Primo amore

I had literally just completed my reading of Booth Tarkington's novel from which this movie was adapted before settling down to watch Katharine Hepburn star in the title role of this early George Stevens film.

It's a little creaky for sure as you might expect from an old 1935 feature and even if it does tack on a happy ending at variance with the original book, it would take a hard heart to seriously object to the upturn in Alice and her father's fortunes as things turn out.

The story of a sparky, pretty young girl brought up in rather straitened circumstances by her well-meaning but rather down-trodden parents, she is excited to be attending a high society party in the neighbourhood where maybe she can catch the eye of a handsome, wealthy young man who will elevate her from her life of comparative drudgery and give her the good life she craves. However, forced to wear an old dress long out-of-fashion and with no friends with whom to pal about, she's reduced to taking dances from the prize klutz and then playing wall-flower before she by chance meets up with poor little rich boy Arthur Russell played by Fred McMurray, apparently the fiancé of the wealthy deb holding the party but who sees past Alice's outer appearance to the good person within and promptly falls for her.

There are side plots involving Alice's rascally brother who eventually steals money from his employer, while her old dad, played by Fred Stone, employed at the same firm, is egged on by his henpecking wife on the pretext of improving Alice's prospects, to finally get out from his sinecure and set up a glue business in competition with his erstwhile employer, the vaunted big-man-in-town A J Lamb.

It all comes to a head when mum holds a big family dinner to formally meet and greet Arthur in a painfully excruciating scene where everything that can happen to embarrass the bold Alice duly does but just when it seems that poverty and ignominy awaits the family and that Alice may have to shock-horror go out and work for a living, along come two acts separate acts of charity and compassion at the end which transform all their fortunes, especially Alice's.

It's impossible to deny Alice her happy ending, so sympathetically and engagingly does Hepburn play the part. At this early stage in her career, some of her later irritating ticks and mannerisms are largely absent so that you really want things to turn out well for her. Likewise Fred Stone as her put-upon father, who finds his backbone in the end, even if his "Dang me!" protestations in that wheedling voice of his will likely set your nerves on edge. McMurray too is charming as the suave playboy who turns his back on his privileged but mean-spirited social equals for the love of poor but honest Alice.

One thing I didn't enjoy were the stereotypical demeaning parts given to black actors in the film, like seeing Hattie McDaniels as a slatternly hired-help but to be fair they are as written in the book, although if the producer could take the liberty to change the ending, it's just a pity they couldn't have done something similar with the casting of these parts.

Still, this was an enjoyable and entertaining mild-morality tale, made memorable mainly by Hepburn's bright performance in the title role.

Have you ever picked up what you thought was a glass of water, but when you took a long sip you ended up with a mouthful of Sprite? A surprising feeling, but then you have to figure out if it's pleasant or not. I felt similarly about my experience watching "Alice Adams", George Stevens' 1935 film starring Katherine Hepburn as the title character. Expecting a wily romantic comedy, possibly a precursor to Hepburn's screwball comedies, I instead witnessed a beautiful, touching and sad film about rejection and romance in small-town America.

Alice is the daughter of a bookkeeper who is sick, and therefore temporarily out of work. Even before his unemployment, his job did not provide as much money for his family as many of Alice's contemporaries. This causes Alice to not be accepted in society, and makes it harder to find a boyfriend, though she tries to keep cheerful in front of her family. Unfortunately Mrs. Adams doesn't make things easier, by constantly harping on Mr. Adams to quit his job and be more ambitious. When the Palmers have their annual dance, Alice asks her brother Walter to take her, and there she first sees Arthur Russell MacMurray) a wealthy young man who is practically engaged to Mildred Palmer, probably the richest and most socially prominent young woman in the town. He notices Alice, and after a dance together, finds her a couple of days later and they begin a romance, but it becomes obvious that Alice is not going to be able to put up a façade of wealth and social acceptance for long, as their relationship becomes more serious.

