Spitfire

Just the thought of "Katharine Hepburn as a hillbilly" automatically sends many viewers into hysterics, and it's indeed jarring at first to view her as Trigger Hicks, an innocent Ozarks miss who's an ungainly combination of religious fervor, antisocial behavior, unexamined but potent sexuality, and wisecracks. Take away all your predispositions about Katharine Hepburn, though, and she's quite good in it, doing a lot of acting with her eyes and singing in a far more resonant alto than she exhibited decades later on the Broadway stage. It's a "Tobacco Road"-like melodrama of misfits in the hills, with Ralph Bellamy and Robert Young as the smart-men-from-the-city who are interested in her, and it's from a 1927 stage play that didn't run long. (One of the stage actors, Sara Haden, repeats her stage role; also in the original company was a very young Natalie Schaefer, as the wife of the Robert Young character.) It's picturesque and thoughtful and really quite touching in examining how nonconformists cope in unfriendly surroundings, and the lack of background music and deliberate pacing make it seem less manufactured and movie-fied than many contemporary offerings. Give it a chance. However, a postscript: In the mid-1970s I had occasion to tell Miss Hepburn, as she was getting into her limo, "Miss Hepburn, one of your movies is on TV locally this week, it's called 'Spitfire.'" "'Spitfire,' 'Spitfire,' she mused. "Oh, God help us all."