LITTLE WOMEN: Blu-ray (RKO Radio Pictures, 1933) Warner Archive

Kate ‘the great’ Hepburn struck an early blow for her independence and career in George Cukor’s masterfully directed Little Women (1933). Only a year before, Hepburn had wowed audiences and impressed her masters at RKO with an Oscar win in her movie debut – also for Cukor; A Bill of Divorcement (1932). The honeymoon period for Hepburn at RKO, alas, was short-lived. But before this deluge there was Hepburn’s Jo Marsh in Little Women. Enamored with author, Louisa May Alcott’s strong-minded depiction of New England family life, Cukor embraced the project as much as his star (although later to confess, until agreeing to do the movie he had never actually read the novel upon which it was based), and, in their second outing together in as many years, proved the first had not been merely a flash in the pan. Cukor would later muse that Hepburn, like Garbo in Camille (1936) had been born to play the part of Jo Marsh. “(She) cast something over it…tender and funny, fiercely loyal, and played the fool when she felt like it. There was a purity about her.” “This was (also) the beginning of my interest in research,” Cukor reasoned, “(At Hepburn’s request), Walter Plunkett designed the clothes with a great sense of family. The girls were poor but high-minded and it was arranged that one of them would wear a certain dress at a certain time, and then, another would borrow a skirt or jacket and so on. The frugality was real.” Plunkett’s considerable artistry was also called upon to mask co-star, Joan Bennett’s advancing pregnancy. Age 24, Bennett is almost believable as the self-centered/teenage Amy – in the novel, a mere child barely on the cusp of womanhood.

With a certain fastidiousness to detail, Cukor and his production designer, Hobe Irwin, set about to recreate Alcott’s family home with ‘great taste,’ rather ambitiously to avoid the ‘Hollywood’ urge to glamorize these otherwise natural settings all out of proportion. The sumptuousness of the piece thus evolved from Henry W. Gerrard’s sublime B&W cinematography, and in the richness to be found in all but a singular performance in the picture; that failing owed Spring Byington as the Marsh matriarch – ‘Marmee.’ For the rest, Jo and her sisters were admirably cast with Joan Bennett as Amy (whom Cukor impulsively plucked from relative obscurity while slightly inebriated at a party), Frances Dee (Margaret/‘Meg’) and Jean Parker (Elizabeth/‘Beth’). Also in it, Douglass Montgomery as long-suffering suitor, Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence, Edna May Oliver (appropriately pert as Aunt Marsh, in a role originally slated for actress, Louise Closser Hale, who unexpectedly died before production got underway), Henry Stephenson (an empathetic Mr. Laurence), John Davis Lodge (as Meg’s suitor/the tutor, John Brooke) and Paul Lukas (as Professor Bhaer, the squire to eventually fire Jo’s heart).

Cukor’s version of Little Women is usually cited as the definitive adaptation, already thrice removed from Alcott’s book with two preceding silent versions in the hopper by 1933. Aside: I much prefer Gillian Anderson’s 1994 version, to feature exquisite performances from Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Christian Bale and Claire Danes, and, also manage a minor affinity for MGM’s glossified but good 1949 reimagining, starring June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Mary Astor, Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret O’Brien. You can thoroughly forget director, Greta Gerwig’s ‘me too’ disposable little nothing from 2019. Interestingly, Cukor’s version was producer, David O. Selznick’s swan song at RKO, Selznick, already having departed the studio but returning to supervise and fulfill his outstanding commitment under his old contract. For this, Selznick received no screen credit – probably, just as well, as the movie does not bear the elemental dickering of his trademarked micromanagement.

