The play in which Katharine Hepburn as Terry Randall has her triumph (after a disastrous rehearsal) is a parody of The Lake, the 1933 stage flop Hepburn starred in, inspiring Dorothy Parker's memorable review: "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." By the time she made Stage Door, Hepburn was confident enough to send up her poor performance in the play as her character walks stiffly through rehearsals. Hepburn later said La Cava's decision to use The Lake as the play in which her character makes her debut "was a brilliant idea because it allowed me to take my most miserable moment in the theater and turn it into something fun." The famous line, "The calla lilies are in bloom again," was supposedly lifted directly from the play. It became forever after the bit of dialogue Hepburn imitators and spoofers used, in her trademark Bryn Mawr accent, of course.

In the 1956 episode of I Love Lucy, in which Lucy Ricardo appears briefly (and disastrously) in an Italian movie, Lucille Ball ribbed her Stage Door colleague with the famous line, "The calla lilies are in bloom again."

In Stage Door , the name of the play Hepburn appears in is "Enchanted April," but bears no relation to the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim or the 1992 film and 2003 play based on it.

"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a shortened version of Stage Door on February 20, 1939, with Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou reprising their screen roles and Rosalind Russell stepping in to Hepburn's role. Eve Arden also returned but in a different part, playing Linda, Rogers's nemesis and rival for the affections of Menjou.

Adolphe Menjou and Katharine Hepburn appeared together previously in another play about the world of theater, Morning Glory (1933). As in Stage Door, she played an ambitious young actress and he a powerful producer. Hepburn won the first of her four Academy Awards for that film.

The ending of Stage Door, in which, after tragedy and triumph a new young actress arrives to begin the cycle all over again, is highly reminiscent of that other acclaimed comedy-drama of life in the theater, All About Eve (1950).

Adolphe Menjou and Andrea Leeds returned to the Broadway milieu of Stage Door a short time later as an aging actor trying to make a comeback and his aspiring actress daughter in Letter of Introduction (1938).

Katharine Hepburn played herself in the similarly named but unrelated Stage Door Canteen (1943), a celebrity-filled story set in New York City's famed club for soldiers.

Ginger Rogers guest-starred as herself in a 1971 episode of Lucille Ball's TV series Here's Lucy. In the story, star-struck Lucy practically stalks Ginger, who is finally talked into dancing a Charleston with her. As she leaves Lucy's home (upon retrieving a lost purse Lucy has found), she begs Lucy to "become a Katharine Hepburn fan."

The Rehearsal Club, the Manhattan rooming house for young actresses that inspired Stage Door, was in operation from 1913 to 1979. Carol Burnett wrote about her time there in her book This Time Together (Harmony House, 2010).

by Rob Nixon