Spitfire

Any chance to see Katharine Hepburn in something I haven't seen or from her early movie career is a treat, and on that level the film is amusing, but she's horrible miscast as a Hill Billy. Her famous New England enunciation slips through, making lines like, "I'd better rustle up some Vittles" pretty ludicrous. She's so pretty and so young… it almost overcomes this major flaw. The story is an old fashioned melodrama, and there fore, a younger generation may think this pretty corny stuff, but this was the staple of American Entertainment well into the 1940's. It has its moments, but you might need to be a die-hard movie buff to appreciate it.

SPITFIRE (RKO Radio Pictures, 1934), directed by John Cromwell, stars Katharine Hepburn in one of her most unusual movie roles, unusual by sense of her casting rather than its story. Following the pattern of playing a stage struck girl in MORNING GLORY (1933), for which she won the Academy Award, and going one better as Jo March to the screen adaptation to Louisa May Allcott's literary work of LITTLE WOMEN (1933), who would have imagined the now established Hepburn choosing for her next movie role as a mountain girl? Taken from the story, "Trigger" by Lula Vollmer, SPITFIRE could easily be a hillbilly caricature of Jo March due to her tomboyish nature, yet at the same time makes every effort presenting herself in a very believable manner down to her hillbilly spoken dialect.

Opening title: "Ignorance and superstition are not confined to any one locality. They stalk hand in hand all over the world flourishing, especially in isolated sections cut off from civilization. But, here in the backwoods countries sometimes we find a faith simple and strong enough to throw its lights even into civilization." Trigger Hicks (Katharine Hepburn) is introduced as a religious 18-year-old mountain girl who's peaceful one moment and speaks her mind with violent outbursts the next by throwing stones without hitting her target. She believes herself to be a mystic healer whose prayers can heal the sick and raise the dead. Close by to where she's living are John Stafford (Robert Young) and George Fleetwood (Ralph Bellamy), a couple of contract engineers for the Whitlock Construction Company working on a dam building project nearing completion. They each encounter Trigger Hicks and find her fascinating in nature. Trigger becomes slightly romantically involved with one of them, unaware the he's married. The basic premise, which takes up much of the film's second half, concerns Trigger taking it upon herself in abducting an infant belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer (Sidney Toler and Therese Wittler), believing she can cure this sickly baby who's near dying. The child does improve under her care, but is advised by Fleetwood to return it to its parents, which she does. After the return, the baby becomes weaker, and after its death, both parents and the neighboring crowd accuse her of witchcraft, resulting to verbal outbursts and casting stones. Will Trigger be able to prove otherwise?

Though there have been backwoods stories told on screen before dating back to the early days of motion pictures, with the rarely seen STARK LOVE (Paramount, 1927)immediately coming to mind with an authentic hillbilly cast rather than professional actors in the cast, makes one wonder how SPITFIRE might have turned out had it been produced that way instead? However, for the sake of box-office appeal, comes Katharine Hepburn, Robert Young (on loan from MGM) and Ralph Bellamy as the selected actors working together for the only time. Others in support are: Louis Mason (Bill Grayson); Martha Sleeper (Eleanor); Virginia Howell (Granny Raines); John Beck (Jake Hawkins); along with Bob Burns (billed as High Ghere) in the role of West Fry. In her first screen role, Sara (billed Sarah) Haden, nearly steals it with her believable performance as Etta Dawson, an ignorant hillbilly girl who gets on Trigger's nerves. Louis Mason is equally effective playing the rustic hayseed, also working on the dam project who stirs up Trigger by wanting to kiss her.

With the exception of the opening credits, SPITFIRE lacks any sort of mood music and underscoring, yet manages not to resemble an early 1929 talkie. It does, however, take some time getting the story going with character introduction and plot development to where the story is heading before leading to a resulting conclusion that's seems to pave way for a sequel which never occurs.

Formerly available on video cassette, SPITFIRE did have broadcasts on various cable networks as USA (1980s); American Movie Classics (prior to 2001); and Turner Classic Movies since 1994. Though rarely shown on New York City television since the 1960s, it was interesting getting to see SPITFIRE at one point dubbed in Spanish on the Spanish TV channel prior to 1973 on WNJU, Channel 47, Newark, New Jersey, before getting to know what the actors are actually saying when shown entirely in its original English with a couple of reruns on public television's WNET, Channel 13 (1977-78), in New York City.

Aside from other Hepburn's offbeat performances as a Chinese wife in DRAGON SEED (MGM, 1944), and a Russian in a Bob Hope comedy, THE IRON PETTICOAT (MGM, 1956), for SPITFIRE, this is Hepburn, a different Hepburn type performance, that dominates the proceedings in such a way that it's totally impossible not seeing this one through its entire 87 minutes, at least for Hepburn fans anyway. (***)

It's a tribute to the great Katharine Hepburn that despite RKO casting her as an Okefenokee swamp hillbilly in "Spitfire," where she plays a character named Trigger (formerly mainly known as Roy Rogers' horse), Hepburn managed to have a magnificent and long career. A role like this would a brung down a lesser filly an' she'd a bin hog-tied an' on her way home on the horse that brung her.

Trigger, anyway, lives in a shack with her drunken pappy, lives on faith and is actually a faith-healer. Her neighbors think she's a witch. Two engineers, John Stafford (Robert Young) and George Fleetwood (Ralph Bellamy) meet Trigger and try to help her after she steals a baby in order to heal him. Both engineers end up falling for Trigger, though John is married and his wife shows up.

Katharine Hepburn's finishing school accent doesn't mix well with mountain talk. This is dreadful miscasting. The film is based on a play, and this was probably a new kind of play that didn't deal with the upper class, so it required a more natural style of acting. There's no denying that Hepburn was a fantastic actress, and she certainly can play the emotions called for in this role. But it's a bad fit.

Sidney Toler, who played Charlie Chan, appears in this film and speaks with the same that thar back-slapping accent as the rest of them.

Odd film, probably an odd play, with a odd cast.

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."

Other reviewers seem to be comparing this delightful old film with standard streamlined products of the 40s and later. But "Spitfire" belongs to an older tradition, and it's a rare example of theatrical naturalism translated to film. Naturalism was always a dicey affair, attempting to study real (i.e., non-glamorous) people in folksy environments, and usually failing because written by authors of "a class above" for sensational purposes. I found this quaint vision of hill folk very appealing, representing a kind of nostalgia for Americana imagined although never real--yet nevertheless enjoyed by mainstream audiences. The young Hepburn gives an awkward but dazzling performance, fully inhabiting her naïve, sentimentalized Trigger Hicks, delivering her lines in a vigorous and truly delicious stage "Hillbilly" dialect. Don't miss a chance to travel on this strange, charming time machine.