Age 26, Katharine Hepburn plays to her farouche, Tom-boyish strengths with an air of cultivated unruliness. Acknowledging Hepburn’s contributions, Cukor concurred, that she was “...more than a personality. She is a human dynamo. Without meaning to be, and simply because of the vigor of her own mind and the intensity of her attitude toward her own work, she can be, if given the chance, what I would call an artistic bully...I do not say that had I decided to “lie down” to her from the start, a less good picture would have resulted. But a director with a conscience will fight tooth and nail to get the picture as he wants it. Let me hasten to say that Miss Hepburn and I did not fight at all. I confess freely that I used many weapons in dealing with her -simulated rage, ridicule and good-humored cajolery. She has a great sense of humor, and is capable of directing it against herself.” Owing Cukor’s goal to emphasize the apposition between sacrifice and family life, his Little Women emerges as a testament to the professional courtesies extended between director and star.

For its time, the 1933 version likely appealed to a certain sect of contemporary audiences precisely as its homespun family unity, pinned to life’s simple pleasures, flew bravely in the face of the ‘then’ more jaded class-conscious modernity in all those screwball comedies or Astaire/Rogers’ art deco paradises where women – scattershot or not - dealt with men on their terms rather than to supplicate to the whims, wants and wanton sexual desires to be derived from schlepping it in a man’s world. Yet, Cukor’s product does not wallow in nostalgia for this more antiquated epoch. Instead, Little Women serves as a fond recollection of that Currier and Ives naïveté, hardly unintelligent, though far less-demanding and stressful in an era since overrun by fast gals and dapper dans. 

Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman’s screenplay borrows – in some scenes – word-for-word from Alcott’s prose, retaining their relevancy as the actors here are not all that far removed from the era being depicted. As good as all the other versions of Little Women may be – and some ‘actually’ are – they can only guess at what it must have been like to don heavy woolen hoop skirts in front of a roaring/homemade fire, or, to have ridden in a one-horse open sleigh as a primary mode of public transportation. Kate Hepburn’s towering performance denies the piece its hermetically sealed Victoriana, to massage rather than substitute Alcott’s Jo Marsh as inelegant and thorny with Hepburn’s pert good sense to know when to tarry. Nevertheless, Cukor’s aversion to obligatory heterosexual lovemaking (his characters usually articulate through word-smithed byplay rather than express what they feel via mere physical contact) stunts the amorous slant in his male participants.

Alcott’s ‘boy next door’ - Laurie was the stud of his times. As portrayed by Douglass Montgomery herein, he is merely second-string filler, toggling in his affections between Jo and Amy. Similarly, Meg’s paramour, John Brooke gets reincarnated by John Davis Lodge to lose all credibility as a serious but sweet suitor. He is more silly than sweet. Jo’s attraction to Prof. Bhaer is equally perplexing. Certainly, she is attracted to his waning toehold in academia. But Paul Lukas fails to convince the audience how a young woman of Jo Marsh’s aptitude and rapidly advancing aptitude could see beyond such an absence. And Lukas, despite his professor’s pedigree, drags in his intellectual resilience to truly challenge Jo’s enterprising mind. At best, we can imagine this couple politely debating the social relevancy of provocatively revealing a glimpse of stocking.

Set in Concord, Massachusetts, Cukor’s Little Women retains the novel’s episodic structure. We meet the Marsh girls and Marmee as they await the return of their beloved father/colonel/chaplain (Samuel S. Hinds) from the Union Army. Jo begrudgingly caters to the family’s affluent aunt, while aspiring to become a famous author. Amy is self-centered. Meg works as a governess. Beth informs her musical appreciation on a clavichord. Eventually, the girls become infatuated with Laurie, sent to live with his grandfather (Henry Stephenson) in the house adjacent their property. Invited to a party, Meg becomes smitten with Laurie’s tutor, Brooke. Jo and Laurie share in flirtations and friendship. For Jo, the understanding is strictly platonic. Laurie, alas, begins to form an attachment. In the meantime, Beth takes Mr. Laurence up on his offer to practice her pieces on his piano. Upon discovering her husband has been wounded in battle, but is recuperating in a hospital in Washington, D.C., Marmee leaves the girls to fend for themselves.