There were so many times that I found myself just aching for Alice during this film. Booth Tarkington is so good at capturing the darker side of small town life without being obvious, that it is understandable that this film could be mistaken for a light romantic comedy, though in reality it was anything but. Alice's low self-esteem, mainly due to society's views on her more than her family's lack of money makes her such a fragile character that she becomes immediately sympathetic, and this is mainly due to Hepburn's performance. This was early in her career, and after seeing many of her later films it is easy to forget just how radiant and luminous she once was. She has always been one of my favorite actresses, but it was generally because of the strength she gave the characters she played throughout the years, not her fragility. "Alice Adams" was an extremely pleasant surprise, and I ended up absolutely loving it. A very solid 8/10.

--Shelly

ALICE ADAMS, played by the late, great Katharine Hepburn, is quintessentially the beautiful, ambitious small-town girl put upon by circumstance. She wants desperately to be accepted, to be something other than just a poor "nobody"... to hide the fact that she doesn't come from 'money' and 'background'. This is painfully obvious in the first few scenes, when Alice steals out of the nickel-and-dime store but pauses meaningfully before the classy Vogue shopfront: trying to fool the world and possibly herself into thinking that that was where she was shopping all afternoon. She plans and preens for the high-society Palmer party, even though she has to wear her two-year-old dress, pick flowers for her own corsage, and go with her brother Walter (Frank Albertson) as her date. As everyone at the party ignores Alice, save another social reject Frank Dowling (bit-player Grady Sutton), she spots and is attracted to the rich, handsome Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray, in a woefully underwritten role). Of course, Mr. Russell is meant to marry party hostess Mildred Palmer. This doesn't last long though--he quickly makes clear his attraction to the magnetic, gracefully awkward Alice, and begins to court her with serious intent. But Alice, in her eagerness to hide her social status, papers over their growing love with lies, which leads to a disastrous dinner party at the Adams abode... even as her family slowly disintegrates around them, partly due to Alice's father Virgil (Fred Stone) wanting to earn more money for his daughter.

The film is generally okay--that's the best word for it. Not great, not even really *good*, but just... okay. It's interesting, and hints at something better than it is. But ultimately, it's a social drama that comes off a bit stilted, with very few fully-fledged characters. The key role of Arthur Russell is remarkably free of a personality, and it's even hard to really put a finger on what Arthur finds so enchanting about Alice... aside from her being fortuitously Katharine Hepburn's identical twin. Oh, Alice is an interesting character, certainly. But so much of her being is concentrated on her social ambitions that it leaves you wondering what Arthur sees in her since these are the very things she hides from him when they are together. Alice's brother and father fare better, but even towards the end, Walter becomes little more than a plot device in an ending that appears to want to serve as a muddled sort of come-uppance for Alice. Sutton as bumbling gentleman and his sister's dance partner is actually a stand-out in his... what? Five minutes of screen time? Intriguing though the message of the film may be (social class does not matter and attempts to rise above it will only keep you from your true self and happiness), the blandness of the characters keeps one from really developing sympathy for the characters.

As for Alice, the film almost seems designed to have the audience keep her at arm's length. When she recognises that she is the one who will drive Arthur away, not because of what he has heard about her but because she cannot bear to confront her own reality head on, she keeps pressing on. The one truly brilliant scene in the film is that of the disastrous dinner party--this is possibly the first film I've seen where the atmosphere is one of muffled horror, both on the part of the participants as well as the audience. As Alice flounders through the dinner, chatting constantly, gaily, desperately, I found myself just wanting her to please, please keep quiet. To stop making things worse. It was very effectively staged, and a wry, clever commentary on Alice's inability to just relax and be herself. But by the end of the film, when Alice realises her foolishness and finally lets her guard down, there just isn't time to muster much sympathy for her character. It doesn't help that her suitor is so terminally boring that the love story is charming at best, but certainly does not come anywhere near to the unadulterated magic of the best classic film couples.

