Product Description

Based on a novel by booth tarkington. A pretentious social climber alice adams suffers through various travails before finding a modest decent man who loves her. Studio: Turner Hm Entertainm Release Date: 04/05/2005 Starring: Katharine Hepburn Fred Macmurray Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25467 in DVD
• Brand: Turner
• Released on: 2003-01-07
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Amazon.com
Hollywood's ability to conjure up a bittersweet small town (on the studio back lot, to be sure) has rarely been on better display than in Alice Adams, a gentle adaptation of a Booth Tarkington novel. For that matter, Katharine Hepburn rarely had a better chance to radiate her early youthful glow. She plays the title character, a lonely misfit who tries--too hard--to fit in with the snooty debutantes in her class-conscious town. Fred MacMurray is the suitor who miraculously feels comfortable in the front-porch swing of the faded Adams home. In the exquisitely timed comedy of MacMurray's miserable dinner with Alice's family, director George Stevens displays the tools he learned directing Laurel and Hardy two-reelers, and the sequence becomes a funny-painful classic of social embarrassment. Hepburn's performance, whether Alice is chattering pretentiously or briefly lowering her guard and revealing her loneliness, is simply incandescent. --Robert Horton

From the Back Cover
Katharine Hepburn is Alice Adams, a naive young woman who aspires to greater social status. Wanting to escape the confines of her middle-class upbringing, she presents herself to friends as a member of high-society. Then, one night as an elegant party where she really doesn't belong, she falls in love with Fred MacMurray--a veritable Prince Charming who believes Alice's fabricated stories of family wealth. But, when he's invited to meet the Adams, the ruse becomes painfully obvious. Yet, in the end, love conquers all.

This film was a smash success in the 1930s, winning Katharine Hepburn an Oscar nomination. It's still fresh and funny today with its message that it isn't the position you're born to that matters, it's the person you choose to become.

Customer Reviews

For the First Time Katharine Hepburn Plays Against Type
"Alice Adams" is directed by George Stevens from Booth Tarkington's 1921 Pulitzer Prize winner novel. Katharine Hepburn plays the title character, a lovesick young girl who vainly attempts to attain the same level as her socially superior acquaintances and to impress the young man, played by Fred MacMurray, she meets at a dance. There is also a rather hackneyed sub-plot involving her father's business ventures that distracts from the human drama.

Of course all of Alice's attempts to better her place in the world meet with a continuous string of disasters. Alice is embarrased to be escorted by her brother to the dance, prattles on about her family's nonexistent wealth, and will not let MacMurray into her house until she is finally and fatefully obliged to invite him to dinner. The comic highpoint of the film is the dinner party, where the family has hired a maid (Hattie McDaniel) to help with what becomes a total disaster.

Hepburn carries the emotional heart of the movie, and her strength as a maturing actress is captured in two scenes where she carries the moment with tears rather than words. After the dinner scene she runs to her bedroom and breaks down weeping at the window, finally crushed by all that has happens. When her father (Fred Stone), who has no clue the dinner has been a disaster, comments on how nice her date was, a tear roles down Hepburn's cheek. These two scenes created Hepburn's reputation as the screen's greatest "on cue" weeper.

Hepburn received her second Oscar nomination for this film. Her performance is vastly superior to when she won for "Morning Glory" (but more in keeping with her Jo March in "Little Women" that same year) primarily because this is the first successful film in which she acts against type (as opposed to her unsuccessful effort as a hillbillie gal in "Spitfire"). The Hepburn persona that becomes solidified in "The Philadelphia Story" and "Woman of the Year" is pretty much the opposite of Alice Adams. Instead of the goddess brought off her pedastal, here we have the girl from the wrong side of the tracks trying to get ahead in the world. This is one of the better opportunities to see Hepburn NOT play Hepburn (the other great example is "Long Day's Journey Into Night").

Of course, Hollywood tacked on a happy ending to the film version, and while it is not as jarring as what they did to "The Magnificent Ambersons," it does not make for a smooth conclusion. More importantly, it undoes the poignancy of Hepburn's farewell to MacMurray when she tells him: "You know, I have a strange feeling. I feel as though I'm only going to see you for five minutes more in my whole life."

Overall, Hepburn's performance overcomes the limitations of the script. The role was never going to become a Hepburn staple, but she plays it surprisingly well here. "Alice Adams" holds up better than most of her early RKO films.

Katharine Hepburn's Finest Performance
In this superbly done George Stevens film, Katharine Hepburn creates one of the greatest American heroines--headstrong yet deeply vulnerable Alice Adams, a fiendishly anxious impoverished young woman just as fiendishly determined to rise into the white, light, airy world of the upper middle class...as exemplified by the great party scene early on in the film...This scene and the very famous dinner party set piece are magnificent, but so are all of the scenes btwn Hepburn and MacMurray, who's tall, charming, and finely modulated in a very subtle way...Even the tacked-on happy ending doesnt remove the sting of genuine pathos from Hepburn and MacMurray's second to last scene...Hattie McDaniel almost transcends her schlocky-racist role with her droll aside and expressions. This is one of the great films of the 30s.

Hepburn is Amazing
Katherine Hepburn plays a young, flightly girl with big dreams of taking her place in high society. Unfortunately, she lives in a run down house, her family has none of the pretensions she needs, and she is viewed as somewhat of a joke by the girls she wishes she was like. But Fred MacMurray, a member of the social circle she desires to be a part of, takes an interest in her, making her wonder if her dreams could possibly come true. This isn't the kind of film that I enjoy watching, and even though I'm not even much of a Hepburn fan, my positive rating is based on her painfully honest performance. There are moments when you will cringe as she attempts to make more of her life than it is, because you can feel her embarrassment and the awkwardness of her situation. The much discussed dinner table sequence is a prime example. Hepburn is the whole movie, and although the rest of the performances are capably done (especially Fred Stone as her struggling father), she is the one you will remember.