Little Women

The fact that Little Women achieved box office success while also following the classic novel closely helped producer David O. Selznick convince his bosses at MGM to approve a faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1935), which was also directed by George Cukor. With Little Women's box office success, RKO announced plans to re-team Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Edna May Oliver and Henry Stephenson in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The project was abandoned, though Oliver would eventually star in MGM's 1940 version of the classic novel. Independent producer Walter Wanger was so impressed with Bennett's performance he signed her to a personal contract. Under his guidance, she would make some of her best films, including Trade Winds (1938), Scarlet Street (1945) and The Reckless Moment (1949). He also would marry her. A year after the success of Little Women, Mascot Pictures filmed Louisa May Alcott's sequel, Little Men, with Erin O'Brien-Moore as Jo and Ralph Morgan as Professor Bhaer. Other versions appeared in 1940, with Kay Francis, and in 1997, with Mariel Hemingway. As a miniseries, the story appeared on Japanese television in 1993 and on British television in 1998. Shirley Temple took on the role of Jo in a 1960 entry for her Shirley Temple's Storybook series co-starring Fernando Lamas as Professor Bhaer. Hepburn would return to the role of Jo for a 1945 radio adaptation on Theatre Guild of the Air. She would reprise the production in 1947. Little Women was adapted for television in 1946, with Margaret Hayes as Jo. Selznick started work on a remake in 1946 as a vehicle for his protégée and later wife Jennifer Jones. Diana Lynn, Bambi Linn and Rhonda Fleming played her sisters, with Anne Revere as her mother, Charles Coburn as Mr. Laurence, and Constance Collier as Aunt March. Although they started work on the film, Selznick was so exhausted from producing Duel in the Sun (1946), he sold the project to MGM. Only director Mervyn LeRoy and actress Elizabeth Patterson, who played the family's maid, stayed with the production. The lavish 1949 MGM remake starred June Allyson as Jo, with Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh and Margaret O'Brien as her sisters, Mary Astor as Marmee, Lucile Watson as Aunt March, Peter Lawford as Laurie, C. Aubrey Smith as Mr. Laurence and Rossano Brazzi as Professor Bhaer. Although considered inferior to the 1933 version, it won the Oscar® for Best Art Direction. The MGM remake pushed the 1933 version out of the limelight for years, as did dismissals of the story as sentimental. In the '70s, however, the film was rediscovered by feminist critics who were impressed by Hepburn's portrayal of Jo as a character of strength and independence. The novel Little Women inspired TV series in 1950, 1958 and 1979. The latter -- starring Jessica Harper as Jo, Dorothy McGuire as Marmee, Mildred Natwick as Aunt March and Robert Young as Mr. Laurence -- was inspired by an acclaimed 1978 miniseries starring McGuire and Young, but with Meredith Baxter Birney as Jo, Greer Garson as Aunt March and William Shatner as the Professor. Other television versions include a 1958 musical starring Florence Henderson and Margaret O'Brien and a 1970 British miniseries. The most recent film version of Little Women appeared in 1994 under the direction of Gillian Armstrong, with Winona Ryder as Jo, Susan Sarandon as Marmee, Gabriel Byrne as the Professor, Claire Danes as Beth, Kirsten Dunst as the young Amy, Christian Bale as Laurie, John Neville as Mr. Laurence, Eric Stoltz as John Brooke and Mary Wickes as Aunt March. It won Oscar® nominations for Ryder as Best Actress, the screenplay and the score As in the 1933 version, the design for the March house was modeled on Louisa May Alcott's own home in Massachusetts. A new stage musical adapted from the novel opened on Broadway in 2005, with Sutton Foster as Jo and Maureen McGovern as Marmee. The songs were written by Jason Howland and Mindi Dickstein. by Frank Miller

