Alice Adams

Plot synopsis:
Alice Adams (Katharine Hepburn) is the youngest daughter of the Adams family. Her father (Fred Stone) is an invalid employed as a clerk in a factory owned by Mr. Lamb (Charles Grapewin), who has kept Adams on salary for years despite his lengthy illness. Her mother (Ann Shoemaker) is embittered by her husband's lack of ambition and upset by the snubs her daughter endures because of their poverty. Alice's older brother, Walter (Frank Albertson), is a gambler who cannot hold a job and who associates with African Americans (which, given the time period in which the film is set, is considered a major social embarrassment). As the film begins, Alice attends a dance given by the wealthy Mildred Palmer (Evelyn Venable). She has no date, and is escorted to the occasion by Walter. Alice is a social climber like her mother, and engages in socially inappropriate behavior and conversation in an attempt to impress others. At the dance, Alice meets wealthy Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray), who is charmed by her despite her poverty.
Alice's mother nags her husband into quitting his job and pouring his life savings into a glue factory. Mr. Lamb ostracizes Mr. Adams from society, believing that Adams stole the glue formula from him. Alice is the subject of cruel town gossip, which Russell ignores.
Alice invites Russell to the Adams home for a fancy meal. She and her mother put on airs, the entire family dresses inappropriately in formal wear despite the hot summer night, and the Adamses pretend that they eat caviar and fancy, rich-tasting food all the time. The dinner is ruined by the slovenly behavior and poor cooking skills of the maid the Adamses have hired for the occasion, Malena (Hattie McDaniel). Mr. Adams unwittingly embarrasses Alice by exposing the many lies she has told Russell. When Walter shows up with bad financial news, Alice gently expels Russell from the house now that everything is "ruined."
Walter reveals that "a friend" has gambling debts, and that he stole $150 from Mr. Lamb to cover them. Mr. Adams decides to take out a loan against his new factory to save Walter from jail. Just then, Mr. Lamb appears at the Adams house. He accuses Adams of stealing the glue formula from him, and declares his intention to ruin Adams by building a glue factory directly across the street from the Adams plant. The men argue violently, but their friendship is saved when Alice confesses that her parents took the glue formula only so she could have a better life and some social status. Lamb and Adams reconcile, and Lamb indicates he will not prosecute Walter.
Alice wanders out onto the porch, where Russell has been waiting for her. He confesses his love for her, despite her poverty and family problems.

Tags: romantic, melodrama

Review:
When I first watched this film, despite the fact that George Steven's excellent direction makes a rather mundane plot into a very involving film, I was a bit thrown off by the actor who plays Katherine Hepburn's ailing father.
And it is because of Mr. Fred Stone's performance in that scene that "Alice Adams" remains one of my very favorite films.And who was the man?
As a young man Ray Bolger saw the production in Boston, and began to pursue his own "eccentric dancing" career, becoming immortalized himself as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM film.In "Alice Adams", Fred Stone gives a remarkably sympathetic and honest performance, a simple, rather shy and utterly unpretentious Everyman, who, though convalescing from some undisclosed illness, must constantly endure the brow-beatings and guilt trips laid upon him by his nagging wife.
You won't find anything like it in any film of the last 40 years--many imitations, yes---but not the REAL thing.Oh yes, there's Katherine Hepburn too, in a role that requires her to act flighty and charming in an annoyingly overwrought way---a little of it goes a VERY long way.
Other stand-outs include Alice's smart-aleck brother, played by Frank Albertson, an appealing light comedy/musical theater guy BEST KNOWN for 2 roles:  as Sam "hee-haw" Wainwright in "It's a Wonderful Life" and as the lecherous businessman who gives Janet Leigh the $40,000 in the second scene of "Psycho" (he really had aged a lot by 1959).
