History of Stage Dooring

[ErinDillyFan]

When did the practice of hanging out at the stage door become a big deal? I went to see "Amadeus" in the summer of 1981 and a friend wrote a love letter to Amy Irving and asked me to go to the stage door. I went after the show and knocked on the door and gave the letter to whoever answered the door. There was no one hanging out around the door like there would be now...

[FindingNamo]

It's always a good idea to generalize based on a single experience.

[madbrian]

Well, if the show Follies is to be believed, folks have been hanging around stage doors since the earliest days of musical theater. Also, in the movie Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, folks were hanging around the stage door all the way back in Vaudeville days.

[FindingNamo]

Let's face it, Amy Irving was no Baby Jane.

[Jordan Catalano]

I saw Sarah Jessica Parker in ONCE UPON A MATTRESS in December, 1996. After the show myself and my father were the only ones who were at the stage door. After about 10 minutes, someone came out and said that it looked like we were freezing and did we want to come inside and wait. SJP came down a few minutes later and chatted and took pictures with us and was ridiculously sweet.


You're telling me that doesn't happen at every show, Namo?

[Kelly2]

To an extent, it has been around for a long time, but it has not been around in it's current form for very long. Today's "stage door" is the wild wild west.

[Kelly2]

To an extent, it has been around for a long time, but it has not been around in it's current form for very long. Today's "stage door" is the wild wild west.

[Jordan Catalano]

To an extent, it has been around for a long time, but it has not been around in it's current form for very long. Today's "stage door" is the wild wild west.

[Rainbowhigh23]

Didn't men wait at stagedoor to meet the Floradora girls in the 1800s?

[FindingNamo]

Does that analogy not suggest it's been around since the mid-1800s?

[madbrian]

Dictionary.com gives the origin of 'stage door Johnny' as an American term coined around 1910-1915.

[JoeKv99]

I disagree. To an extent, it has been around for a long time, but it has not been around in it's current form for very long. Today's "stage door" is the wild wild west.

[sbflyfan]

Even Meryl Streep goes to the stage door, but not for the reasons we do...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KwP3IATjUo

[OrdinaryJukebox]

Stage-Dooring is interesting to me. I've only done it for actors I adore and just need to meet (Amy Brenneman at the stage door of "Rapture, Blister, Burn, LaChanze in "The Color Purple"), but I often make a fool of myself by not being able to articulate a sentence clearly. I get way too "star-struck."

It bothers me that people get annoyed if actors don't stop or if they don't come out. Is it nice when/if they do? Sure, of course it is. However, it's not part of their job. It's not in their contract (at least not any contract I've ever seen), and it's just as rude of an audience member to expect it and feel that it's the actors obligation. Maybe they're exhausted, had a bad day, aren't feeling well, etc. We all want a great story like the one about SJP in "Once Upon a Mattress," because we all want to believe that the actors we admire and watch are down-to-earth, sweet, humble people. However, sometimes, they're not and that's okay ... I want to see a great performance. If I get that, they've done their job. If they take a photo with people, that's just gravy. Sorry for the rambling ... :P

[artscallion]

Stage struck Johnnies turned Sarah Jessica Parker's mattress into the wild wild west as recently as 1996. But I believe the tradition goes much further back than that.