Katharine Hepburn's fourth film and first after her Oscar winner Morning Glory is an adaption of the Louisa May Alcott classic Little Women. Kate becomes the quintessential Jo March in this film and CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS she does a bang up job.
I can't see George Cukor doing this with anyone else. In a sense Kate isn't acting, she really is a 20th century version of Jo March. Like Louisa May Alcott and her family, Kate comes from that Puritan New England background and in the 19th century she could have been Jo March. It would not surprise me in the slightest if back in the day Kate's grandparents from either or both sides hobnobbed with the Alcott clan.
Little Women is set during the Civil War and it was a time for sacrifice on the battlefield as well as the home front. The March family patriarch Samuel S. Hinds is now engaged in the 'irrepressible conflict' answering to a higher law than the Constitution. That was a day when people put themselves on the line for their country and what they believed in.
Spring Byington made her screen debut as the mother of four girls who in real life were not too much younger than the woman they called Marmee in this film. Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Jean Parker bring to life the distinct personalities of all the March girls under the careful guidance of George Cukor.
Like Louisa May Alcott in life, Jo March loves her dad, not just as her father, but also for what he stands for. Alcott's father Bronson Alcott was a noted abolitionist and so was Louisa May. She leaves no room for doubt that the Union and the abolition of slavery is a righteous cause in Little Women. Alcott was a feminist and a suffragette as well, she wanted to do more for what she believed than provide warm home and hearth for some man who happened to believe as she did.
Hepburn as Jo is developing as a human being and she realizes she wants the same thing and she also knows there's more out there than New England and its mores. Small wonder that visiting scholar Paul Lukas is who eventually wins her affections.
By the way, one ought to either read the further Alcott novels on these characters and/or see the film Little Men with Kay Francis and Francis Lederer as older versions of these same characters to see how they've developed.
Besides Lukas and Hinds the three other prominent male characters are Douglass Montgomery as the dashing young neighbor next door who first sparks Hepburn's attention and later Bennett's, John Davis Lodge who pairs off with Frances Dee and Henry Stephenson, Montgomery's stern father with a broad eye twinkle.
And of course we can't forget the ever imperious Edna May Oliver as Aunt March who rules the roost whenever she makes one of her visits to the household. Oliver like Hepburn also had a New England background, she's as New England as Paul Revere and the Boston Red Sox.
With an excellent recreation of New England both in look and style George Cukor created an enduring masterpiece in Little Women. And probably even more than Morning Glory, it's the film that young Katharine Hepburn is most identified with.
I can't see George Cukor doing this with anyone else. In a sense Kate isn't acting, she really is a 20th century version of Jo March. Like Louisa May Alcott and her family, Kate comes from that Puritan New England background and in the 19th century she could have been Jo March. It would not surprise me in the slightest if back in the day Kate's grandparents from either or both sides hobnobbed with the Alcott clan.
Little Women is set during the Civil War and it was a time for sacrifice on the battlefield as well as the home front. The March family patriarch Samuel S. Hinds is now engaged in the 'irrepressible conflict' answering to a higher law than the Constitution. That was a day when people put themselves on the line for their country and what they believed in.
Spring Byington made her screen debut as the mother of four girls who in real life were not too much younger than the woman they called Marmee in this film. Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Jean Parker bring to life the distinct personalities of all the March girls under the careful guidance of George Cukor.
Like Louisa May Alcott in life, Jo March loves her dad, not just as her father, but also for what he stands for. Alcott's father Bronson Alcott was a noted abolitionist and so was Louisa May. She leaves no room for doubt that the Union and the abolition of slavery is a righteous cause in Little Women. Alcott was a feminist and a suffragette as well, she wanted to do more for what she believed than provide warm home and hearth for some man who happened to believe as she did.
Hepburn as Jo is developing as a human being and she realizes she wants the same thing and she also knows there's more out there than New England and its mores. Small wonder that visiting scholar Paul Lukas is who eventually wins her affections.
By the way, one ought to either read the further Alcott novels on these characters and/or see the film Little Men with Kay Francis and Francis Lederer as older versions of these same characters to see how they've developed.
Besides Lukas and Hinds the three other prominent male characters are Douglass Montgomery as the dashing young neighbor next door who first sparks Hepburn's attention and later Bennett's, John Davis Lodge who pairs off with Frances Dee and Henry Stephenson, Montgomery's stern father with a broad eye twinkle.
And of course we can't forget the ever imperious Edna May Oliver as Aunt March who rules the roost whenever she makes one of her visits to the household. Oliver like Hepburn also had a New England background, she's as New England as Paul Revere and the Boston Red Sox.
With an excellent recreation of New England both in look and style George Cukor created an enduring masterpiece in Little Women. And probably even more than Morning Glory, it's the film that young Katharine Hepburn is most identified with.