Alice Adams (1935) Director: George Stevens
“I’ve lived long enough to know that circumstances can beat the best of us – yes, the best of us.”
★★★★★
After several disappointing flops like the film Spitfire (1934) and the Broadway production of “The Lake,” Alice Adams rejuvenated Katharine Hepburn’s Hollywood career echoing such hits as Morning Glory (1933). It is based on the 1921 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington (winner of the Pulitzer in 1922). I decided to watch this film in conjunction with reading the novel as I make my way chronologically through the Pulitzer Prize winners. Feel free to read my review of Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel here.
Alice Adams tells the story of Alice (Katharine Hepburn), daughter of a glue factory worker in a provincial Indiana town (Tarkington frequently wrote novels about his Midwest home of Indianapolis). She is insecure about her family’s class-status and dreams of becoming a high-class lady. Thus she and her mother constantly push their father to make more money. One evening, Alice attends a ball with many well-to-do families where, after much alone-time off the dance floor, she meets a kind gentleman named Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray) who expresses interest in her. She is embarrassed, however, to find her brother playing games with the servants in a backroom. She continues to put on a facade of wealth and grandeur as Mr. Russell gently courts her throughout the film, until the Adams family hosts him for dinner one hot evening at their humble neighborhood house. Alice is routinely embarrassed by her family’s actions and the dinner erupts in chaos when they find out her brother stole $150 from the glue factory on behalf of a friend. Her father’s career is nearly ruined –until it is saved at the last moment by Alice.
At this point, Hepburn wanted the film to end –to leave the question of her relationship ambiguous to the audience– however RKO decided a happy ending was necessary to prevent a bomb at the box office. RKO was known to tamper with film endings, most notoriously in Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, another film based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. Additionally, there was a dispute onset between Katharine Hepburn and director George Stevens over the closing sequence –whether it should be Hepburn crying by a window or on her bed as scripted– but when Hepburn simply could not produce the tears necessary for the scene, Stevens berated her which unleashed a flood of genuine tears. Alice Adams was nominated for two Academy Awards, but lost both (though Best Actress that year, Bette Davis, always felt Hepburn deserved the award instead). Director George Stevens would go on to create several later Hollywood successes, including Swing Time, Gunga Din, and Shane, among others.
The sad yearning of Alice Adams, a simple Midwestern girl with aristocratic dreams, is beautifully captured in this film by Katharine Hepburn. Previously, Hepburn was known for portraying strong and confident characters, so Alice Adams, in her innocent naiveté, was a departure for her and it is amusing to watch a Bryn Mawr woman portray a lower-class blue-collar girl. However, Alice Adams is nothing without Hepburn, and appropriately it injected new life into Hepburn’s career from this point forward. Alice Adams is a delightfully simple film full of hope and nostalgia for a simpler time. Scenes of particular note include Alice’s sorrow as she sits alone beside the dance floor, the warm evening on the porch of her family’s home, and her walks around town as she runs into her gentleman-lover unexpectedly. It is always amusing seeing the ways in which American upper-crust patrician actors and writers (Katharine Hepburn and Booth Tarkington) portray the blue collar workers of the nation. But here Katharine Hepburn truly shines (in later years, she regarded Alice as one of her favorite roles).
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Click here to read my review of Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Alice Adams.
Credits:
- Directed by: George Stevens
- Screenplay by: Dorothy Yost, Mortimer Offner, Jane Murfin
- Based on: Alice Adams (1921), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington
- Produced by: Pandro S. Berman
- Starring:
- Katharine Hepburn…..Alice Adams
- Fred MacMurray…..Arthur Russell
- Fred Stone…..Virgil Adams
- Evelyn Venable…..Mildred Palmer
- Edited by: Jane Loring
- Music by: Max Steiner, Roy Webb
- Production Company: RKO Radio Pictures