Little Women had been filmed in 1917, with Ruby Miller as Jo, and in 1918, with Dorothy Bernard. The latter version was actually filmed in Louisa May Alcott's Concord, Massachusetts, home. A stage version played Broadway in 1912, with revivals in 1916 and 1931. The latter production starred future film actresses Jessie Royce Landis as Jo and Lee Patrick as Meg. To capture the March family's frugality, Cukor and costume designer Walter Plunkett arranged to have dresses passed from older to younger sisters through the course of the film. Hepburn accused Cukor of never having finished reading the novel, a claim he good-naturedly denied. Little Women marked the feature debut of stage actress Spring Byington (she previously had starred in a 1930 Vitaphone short shot in New York). The role of Marmee was far removed from her usual run of flighty eccentrics, such as the ditzy mother in You Can't Take It with You (1938). After one of Hepburn's most exuberant scenes, the crew lowered a large ham from the catwalk as a practical joke. Hepburn was a regular guest at Cukor's Sunday afternoon parties, but never got along with another of his friends, Tallulah Bankhead. The feeling was mutual until Cukor arranged for Bankhead to screen some scenes from Little Women. After watching Hepburn's work, Bankhead went to the set, tears streaming down her face, and fell on her knees before the actress. Cukor quipped, "Tallulah, you're weeping for your lost innocence." In 1948, Cukor was asked to take over the MGM remake of Little Women from Mervyn LeRoy. He refused, primarily because he remembered his own pain at having been replaced on Gone with the Wind (1939), but he also felt the remake was too slick and lacked the magic of the original. Although she played Beth, the sister who dies while still young, Jean Parker actually outlived her three on-screen sisters, passing away November 30, 2005. Douglass Montgomery, who played Laurie, had worked with Cukor in the director's upstate New York stock company. Like many actors from his theatre days, Montgomery was the beneficiary of Cukor's gratitude. Not only did he win one of the films' two major male roles, but when his career had faded, Cukor got him work filming screen tests for Gone with the Wind. Newspaper ads for the film heralded, "The radiant Star of Morning Glory [1933] marches still deeper into your heart as the best loved heroine ever born in a book....See her...living...the immortal Jo. FUN QUOTES FROM LITTLE WOMEN (1933) "It's a dollar for each. Well, take them....Never mind thanking me. Just spend it wisely, that's all I ask. Although it's more than I can expect when you're so much like your father. Waltzing off to war and letting other folks look after his family." -- Edna May Oliver, as Aunt March, offering Katharine Hepburn, as Jo March, a Christmas gift and some unwanted advice. "It's not preachers that's going to win this war. It's fighters" -- Oliver, as Aunt March. "Christopher Columbus!" "Jo, don't use such dreadful expressions. Here comes old Mr. Laurence. What if he should hear you?" "I don't care. I like good strong words that mean something." -- Hepburn, as Jo March, defending her pet expression to Frances Dee, as Meg March. "Oh, I detest rude, unladylike girls." "And I hate affected, niminy piminy chicks!" -- Joan Bennett, as Amy March, quarreling with Hepburn, as Jo. "Oh, wait until I become a famous author and make my fortune. Then we'll all ride in fine carriages and dress like Flo King, snubbing Amy's friends and telling Aunt March to go to the dickens." -- Hepburn. "What richness!" -- Hepburn responding to the home of her neighbors the Laurences. "It's as dull as tombs over here." -- Douglass Montgomery, as Laurie. "I'll be prim as I can be and not get into any scrapes -- if I can help it." -- Hepburn, promising to behave at the party. "She has an infirmity. She's shy....If it weren't for that she'd be simply fastidious." -- Bennett, as Amy, describing Jean Parker, as Beth March, to Henry Stephenson, as Mr. Laurence. "Tell your mother I think all her daughters are simply fastidious." -- Stephenson, as Mr. Laurence. "What a blunderbuss I am." -- Hepburn. "There, I've done my best. If that won't do, I'll have to wait until I can do better." -- Hepburn, finishing a story. "Oh, why do things always have to change just when they're perfect." -- Hepburn. "When will you stop your childish, romping ways." "Not until I'm old and stiff and have to use a crutch." -- Dee, as Meg March, arguing with Hepburn. "I happened to be going past a barber shop, and I saw some tails of hair hanging in the window with the prices marked on them, and so I thought it'd do my brains good to have my mop cut off....Well, it's boyish, becoming and easy to keep in order" -- Hepburn, after she has sold her hair to help pay for her mother's trip to Washington. "Stay here. I want to carry away a picture in my mind of my brave little women to take to father. Goodbye, my darlings." -- Byington, as Marmee, leaving for Washington. "Oh, I beg your pardon, but you're such a dear, I couldn't help flying at