From Memphis to Birmingham, from the sticks to the Palace Theatre in New York, the Ultima Thule of a trouper in vaudeville. "Stage Mother" portrays the life of ham actors with great ambitions. Kitty Lorraine loses her husband when he drops to the stage from a trapeze; a baby is born; down to Boston to get help from Fred's family. She enters a magnificent mansion, which might be situated on Beacon Street, and meets her mother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law; the last mentioned would thrill psychologists who are looking for cases of spinsters with arrested development. Kitty soon tires of the nostalgic atmosphere and goes on the road with an old friend; he soon tires of her company and takes to drink and younger women.

Broke, pleading to a manager in New York to give her a break, you're washed up he says simply. Why don't you try working in a theatrical office, you know plenty of the crowd... Kitty remembers her daughter in Boston; she is ambitious again. That she shouldn't have gotten to the top is no reason that Shirley shouldn't. Dancing lessons, a try-out, success, the Palace, and then a rehearsal in Boston for a musical comedy. While mother is having an appendectomy, Shirley romps through the woods with Warren Foster, a young artist, who is living in her grandmother's home. Kitty breaks up the romantic element in her daughter's life by blackmailing Warren's mother; selfishly she continues to make Shirley's life miserable until she realizes that a career is not everything.

It is a pleasure to report that Alice Brady has finally learned that overacting may become monotonous; in "Stage Mother" she offers her best performance since she has come to the screen. Maureen O'Sullivan is pleasing as the young ballet danseuse.