Best movies like The Making of a Man

Dolly Havens, a small-town girl with big-town ambitions that are larger than her talents, hooks up with Johnny Storm, a vaudeville performer, whose talents make the act a success. Dolly, thinking she is the reason, meets a handsome leading man and joins up with him but, before long, he discovers 'she ain't a trouper' and she is soon performing with 4th-class acts in Tank Town America

Hired to helm an Americanized take on a British play, director Lloyd Fellowes does his best to control an eccentric group of stage actors. With a star actress quickly passing her prime, a male lead with no confidence, and a bit actor that's rarely sober, chaos ensues in the lead up to a Broadway premiere.

The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.

In 14th Century England, this tale of murder and mystery follows a fugitive priest who falls in with a troupe of actors. As they arrive in a small town, the actors encounter a woman being sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft and murder. Discarding the expected bible stories, the actors now stage a performance based on the crime. Through the performance of the play, they discover a mystery.

Stage hand Harold falls in love with the leading lady of a visiting theatrical troupe.

Liverpool. 1947. Right after World War II, a star struck naive teenage girl joins a shabby theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue and learns about the grown-up world of the theater.

Roscoe and Buster give a bullying Strongman the what-for, but after the performance troupe quits it's up to Fatty and Buster to keep the show going.

The assistant stage manager of a small-time theatrical company is forced to understudy for the leading lady at a matinée performance at which an illustrious Hollywood director is in the audience scouting for actors to be in his latest "all-talking, all-dancing, all-singing" extravaganza.

Husband-and-wife vaudeville stars separate when success goes to his head.

An ex-theater actor is given one more chance to star in a musical yet his alcoholism may prevent it from happening.

David Kolowitz, a nice young man living with his parents in New York City in 1938, works at a machine repair shop. His parents want David to study to become a pharmacist. But what he really wants is to be an actor like his idol, Ronald Colman. One day, at his friend Marvin's suggestion, David tries out for a part in a play, and gets it, despite his obvious lack of acting experience (not to mention ability). True, it's a rather small part in a low-rent production. Leading the troupe is a washed-up, alcoholic actor who hires David at the urging of his actress-daughter, who finds David "cute." To play his part, David must come up with his own costume - a tuxedo - and pay the house five dollars a week, ostensibly for tuition. But it is David's first acting job, one which calls for him to "enter laughing." And if it doesn't work out - well, there's always pharmacy school.

One fateful night in a small English regional theatre during World War II a troupe of touring actors stage a production of Shakespeares King Lear. Bombs are falling, sirens are wailing, the curtain is up in an hour but the actor/manager Sir who is playing Lear is nowhere to be seen. His dresser Norman must scramble to keep the production alive but will Sir turn up in time and if he does will he be able to perform that night? The Dresser is a wickedly funny and deeply moving story of friendship and loyalty as Sir reflects on his lifelong accomplishments and seeks to reconcile his turbulent friendships with those in his employ before the final curtain.

Buster Keaton is a bank teller who becomes involved with a hold-up, counterfeiters, and a theatrical troupe posing as spooks in a haunted house.

Funloving Pearl White, working in a garment sweatshop, gets her big chance when she "opens" for a delayed Shakespeare play...with a comic vaudeville performance. Her brief stage career leads her into those "horrible" moving pictures, where she comes to love the chaotic world of silent movies, becoming queen of the serials. But the consequences of movie stardom may be more than her leading man can take

After waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.

The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

A meek Belgian soldier (Harry Langdon) fighting in World War I receives penpal letters and a photo from "Mary Brown", an American girl he has never met. He becomes infatuated with her by long distance. After the war, the young Belgian journeys to America as assistant to a theatrical "strong man", Zandow the Great (Arthur Thalasso). While in America, he searches for Mary Brown... and he finds her, just as word comes that Zandow is incapacitated and the little nebbish must go on stage in his place.

Chorus girl Peggy Lane, finds a small part in a new show for David North, a stages-truck country boy. At rehearsal, David meets Delerys Devore, the show's star, and she quickly offers him a larger part in her act. Quite taken with David, Delerys invites him to her home on the pretext that Peggy will be there; when Peggy does not show up, David leaves, infuriating his hostess. Derelys has Peggy fired the next day, and in reprisal Peggy goads her into a Carmenesque fight backstage just before the show. Derelys is unable to go on stage, and Peggy takes her place, becoming the hit of the show. Peggy and David are later married and give up show business, finding contentment living on a farm.

Three struggling theatrical performers meet a famous songwriter who is trying to convince a wealthy oilman to finance a musical he is scripting, promising them stardom if it comes to fruition.

The famous matinee idol and blackface comedian, Don Wilson, heads out of town to escape adulation. There, calling himself Harry Mann, he accidentally joins a traveling acting troupe, and falls in love with Ginger Bolivar, who runs the troupe and stars in their Civil War melodrama. Don's producer sees the play, and thinks it's a comic masterpiece, and just what Don's Broadway show needs. But when Ginger finds out she's been played for a fool, will she forgive Don?

