Little Women (1933)

I seem to have copies of a surprising number of movies in Summer Under the Stars this year that I haven't blogged about before. Another one coming up, for Katharine Hepburn's day, is the 1933 version of Little Women, tomorrow (August 18) at 9:30 AM.

Now, I have to admit that before doing this post, I had not read the novel by Louisa May Alcott on which this and the other movie versions is based. Nor had I watched any of the movie versions all the way through, although I had seen parts of at least the 1949 version that has Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Lawford in the cast. But I did know vaguely of the plot, namely that it deals with the struggles of the four March sisters in Massachusetts during the Civil War while their father is off serving the Union Army.

The sisters are Jo (short for Josephine, played by Katharine Hepburn), Meg (Frances Dee), Beth (Jean Parker) and Amy (Joan Bennett). Meg, the eldest, is making some extra money for the family by working as a seamstress. Jo is a bit of a tomboy and dreams of becoming a professional writer. Amy is the youngest and just finishing her education, while Beth is musically inclined. They live with their mother (Spring Byington), while also having an Aunt (Edna May Oliver) who is better off and exerts a bit of control on the family although she's not the villain of the piece by any means. There's really no villain here.

The Marches live next door to Mr. Laurence (Henry Stephenson) but aren't all that close to him. The relationship is about to change, however, when his grandson Laurie (Douglass Montgomery) arrives from Europe and spends some time with grandfather. All the girls are taken by this handsome young man, but obviously, no more than one of the girls can have him. Laurie also has a tutor, John Brooke, which gives another man for the girls to go gaga over.

The war hits home for the family when news reaches them that Dad has been injured and is at an army hospital in Washington; eventually he comes home although he's never a major character. Beth has gotten sick by this time and there's some fear that she's going to die. Jo eventually goes off to New York to try to make it as a writer, where she meets German professor Baer (Paul Lukas), and those two may or may not wind up becoming romantically involved if Jo can't have Laurie.

Little Women is more episodic than having an overriding plot, and this telling of the tale really puts the emphasis on Jo since it's Katharine Hepburn in that part. Hepburn is, unsurprisingly, a force of nature here, and to me that force is not always appropriate. At times it works quite well, but sometimes it's just too much.

The movie has production values that are quite good for 1933, although this sort of period material is stuff that modern productions can do without making it look quite so backlot-bound. Still, for a 1930s literary adaptation, this version of Little Women does quite well.