David Allen
"Alice Adams" (1935) Is Another Booth Tarkington Soap Opera Movie With Kate Hepburn Miscast, Sadly.Hepburn won the Best Actress Academy Award for Morning Glory (1933) playing an upwardly mobile wanna-be newly arrived to NYC stage actress who comes out a winner in the end.Before that, we saw Hepburn in the 1932 version of A Bill Of Divorcement (1932), a movie which, like Alice Adams (1935) had been both a stage play and a silent movie more than a decade before the belated Hepburn versions of the 1930's. In "Divorcement," Hepburn plays a snappy, perky, attractive socialite young woman (a débutante type) with a handsome fiancé boyfriend who looks terrific in the tuxedo he always wears to the English mansion where Kate lives with her family.The goofy Bill Of Divorcement (1932) story forces Hepburn to depart from the ways of a smart girl, and start thinking and doing dumb things.....just pay attention to Hepburn as presented at the start of the story....and ignore the unfolding story which the Hepburn character gets swept into...not her fault!Soooooooooo....in "Divorcement" (1932), Kate's first movie, she plays a rich girl who is smart, attractive, and interesting. She got third billing after main star John Barrymore and lead female star, Billie Burke...we see Kate Hepburn as a newcomer actress (age 25 in 1932)rising dazzlingly.Then comes Morning Glory (1933) where she is also a star rising dazzlingly, but not living in a mansion and part of the gentry as she makes her way into our hearts. Poor little rich girl who makes it.Then comes Alice Adams (1935) which casts Kate (to alliterate a bit!) as a loser poor girl with slob family members who increase her problems. Kate keeps smiling all the while, but sheds a tear from time to time, recognizing as she does she's a loser.Well.........Kate Hepburn is no loser and never was. She was miscast in the Alice Adams (1935) soap opera, and thankfully this was the last time.After Alice Adams (1935), the real Kate Hepburn emerges and triumphs every time in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Stage Door (1937), Holiday (1938), and her crowning glory stage play turned very good movie, The Philadelphia Story (1940), the last two scripts written by the brilliant Philip Barry.Young, less than 35 years old Katherine Hepburn's best movies started with A Bill Of Divorcement (1932) and continued without interruption with Sylvia Scarlett (1935) through The Philadelphia Story (1940), with Morning Glory (1933) an interesting exception which doesn't fit with the other movies, but is an OK movie.Alice Adams (1935) doesn't make it.Sob sister Booth Tarkington didn't provide a good story, as he also didn't for poor friendless (in 1942) Orson Welles who had trouble with Tarkington's soap opera dysfunctional rich family story, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).--------------- Written by Tex Allen, SAG movie actor. See WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more about Tex. Email Tex at
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