com (Paul Isaacs) writes:
> So we watched the movie "Stage Door" this weekend.  Great flick.  

Oh yes, a big favorite from way back, usually shown on 
a double bill with "The Women".  

> Lucille Ball, Katheryn Hepburn, Eve Arden, Ginger Rogers, and more.

Katharine Hepburn.  She's *very* sensitive about the spelling
of her name.

> All the stars look about 12 years old, and there's lots of catty banter.
>
> But I had two observations/questions.  Then a little game.
>
> [1] I distinctly saw Lucille Ball *snap* at one of the other characters.
>    The film was made in 1937, so this seems to be a very early occurence, no?
>    Has there been a thread on the origin of the snap?  Did it go back this
>    far?  I'm curious if this was a common thing in the thirties.

Aaaaargh.  The threadlet I started was not about read-you-up-and-down
snaps, nor was it about any of the other snaps demonstrated in "Tongues
Untied", nor was it about the "And just like that <snap!>" snaps, nor
was it about the "I'm so pissed off I could scream! <stamp foot> <snap!>"
snaps, nor was it about "Hey baby, I'm real hip <snap!>" snaps, nor any
of the other kinds of snaps performed by one person at a time.  No.  The
threadlet I started was about rhythmic unison snapping by groups of
people, snapping that takes the place of hand-clapping.  Read-you-up-
and-down snaps are much in evidence in bitchy comedies from the thirties,
so I would imagine they were known out in the real world, too.


> [2] In the film, Katheryn Hepburn gets a part in a play (called something
>     like "Enchanted April") and her first line on stage is "The calla
>     lillies are in bloom again. I wore them on my wedding day..."
>     Now, this line is from "Long Days Journey into Night," isn't it?

Not that I can recall, and I think I'd rather reread _Middlemarch_,
even the Collected Works of Melmac, than read that again.

>     Well, that film was made long after "Stage Door," so I'm a little
>     confused about chronology. 


Umm.  "Long Day's Journey" *was* first a play.

>                                I can't believe Tenessee Williams would
>     lift a line from "Stage Door," so is it the other way around?  

Umm.  You mean Eugene O'Neill.  I don't imagine O'Neill would have
lifted a line from "Stage Door" (although the thought that he might
have is *hilarious*), and I don't think it would have been possible
for whoever wrote "Stage Door" to have borrowed from "Long Day's Journey",
as it wasn't published until the mid 1950s.

>                                                                     And
>     is it just coincidence that Katheryn Hepburn was later to get that
>     same line in "Long Days Journey"?

I don't recall it in "Long Day's Journey", but then I *loathe*
the play (and, really, all of O'Neill) so much that I could have
missed it through inattention.

> A Game
> ------
>    Speaking of actors having the same lines twice in different films, can
>    anyone think of other examples?  I know that Doris Day sang "Que sera
>    sera," with her little boy in "The Man who Knew Too Much," and this 
>    was a reference to her previous work.

I used to know this.  Doris Day sings "Que sera sera" in *three*
movies (and, of course, on her TV show), but I can't recall which
movies now.  The (deleted) reference to Harrison Ford went over
my head.  Ummm.  I can't think of a line that an actor repeats,
but Lillian Gish's first appearance in Altman's "A Wedding" is 
identical, I seem to recall, with her first appearance in a movie
she made for D.W. Griffith almost 70 years before. 

Arne


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