you." "Fly at me again. I rather liked it." -- Hepburn and Montgomery, as Laurie, in the throes of young love. "If life's as hard as this, I don't see how we'll ever get through it." -- Hepburn. "I know I'm not half good enough for you, but, well, if you love me you could make me anything you like." "As though I'd change you, Laurie. Laurie, you should marry some lovely, accomplished girl who adores you. Someone who'd grace your beautiful house. I shouldn't. I loathe elegant society, and you like it. And you hate my scribblings, and I can't get on without it. And we should quarrel....And everything would be so horrid if we were ever foolish enough to....I'm so grateful to you. And so proud and fond of you. I don't know why I can't love you the way you want me to. I've tried, but I can't change the feeling, and it will be a lie to say, 'I do.'" -- Montgomery attempting unsuccessfully to propose to Hepburn. "Mothers have to have sharp eyes. Especially when their daughters keep their troubles to themselves." -- Byington. "He's a professor, see. You know, learning them how they talk in foreign countries. I don't know what good it does them when they're living right here." -- Nydia Westman, as Mamie, describing Paul Lukas as Professor Bhaer. "If only I could write something like that. Something that would set other hearts on fire." -- Hepburn, responding to a song Lukas, as Professor Bhaer, has sung. "Amy, you seem to forget waiting cabs cost money. That's the trouble with people who've never had anything -- easy come, easy go." -- Oliver, hurrying Bennett off to Europe. "If I can't stand the truth, I'm not worth anything. I didn't think the stories were so very good. But you see, 'The Duke's Daughter' paid the butcher's bill. And 'The Curse of the Conventrys' was the blessing of the Marches, because it sent Marmee and Beth to the seashore." -- Hepburn, on Jo's stories. "I say to you, 'Sweep mud on the street first before you are false to this talent.' Say to yourself, 'I will never write one single line which I have not heard in my own heart.' Say to yourself, 'While I am young, I will write the simple, beautiful things that I understand now. And maybe later, when I am a little bit older and I have felt life more, then I will write about those poor wretches. But I will make them live and breathe like my Shakespeare did.' Will you do that, my little friend?" "Oh, yes, I'll try. But I don't think I'll ever be a Shakespeare. Do you?" "But you can be a Josephine March, and I assure you, that is plenty." -- Lukas, as Bhaer, giving Hepburn some writing advice. "Those of us that have been all over the old world can find many things in the new that are...beautiful and young." -- Lukas, betraying his feelings for Hepburn. "Look at me world, I'm Jo March, and I'm so happy." -- Hepburn. "Oh, poor Jo. You mustn't be afraid. Doesn't that sound funny? Me saying that to you, when you've always said it to me. You've always reminded me of a sea gull, Jo. Strong and wild. And fond of the wind and storms. And dreaming of flying far out to sea. And mother always said that I was like a little cricket, chirping contentedly on the hearth. Never able to bear the thought of leaving home. But now, it's different. I can't express it very well and shouldn't try to. To anyone but you, because I can't speak out to anyone but my Jo. I'm not afraid any more. I'm learning that I don't lose you. That you'll be more to me than ever, and nothing can part us, though it seems to. Oh, but Jo, I think I'll be homesick for you, even in heaven." -- Parker, on her deathbed. "We mustn't cry. We must be glad she's well at last." -- Hepburn, comforting Byington after Parker's death. "No, we never can be boy and girl again, Laurie. Those happy old times can never come back, and we shouldn't expect them to. We're man and woman now. We can't be playmates any longer, but we can be brother and sister, to love and help one another all the rest of our lives." -- Hepburn's reconciliation with Montgomery after he has married Bennett. Compiled by Frank Miller