During this absence, Beth contracts scarlet fever. Although she briefly recovers, her health is gravely impacted. Marmee and Mr. Marsh return home. Meg announces her engagement to Mr. Brooke whom she eventually weds. Their pending happiness causes Laurie to confess his love to Jo. Bittersweetly, she turns him down. To mend a wounded heart, Laurie departs for Europe and Jo to New York to pursue her writing career. There, she meets Professor Bhaer, an impoverished German linguist under whose guidance her authorship flourishes. Tragically, Beth falls ill. Jo returns to Concord to nurse her sister, but discovers she is too far gone. Beth quietly dies, leaving Jo inconsolable. Meanwhile, Aunt Marsh has decided to take Amy to Europe instead of Jo. While abroad, Amy and Laurie are reunited and fall in love. Jo is happy for them, but now invests everything in writing an homage to her late sister – a manuscript pronounced as superb by Prof. Bhaer, who shares it with his publisher. Jo later learns her work will be published. Bhaer professes his love for her and she willingly accepts him into her heart and home.

Alcott’s Little Women is such a beautifully constructed slice of an America no more, that time itself has been powerless to put its subtler teachings to rest.  Cukor’s movie endeavors to preserve much – but not all – of the novel’s sincerity. His devotion jettisons Alcott’s pronounced religious vein and diminishes the male characters to the point of narrow-minded absurdity. But Cukor has wisely placed the emphasis of his cinematic gesture on the Marsh clan, and most importantly, to create a ‘character piece’ for his proto-feminist/heroine, amiably filled by Hepburn’s genuine New England bent for strongmindedness and austerity. This would eventually brand her ‘box office poison’ by decade’s end. There is a joyfulness here, a sense Cukor – however much the perfectionist – is truly enamored with the material and by the output from his players. Known as a ‘woman’s director,’ Cukor is able to draw from each cast member (almost) a genuine flair for the period and Alcott’s divinely concocted prose, as well as to place the importance of the work itself within the context of the overreaching arc of the cinema firmament. While much has passed since Cukor and Hepburn endeavored to bring Alcott’s novel to the screen, the author’s dictums and Cukor’s determination to preserve them without slavishly bound by them, results in a masterwork that has remained perennially satisfying. For precisely ‘how long?’ going into the future remains to be seen. My guess would be until time itself has caused all the stars in the heavens to turn cold.

Little Women was one of Warner Home Video’s first DVD releases in 1997, mastered from an immaculately curated nitrate element. The results then were impressive. They pale, however, to the Warner Archive’s (WAC) new-to-Blu. The scan here is first-rate, and minor clean-up has been consistently applied to yield a clean image with accurately reproduced film grain. Gray scale tonality is exceptional. Whites are considerably brighter and blacks, deeper, richer and velvety in texture. Fine detail abounds. This is one of the most impressive B&W transfers yet to come from WAC. The DTS 2.0 mono audio retains its uniquely limited brittleness, gently massaged to remove all hiss and pop during quiescent moments. Extras are ported over from the aforementioned DVD and include two short subjects, two Warner Bros. cartoons, and Max Steiner’s original scoring sessions, an extra that Warner Home Video’s early DVD releases of vintage catalog aspired to where ever original recordings were available. Lastly, a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Little Women remains perennially satisfying for reasons already discussed. The Blu-ray is another top-notch effort from WAC. Realistically, they did not have so very far to go on this one. More impressive would be if WAC could get around to offering us definitive versions of Random Harvest, Marie Antoinette (1938), Rosalie, Week-end at the Waldorf, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Honky Tonk, Idiot’s Delight, Red Dust, The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Romeo and Juliet (1936) Scaramouche, Till The Clouds Roll By, Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, Words & Music, Holiday in Mexico, Royal Wedding, Follow the Fleet, and on and on. You get the picture – lots of goodies still MIA and a long way to go to ready them for hi-def.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

3