However--and this is a pretty darn big however--although this is probably not one of Hepburn's better 1930s films (she starred in a whole run of those, including LITTLE WOMEN, STAGE DOOR, HOLIDAY and BRINGING UP BABY), this is without a doubt one of the best of her 1930s performances. Never was there a lovelier, more quietly desperate wallflower than Hepburn's Alice. Hepburn is not squarely in her prime here--not yet. For that, I point you to her unparalleled, radiant turn in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. But in ALICE ADAMS, she is all fresh, awkward beauty. Her performance gives a strong hint of what she will be well capable of in the future--an almost intuitive ability to harness those 'mannerisms' of hers, as her critics call them, to serve the performance and flesh out her character... but also to shed them in an instant and truly, genuinely surprise her audience with beautiful understatement and a remarkable lack of histrionics in her performance. (This would only be refined in her future roles with Spencer Tracy.) As Alice floats through the Palmer party, pretending she is in demand and only waiting for her date, or as she chats with a desperate light in her eyes to Arthur at the Adams' dinner party, Hepburn suffuses the role with the kind of quiet, frantic desire which is simply perfect for her character. It is Hepburn that gives ALICE ADAMS the spark of life it needs to keep from being a mediocre, even bad, film. Her performance is the cornerstone and, quite frankly, the most interesting part of the film.

7.5, largely on the basis of Hepburn's performance which gives this film the extra edge it needs.

Showing her versatility Katharine Hepburn gets her best part since her Oscar winning Morning Glory in the title role of Alice Adams. Alice and Eva Lovelace are worlds apart. Eva leaves her small town in search of fame and fortune in the theater. But poor Alice just wants to compete with the rest of the girls in her midwest Indiana small town that Booth Tarkington wrote about and land a real Prince Charming of a fellow.

The Prince shows up at a dance she goes to in the person of Fred MacMurray. She's taken with him, but she's ashamed of her family's rather humble living condition. When MacMurray does come calling they have a family dinner that turns into a real disaster.

Kate got one of her Oscar nominations for her role and MacMurray also gets one of his best early film parts as well. Kate's family is also nicely cast with Ann Shoemaker, Frank Albertson, and especially Fred Stone filling out the roles of mother, brother, and father. I do kind of feel sorry for Stone, he's really put upon by his family. In today's world Ann Shoemaker would have gone out and gotten a second job for another income, back then that would have been unthinkable.

Alice Adams is a nice nostalgic trip by Booth Tarkington into the lives and mores of small town Indiana. This film was also George Stevens's first major film and he'd work with Kate again in Woman of the Year.

I had heard of the famous Tarkington novel (but not read it) and had known that Katherine Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for this. So, I rented it.

It's just so moving. What I think some of the negative reviewers forget is just how much a girl's prospects in a small town in the 1920s are determined by whom she marries. For the intelligent, lively, vibrant, charming, warm-hearted Alice Adams - with a pitifully weak (but very sympathetic) and rather poor father, Alice's chance to "make anything" of her life is determined socially.

My heart ached with the snubs Alice receives - the routine unthinking cuts she receives at the hands of those from "better" families. Wearing a two year old dress with a corsage of violets illegally picked from the park, her loutish brother in his old beaten-up borrowed car as her date, she tries SO HARD to fit in - and doesn't because no one will let her. It's the most opaque of glass ceilings.

If you've ever felt (at a job, a party, a family gathering) that there was nothing you could do - no matter how hard you tried - to fit in - yet it was important that you did, you'll feel so much for this charming girl.

I do agree with others that the Arthur Russell part is underwritten.

But the movie boring? Not on your life. The painful moments are more difficult to watch than most war movies in which the protagonist is killed - because it is so well-done -

-- the pains of humiliation borne within, the disability one cannot hide, the old dress, the rude and outrageous relation, the thwarted eagerness - these are far more likely to be the painful moments in one's life (that one does not wish to remember) than any actual bullet wounds.

I love how the movie does not show a saintly Alice - she would love to snub others (e.g., the chubby boy at the dance), would love to parade before others in finery. yet her warmth toward her family - her essential sweetness, her strong frustrated yearning - are completely captivating.

We love this girl - and because of that, we love the movie.