RKO production chief David O. Selznick had defied the recommendations of his colleagues by signing stage actress Katharine Hepburn to star in A Bill of Divorcement (1932). Her face was considered too angular and her manner too eccentric to appeal to the general movie-going public. When he attended the film's first preview, he could sense the audience's confusion at first, but then saw her performance gradually win them over. At that point, he decided that the role of independent New Englander Jo March in Little Women would be the perfect vehicle for her. The novel had long been on his list of classics he considered ideal for screen adaptation. Director George Cukor had never read the novel prior to production since he considered it a girl's story and of limited interest. When he read it, he was struck by the strength of the writing and its depiction of life in New England. Cukor and Selznick did much of their planning for the film on an ocean voyage from Los Angeles to New York. Selznick went through half a dozen writing teams until husband and wife Victor Heerman and Sarah Y. Mason came up with an adaptation that managed to remain faithful to the novel while paring down some scenes to create a film of manageable length. Cukor also fought to keep the script from making the story too Hollywood. When one adaptation created a happy ending by having Jo's first novel become a best-seller, he soundly rejected it. The Heermans' script got an unexpected endorsement from the studio's steno pool. While typing it up, the secretaries were so enthralled they kept stopping to read passages to each other and act out scenes. Cukor cast Joan Bennett as Amy after seeing her slightly drunk at a party. He had always considered her rather hard-boiled, but at the party she revealed a sweet and silly side that was perfect for the character. by Frank Miller

BEHIND THE SCENES - LITTLE WOMEN (1933) Just before Little Women started filming, RKO production chief David O. Selznick signed to produce films for his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer, at MGM. His successor, Merian C. Cooper, fought to keep the project alive. Selznick took director George Cukor to MGM with him. RKO agreed to let Cukor out of his contract if he would agree to return to direct Little Women after his first MGM assignment, Dinner at Eight (1933), and direct one more film for them (the 1933 Our Betters, starring Constance Bennett). They also got MGM to loan them contract player Lionel Barrymore. Katharine Hepburn modeled her performance on stories she had been told of her maternal grandmother, who actually lived during the Civil War era. Although Grandmother Houghton had died before the actress was born, Hepburn's mother had painted a vivid picture of her in family stories. The dress Hepburn wore for Jo's first trip to the opera was modeled on one of her grandmother's gowns. Cukor avoided what he called "Hollywood chi-chi" in the sets by hiring a studio outsider, New York interior decorator Hobe Erwin, to supervise the design. The studio even paid for Erwin to do research in Alcott's hometown, Concord, Massachusetts. The design for the March family's home was copied from author Louisa May Alcott's own house. Joan Bennett was pregnant during the filming but hoped they would finish her scenes before she started to show. When they didn't, costume designer Walter Plunkett redesigned her costumes to conceal her condition, and Cukor shot most of her scenes from the waist up. They also re-wrote one scene requiring her character to fall off a chair; Hepburn's character did it instead. Before shooting the scene in which Hepburn runs upstairs with a dish of ice cream, Cukor warned her that there was no replacement for the dress, so she had to be very careful not to spill it. She spilled it anyway, then laughed. Cukor was so angry he struck her. During filming, the soundman's union went on strike, forcing Cukor to work with an inexperienced crew. Sound problems forced him to make 15 takes of Hepburn's crying scene after Beth's death. When they finally got the take, Hepburn threw up. by Frank Miller

Little Women was RKO's most successful film to that time, grossing $2 million internationally on a cost of $424,000. "Miss Hepburn steps up the ladder, if anything, by her interpretation of Jo. She talks rather fast at times, but one feels that Jo did, and after all one does not wish to listen to dialogue in which every word is weighed when the part is acted by a Katharine Hepburn." -- Mordaunt Hall, the New York Times. "That Little Women attains so perfectly, without seeming either affected or superior, the courtesy and rueful wisdom of its original is due to expert adaptation by Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, to Cukor's direction and to superb acting by Katharine Hepburn....This picture, which critics last week pronounced the best that RKO has yet produced, is likely to place Katharine Hepburn near the top of the list of U.S. box-office favorites." -- Time Magazine "It is, of course, the mood which is the important part of the work, and it is