Also, Charley Grapewin, best-known as Uncle Henry in the 1939 "Wizard of OZ" has a chance to shine as Mr. Stone's slightly cantankerous but generous and warm-hearted boss, Mr. Lamb."Alice Adams" is not for everyone; it's a low-key, genteel film about the problems of small-town people who are moving up in the social world and the one family that gets left behind.
ALICE ADAMS, played by the late, great Katharine Hepburn, is quintessentially the beautiful, ambitious small-town girl put upon by circumstance.
As everyone at the party ignores Alice, save another social reject Frank Dowling (bit-player Grady Sutton), she spots and is attracted to the rich, handsome Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray, in a woefully underwritten role).
even as her family slowly disintegrates around them, partly due to Alice's father Virgil (Fred Stone) wanting to earn more money for his daughter.The film is generally okay--that's the best word for it.
It doesn't help that her suitor is so terminally boring that the love story is charming at best, but certainly does not come anywhere near to the unadulterated magic of the best classic film couples.However--and this is a pretty darn big however--although this is probably not one of Hepburn's better 1930s films (she starred in a whole run of those, including LITTLE WOMEN, STAGE DOOR, HOLIDAY and BRINGING UP BABY), this is without a doubt one of the best of her 1930s performances.
(This would only be refined in her future roles with Spencer Tracy.) As Alice floats through the Palmer party, pretending she is in demand and only waiting for her date, or as she chats with a desperate light in her eyes to Arthur at the Adams' dinner party, Hepburn suffuses the role with the kind of quiet, frantic desire which is simply perfect for her character.
That last part is so good that made the film not only worthwhile to view but one to keep and watch every few years.It bogs down when Hepburn starts her deceiving scheme and nervously yaks and yaks and yaks trying to impress her boyfriend (Fred MacMurray).
The deceit involves her trying to hide her social status, something that must have meant a lot more back in the early '30s than it does today.Critics comment about how the dinner scene is a "classic" and the highlight of the film, but I didn't think it was all that great, although Hattie McDaniel is funny.
I felt similarly about my experience watching "Alice Adams", George Stevens' 1935 film starring Katherine Hepburn as the title character.
Expecting a wily romantic comedy, possibly a precursor to Hepburn's screwball comedies, I instead witnessed a beautiful, touching and sad film about rejection and romance in small-town America.Alice is the daughter of a bookkeeper who is sick, and therefore temporarily out of work.
When the Palmers have their annual dance, Alice asks her brother Walter to take her, and there she first sees Arthur Russell MacMurray) a wealthy young man who is practically engaged to Mildred Palmer, probably the richest and most socially prominent young woman in the town.
Alice's low self-esteem, mainly due to society's views on her more than her family's lack of money makes her such a fragile character that she becomes immediately sympathetic, and this is mainly due to Hepburn's performance.
ALICE ADAMS is the film I'd heard about for years as one of Hepburn's best early films so when I had the chance to watch it recently on TCM I took advantage of it.From a novel by Booth Tarkington, it concerns a young woman anxious to connect socially with the right people who manages to attract the attention of a handsome and well-to-do young man (Fred MacMurray) at a party.
Fred Stone provides a number of chuckles as Hepburn's so provincial father.All of the supporting roles are nicely filled, with special praise for Ann Shoemaker as the concerned mother anxious for her daughter to find the right suitor.
Vibrant, young ALICE ADAMS keeps looking for love & happiness, no matter what tough knocks the world throws at her.Booth Tarkington's novel comes alive in this splendid film from RKO, which, aside from its first rate production values, features a luminescent Kate Hepburn in the title role.
It is wonderful to watch Hepburn work through the film's emotional centerpiece, a disastrous dinner served for the rich young man who's taken a shine to her, inadvertently given on the hottest evening in a decade.
Showing her versatility Katharine Hepburn gets her best part since her Oscar winning Morning Glory in the title role of Alice Adams.
But poor Alice just wants to compete with the rest of the girls in her midwest Indiana small town that Booth Tarkington wrote about and land a real Prince Charming of a fellow.The Prince shows up at a dance she goes to in the person of Fred MacMurray.
