Having seen pretty much every theatrical movie version of the Louisa May Alcott novel, as well as several stage adaptions (a Broadway musical and an Off-Broadway re-telling that modernized the style, keeping the time frame), I know this story inside out and appreciate all the different variations of how the story is told. This two part TV movie is one of the longer versions, clocking in at over three hours. Hardly boring, however, it is perfectly cast, and it seems like somebody transplanted the 1949 Technicolor while inserting a 1970's cast mixed with some glorious veterans in who were big stars when that MGM version came out.
It wouldn't surprise me if MGM contract player Greer Garson was offered the role of Marmee in that version, and turned it down. Dorothy McGuire, a free lance actress at that time, takes on the role here and is absolutely windrtful, a mix of heart, humor and spunk, determined to keep the family together during the early years of the Civil War. Garson plays the crotchety Aunt Match, a far cry from Edna May Oliver, Lucile Watson, Elizabeth Patterson, Mary Wickes and Angela Lansbury, who have played that part in other filmed versions. She's beautiful but her sternness adds a sadness to her character, playing the character slightly like Miss Haversham from "Great Expectations". The other veteran is Robert Young as Mr. Lawrence, the March's neighbior, stern grandfather to Richard Gilliand ("Designing Women"), shocked when he gets pushed back after striking Theodore during an argument.
Part one goes into detail over the relationship of the four sisters, Susan Dey as the tough Jo (not really as tomboyish as in other versions), Meredith Baxter Birney as the romantically incluned Meg, Eve Plumb as the tragic Beth and Ann Dusenberry as the vindictive Amy who angrily burns Jo's manuscript after an argument. The casting of Dey and Plumb as sisters makes for a great trivia question of "What Partridge and what Brady girl played sisters in a TV movie?" The crisis of the first part details how the family deals with news that the father has been injured in battle and is in a hospital in Washington D. C. This is a gorgeous production that has moments of great drama, amusing humor and a big heart, especially from the imperious Aunt March whose own heart still beats bright under all those petticoats and corsets.
It wouldn't surprise me if MGM contract player Greer Garson was offered the role of Marmee in that version, and turned it down. Dorothy McGuire, a free lance actress at that time, takes on the role here and is absolutely windrtful, a mix of heart, humor and spunk, determined to keep the family together during the early years of the Civil War. Garson plays the crotchety Aunt Match, a far cry from Edna May Oliver, Lucile Watson, Elizabeth Patterson, Mary Wickes and Angela Lansbury, who have played that part in other filmed versions. She's beautiful but her sternness adds a sadness to her character, playing the character slightly like Miss Haversham from "Great Expectations". The other veteran is Robert Young as Mr. Lawrence, the March's neighbior, stern grandfather to Richard Gilliand ("Designing Women"), shocked when he gets pushed back after striking Theodore during an argument.
Part one goes into detail over the relationship of the four sisters, Susan Dey as the tough Jo (not really as tomboyish as in other versions), Meredith Baxter Birney as the romantically incluned Meg, Eve Plumb as the tragic Beth and Ann Dusenberry as the vindictive Amy who angrily burns Jo's manuscript after an argument. The casting of Dey and Plumb as sisters makes for a great trivia question of "What Partridge and what Brady girl played sisters in a TV movie?" The crisis of the first part details how the family deals with news that the father has been injured in battle and is in a hospital in Washington D. C. This is a gorgeous production that has moments of great drama, amusing humor and a big heart, especially from the imperious Aunt March whose own heart still beats bright under all those petticoats and corsets.