the unashamed straightforwardness of the writing, the unpatronizing shrewdness of George Cukor's direction and, above all, Miss Hepburn's beautiful playing which make Little Women an exquisite screen drama. It is one of the great feats of Mr. Cukor that he manages a screen play in which everyone is supposed to be charming all over the place and makes it all seem true." -- Mordaunt Hall, the New York Herald Tribune. "A reminder that emotions and vitality and truth can be evoked from lavender and lace as well as from machine guns and precision dances." -- Thornton Delehanty, New York Post. "There are small flaws - a few naive and cloying scenes, some obvious dramatic contrivances - but it's a lovely, graceful film, and surprisingly faithful to the atmosphere, the Victorian sentiments, and the Victorian strengths of the Louisa May Alcott novel...Directed by George Cukor, for the most part imaginatively and with unusual delicacy..." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (Henry Holt and Company). "Surely the definitive version of Louisa May Alcott's novel, sweet, funny, perfectly cast, and exquisitely evocative in its New England period reconstruction...Cukor mines a rich vein of sentiment, never over-stepping the mark into slush, but it is Hepburn's Jo, making a subversive choice of what she wants her life to be, who ensures that the cosiness isn't everything." - Tom Milne, TimeOut Film Guide (Penguin). "...a profoundly moving history of youth and in this celluloid transcription...its deeply spiritual values are revealed with a simple earnestness. Katharine Hepburn as Jo creates a new and stunningly vivid character; strips the Victorian boyden of her too syrupy goody-goodiness; and endows the role with awkwardly engaging youth energy that makes it the essence of flesh and blood reality." - Variety Movie Guide (Prentice Hall). "Charming 'big picture' of its day, with excellent production and performances" - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide (HarperPerennial). "Film offers endless pleasure no matter how many times you've seen it; a faithful, beautiful adaptation..." - Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide (Plume). AWARDS & HONORS The National Board of Review listed Little Women as the Best Film of 1933. Little Women placed eighth on the New York Times' ten best list. Another Cukor film, Dinner at Eight (1933), placed fifth. Photoplay magazine gave Little Women its medal of honor for the year. Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman won the Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay. Nominations also went to the film and George Cukor's direction. Although not nominated for Little Women, Hepburn won the Oscar® that year, but for Morning Glory (1933). Katharine Hepburn was named Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance. Compiled by Frank Miller & Jeff Stafford

Nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, Little Women (1933), won only the latter for the writing team of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman. It was adapted from the classic Louisa May Alcott novel about four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War. There had been a silent version, and there would be several more, but the 1933 film is considered by most critics to be the best, and the most faithful to the book. Victor Heerman was a director in the teens and twenties. He turned to writing, usually with his wife, Sarah Y. Mason - after directing his best-known film, the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers (1930). Many of the couple's scripts were adaptations of novels, such as The Age of Innocence (1934), Magnificent Obsession (1935), and Stella Dallas (1937). The first of these was Little Women. According to Director George Cukor and star Katharine Hepburn, there were several earlier versions of the screenplay by various writers, and none of them worked. The reason Heerman and Mason's script worked so well, Hepburn recalled in her autobiography, was that it was "simple and true and naive but really believable. Mason and Heerman believed the book. So did I. The others didn't." Cukor called the script "something quite original for the time. It wasn't slicked up. The construction was very loose, very episodic, like the novel. Things happen, but they're not all tied together...the writers believed in the book, they understood its vitality, which is not namby-pamby in any way." Little Women was the final film David O. Selznick supervised as head of production at RKO, and it had his usual superb