The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.

Guy Jones (Irons) moves to a small British town and joins the local amateur dramatics society as a way to meet people. However he soon finds the drama offstage far outweighs those onstage.

A young woman, Tara Maguire (Robin Wright) scandalizes her provincial Irish village in the 1950s by having a baby out of a wedlock, and refusing to name the father. She has a rare beauty and every man in town desires her, especially Sergeant Hegarty (Albert Finney). The arrival of a dramatic troupe stirs things up even more, especially when she falls in love with one f the "Playboys", Tom Casey (Aidan Quinn).

Helena Mora, the head of an eccentric theatrical family, has decided to sell her large estate in the Hamptons because of her recent money troubles. Before she completes the sale, she wants to have one last gathering of family and friends, with dramatic performances. Bringing everyone together, though, creates rivalries and tension, especially for Oona, a temperamental but successful movie actress who seeks the approval of her creative peers.

When a mysterious incident nearly claims the life of a beautiful actress during rehearsals for her upcoming play, everyone deduces that her ambitious understudy, Elizabeth (Mellara Gold), is the guilty party. But when Elizabeth discovers that she's become the object of a secret admirer's obsession, she begins to suspect that the murder attempt was a twisted effort to win her heart. Eric Gibson directs this erotic mystery.

A judge who had taken part in the gold rush of 1849 hires an acting troupe to recreate the experience in this rather fanciful silent Western. The make-believe turns serious when a real gold mine is discovered nearby and a local girl is kidnapped by a nasty gambler.

An elderly detective sets out to find who murdered a lecherous stage actor. His estranged wife? His would-be fiancee? Her father? Her boyfriend? A suicided actress's sister? The temperamental prop man? Or maybe the show's talented female chimpanzee?

A young woman arrives in New York City determined to become a great theatrical star, but discovers that her goal may not be as easily attainable as she had hoped.

When theatrical producer Robert Chandler (E. Alyn Warren), believed drowned in a fishing accident, turns up as a lonely, broken amnesiac three months later, he arrives just in time to see his actress wife Carol Chandler (Claire Windsor), thought to be a widow, marrying her leading man Jimmy Keane (John Bowers). Rather than mar her new-found happiness, he takes a job washing cars. New York City is a small town. Will Carol need her car washed?

When Denver’s preeminent sportscaster, competitive single-mother Piper, is called to her son’s school for a bullying incident, she dreads her time wasted. But when she meets the victim’s equally-stubborn single father, Erik, the principal demands they give their kids the attention they deserve – by teaming up to stage the school play, Romeo and Juliet. Piper must get past her immature ego, face her burgeoning feelings, and figure out how to operate a hot-glue gun – and all before opening night!

B.G. Bruno, a rich bachelor, the head of a successful greeting-card company in Scotland, is essentially a kind man but respectable to the point of stodginess and extreme stuffiness. An American troupe visiting Edinburgh wants to produce a musical in town but has trouble getting backers. Bruno meets several of the leading ladies of the show; through a misunderstanding he doesn't correct they think that he's a newspaper reporter. He falls in love with one of the women, who reciprocates; he grows more lively and friendly, to the surprise of his employees. After a series of mishaps and comic incidents comes a happy ending: a successful show and true love.

Teenage orphan Jenny Yates becomes starstruck when a revival of an old Victorian melodrama passes through her small New England town, to the disapproval of her stern grandfather, Uriah. Stowing away in the car of Philip Greene, a wealthy young man working with the theater troupe, Jenny talks her way into the play's lead role. But director Archie Fisher doesn't tell her that the new version of the play is meant as a spoof.

A theatrical troupe from the west end of London loses its leading lady when she goes off to marry a rich young man from the other side of town. The rest of the play deals with the budding romance and trials and tribulations of their love, as well as the changing face of late-19th-century theatre.

Eddie Kehoe is a young vaudeville hoofer who thinks his inability to hit the big time is the fault of stage managers, agents, musicians...everybody but himself. Eddie likes to tell others how good he is, but seldom shows them. Kitty Mayo, an old-time burlesque queen, who is with the McNary Vaudeville Company, advises Eddie to get himself a partner, as his solo abilities can only be stretched so far. He decides to follow her advice and, while in a theatrical supply shop, he sees Rita Carey rehearsing her dancing act that includes a trained duck. Eddie tells Rita he is a good friend of McNary's, and, with him as her partner, her future in show business will be secured. She agrees to join him and Eddie promptly names the act "Eddie Kehoe and Partner". Despite his conceit, Rita likes Eddie, as do others in the troupe, including Cleo a little gold-digger.

When Tad Wallace's act flops on Broadway, he joins a troop heading west. In a small town, they run into Jeffries who has just burned down the theater. When Jeffries kills Griswold, Tad has a plan to trap him by using the talents of Shakespearian actor Thorndyke.