Argento vivo

Yes, this is one of the weaker Hepburn RKO films, but instead of the truly horrible film I expected, I thought it was not as bad as is generally thought.

I like mid-1930's movies, and I'm a big fan of Hepburn. I'm always fascinated watching favorite actors doing unusual roles.

One of the reasons she took the part is due to her obvious talents as a sportswoman....can you imagine someone like Ginger Rogers in the role? Constance Bennett?

I was pleasantly surprised at Sara Haden's performance. She in support of scores of movies, and this role is one of her biggest parts. She's first-rate.

All in all, a very minor film, but if Warners ever gets around to releasing Hepburn's RKO films on DVD, this is one that I will buy.

Okay, you have a lame script about a hillbilly girl. She's emotional and immature, ignert and superstitious, grubby and mystical, with an innocent yet powerful sexuality. Who do you cast? Perhaps an actress who can project some of those qualities? Possibly someone who can do the accept properly, maybe someone in the right age group, or even someone whose background has something in it that would allow her to connect to the character? YOU might, but the producers cast the most damnably Yankee actress in Hollywood - Katherine Hepburn.

Katherine Hepburn - of New England old money, graduate of Bryn Mawr, officially inducted into the Preppie Hall of Fame, the living embodiment of well-bred hard-headed plain-spoken Yankee common sense, whose best roles are as sophisticated and professional women... cast as a ragged teenage Hillbilly outcast illiterate mystic thought to be a witch by her backwoods neighbors? Hepburn had enough Yankee common sense to try everything possible to get out of doing this role, but the idiots who ran studio had the upper hand and forced her into this little stinker. Her awkwardness shows she knows what a fool she's making of herself, but still gives it the old college try (yuk, yuk), taking this movie from ordinary badness into truly amazing eye-popping badness. I mean, classy Kate Hepburn throwing stones at the neighbors and having bug-eyed visions? You have to see this to believe it.

Without Hepburn the movie would still be terrible (but with her it's funny). It's one of these horrible condescending scripts about how ignernt and cruel them backwoods white trash is, and how being ignernt and immature is kinda sexy in a purty girl. Eeew.

(Note: Way funnier than her second-most spectacularly miscast role. In 1941 she played a Chinese peasant woman in "Dragon Seed". It's not nearly as funny, being just a bad war-effort film, it's rather dull and this one is absolutely daffy.)

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. (***)

This would have to be one of the oddest films ever, so much so, I taped it, re-ran about five times and still could not make my mind up. What on earth was the studio/director/writers et al up to ? Then suddenly it hit me, it was an early joke movie someone dreamed up; something like how do we stop immigration into the States, easy, we'll convince the would be newcomers that all Americans are like this ? and thus they'll all return to their native lands. No surely not. Perhaps it was the studios way of pacifying a would be investor who had millions, but a very bad storyline ? Well I do know that Katherine Hepburn became the worlds most incredible actress because she had enough gumption to do silly jobs like this one and rise so far above it that the 'sum of the parts became greater than the whole' Trigger, ah luvsyer gal. (please tell a foreigner whether there actually are/were people like these hill-billies in the US of A) Do you want to see this anomaly ? rent it buy it steal it even. If it gives you something to think about, then good, that's entertainment, I think.

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.