1935 – Katherine Hepburn
Alice Adams
This was a good movie, and while I enjoyed Hepburn’s earlier Best Actress nomination, and subsequent Oscar win for Morning Glory, I think I liked her performance in Alice Adams better. I think the role itself was a little more deserving, and I think there was a little more depth to her performance. There was more subtlety, more nuance, and Hepburn was perfection.
There were so many good things about the performance. At the beginning of the movie, she is a young and eager girl, innocent almost to the point of naiveté. There is an immaturity that usually only exists in children. But by the end, she becomes more aware of the world around her, and is unable to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of her family, the failures of her father.
One of the best scenes in the movie is probably one of the funniest. It is a study of uncomfortable tension, as Alice and her parents try to convince Arthur Russell, played by Fred MacMurray, that they aren’t poor. As the evening goes on, Alice’s fiction begins to unravel and you can see it in Hepburn’s face, her voice, her movements. You can see her slowly starting to lose her grip, desperately struggling to hold back her tears.
As I did a little research on the movie, I learned that the original ending in the source material, a novel by Booth Tarkington, was quite different. In it, Alice and Russell end up permanently estranged from each other. Hepburn and the film’s director George Stevens, wanted an end in which the relationship is up in the air and Alice goes off to secretarial school. However, producer Pandro S. Berman and RKO executives wanted a happy ending where the two end up together and in love. Well, the studio got its fairy-tale ending.
But now, I’ve seen enough Katherine Hepburn movies to expect great things from her, and here, I was not disappointed. This performance had depth, and really gave us a glimpse into the deep pool of talent the actress possessed. Hepburn was wonderful, and I look forward to her next nomination.