production values: authentic period sets by Hobe Erwin; costumes by Walter Plunkett, who would later design costumes for Gone With the Wind; sensitive direction by George Cukor; and a first-rate cast, headed by Katharine Hepburn in one of her best performances as the tomboy Jo. Little Women was a hit, out-grossing most of the films in release at the time. Its success vindicated Selznick's belief that classics could be made into commercial and artistic films. Producer: Merian C. Cooper Director: George Cukor Screenplay: Victor Heerman; Sarah Y. Mason Cinematography: Henry W. Gerrard Costume Design: Walter PLunkettFilm Editing: Jack Kitchin Original Music: Max Steiner Principal Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Jo), Joan Bennett (Amy March), Paul Lukas (Professor Fritz Bhaer), Frances Dee (Meg), Jean Parker (Beth), Edna May Oliver (Aunt March), Henry Stephenson (Mr. Laurence), Spring Byington (Marmee March), Samuel S. Hinds (Mr. March), John Lodge (John Brooke). BW-116m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video. by Margarita Landazuri

Frances Dee, the lovely, intelligent actress who was a leading lady to some of Hollywood's top male stars of the '30s, including Maurice Chevalier, Ronald Colman, Fredric March and her late husband, Joel McCrea, died on March 6 at Norwalk hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut from complications of a stroke. She was 96. She was born Jane Dee, on November 26, 1907 in Los Angeles, California. She was the daughter of an Army officer who grew up in Chicago after her father was transferred there when she was still a toddler. After he was re-stationed to Los Angeles in the late '20s, Jane accompanied him back. Although she didn't harbor any serious intentions of becoming a star, Dee, almost out of curiosity, found work in Hollywood as an extra. With bit parts in small features in the films Words and Music (1929), True to the Navy, and Monte Carlo (both 1930), it didn't take long for studio executives to take notice of the sleek, stylish brunette. They changed her first name to Francis, and gave her a prominent role opposite Maurice Chevalier in one of the first all-talking musicals, The Playboy of Paris (1930). She proved she could handle drama in her next big hit, An American Tragedy (1931) as Sondra Finchley, the role played by Elizabeth Taylor in the George Stevens' remake A Place in the Sun (1951). She met her husband Joel McCrea while filming The Silver Cord (1933), and after a romantic courtship, were married that same year in Rye, New York. It was well-known within film industry circles that their 57-year marriage (ending in 1990 when McCrea passed away) was one of the most successful among Hollywood stars. From there, Dee played important leads in several fine motion pictures thoughout the decade: Little Women (1933), starring Katharine Hepburn; Blood Money (also 1933), where she was cast thrillingly against type as a sex-hungry socialite whose taste for masochistic boyfriends leads to harrowing results; Of Human Bondage (1934), in which she played Leslie Howard's devoted girlfriend; The Gay Deception (1935), a charming romantic comedy co-starring Frances Lederer; Wells Fargo (1937) a broad sweeping Western where she again teamed up with her husband McCrea; and the classic period epic If I Were King (1938) making a marvelous match for Ronald Colman. Dee's film career slowed considerably in the '40s, as she honorably spent more time raising her family. Still, she was featured in two fine films: the profound, moving anti-Nazi drama So Ends Our Night (1941) with Fredric March; and Val Lewton's terrific cult hit I Walked with a Zombie (1943), portraying the inquisitive nurse trying to unravel the mystery of voodoo occurrences on a West Indian plantation. Dee officially retired after starring in the family film Gypsy Colt (1954) to commit herself full-time to her children and her husband. For those so inclined, you might want to check out Complicated Women (2003), a tight documentary regarding the racy Pre-Code films that represented a realistic depiction of the Depression-era morality before the Hays code took over Hollywood in 1934. Frances Dee, although well in her nineties, offers some lucid insight into her performance in Blood Money, and clearly demonstrates an actor's process of thought and understanding in role development. She is survived by three sons including the actor Jody McCrea, who found fame as "Bonehead" in the AIP Beach Party films of the '60s, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. by Michael T. Toole