Alice Adams (1935)

(On Cable TV, January 2020) Everyone can admire the matriarch of steel that Katharine Hepburn became late in life and career, but I do have a soft spot for the soft ingenue Hepburn of the 1930s, playing against later type as just the kind of irresistible sweet girl that people expected from female leads at the time. So it is that she headlines Alice Adams as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, trying to woo a much richer suitor despite plenty of social embarrassment and twisted resentment between their two families. It all culminates at a supper where everything goes wrong, and there’s no other way out than a few frank discussions, absolute candour and reconciliation. Alice Adams is a romantic comedy, and a rather good one too: adapted from a 1921 novel, it does reflect early-twentieth-century small American towns, and milks the social mores of the time for romantic complications that are happily resolved. (The novel doesn’t end as happily, and neither did earlier versions of the script.) Fred MacMurray makes for a great suitor, while Hattie McDaniel shows up in a comic role as a maid. While Alice Adams may not bowl over contemporary viewers, it’s a nice treat for Hepburn fans and those who like mid-1930s Hollywood productions.