When MacMurray does come calling they have a family dinner that turns into a real disaster.Kate got one of her Oscar nominations for her role and MacMurray also gets one of his best early film parts as well.
Kate's family is also nicely cast with Ann Shoemaker, Frank Albertson, and especially Fred Stone filling out the roles of mother, brother, and father.
I suppose that no one ever gave Alice Adams the sage advice that when one goes on a date with somebody, you should just "be yourself." But in the 1935 film "Alice Adams," Katharine Hepburn's title character is too busy trying to hide her humble background and put on hoity-toity airs, whenever she goes out shopping, to a party and especially when being courted, to EVER really be herself, and this desire to climb that social ladder only leads to embarrassing predicaments.
The film boasts two wonderful and heartbreaking scenes: an early sequence at a ritzy dance, where wallflower Alice hugs the sidelines while pretending to no one in particular that everything is fine, and a late scene, in which the well-to-do young courter who has taken a fancy to her (nicely played by Fred MacMurray) suffers through a formal dinner with Alice's family in the middle of a heat wave.
We're supposed to feel sorry for Alice, being from a "poor" (really middle class), unrefined family, snubbed by the rich snobs at parties, and so on.
All of this is obviously meant to indicate how "low" and uncultured Alice's brother is, but to modern audiences (or at least, to *me*), it makes him the most tolerable character in the film, since he comes across as the least pretentious and least prejudiced of the bunch.Meanwhile, Alice's parents squabble constantly - see, her mother spoils her rotten (although Alice is ashamed of her roots, the brat), and keeps nagging her husband to make more money so their daughter will be accepted by the rich crowd.
If she had pronounced the word "really" as "rally" one more time, I would've needed a tranquilizer.Katherine plays a girl, alleged to be poor, who actually lives in what appears to be a middle class family, who is desperately trying to be accepted in upper crust society.
I thought Fred MacMurray did a good job as her unpretentious suitor and I agree 100% with the last reviewer that Katherine's father, played by Fred Stone, had me thinking he was a rotten actor until later in the movie when he charmed me in the scenes where Fred MacMurray comes to meet the family and have dinner with them, (IMO the best scenes in the movie), and then impressed me in the confrontation scene with his boss.Overall, it was a mediocre movie for me, dragged down by Katherine's performance which I found to be way too obvious and phony, and most likely influenced by the over acting of the silent film era that had only recently gone by..
ALICE ADAMS (RKO Radio, 1935), directed by George Stevens, from the 1922 novel by Booth Tarkington, is a charming story about a middle-class family of a quaint little town: Virgil Adams and his wife; son, Walter, and most of all, their daughter, Alice.
Previously filmed during the silent movie era in 1923 starring Florence Vidor, this new edition with Katharine Hepburn offers her a role unlike anything she's done before, a sensitive portrayal of a girl longing to be accepted by others, but going about it the wrong way.
Set in South Renford, "a town with a future," Alice Adams (Katharine Hepburn) starts off the story entering a flower shop to buy a corsage for a social function she's planning to attend.
Mrs. Adams (Ann Shoemaker) who wants the best for her children, particularly Alice, places the blame for her daughter's setback on her husband, Virgil (Fred Stone).
Through the suggestion from her mother, Alice reluctantly agrees to invite Arthur over for dinner, hiring their neighbor, Melena Burns (Hattie McDaniel), to pose as their maid, with disastrous results.For its simple-minded story and excellent character study, there's no question that ALICE ADAMS earned great success with critics and audiences alike.
Katherine Hepburn plays Alice Adams a foolish, annoying, young woman determined to be accepted by the town snobs who shun her.
Fred MacMurray is the socially acceptable suitor Arthur Russell who takes an interest in Alice, although why he is attracted to this strident girl trying too hard to impress, is a mystery.
A Movie the Word "Awkward" Was Made For. Katharine Hepburn gives a sensational performance in this screen adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel.Hepburn plays the titular Alice, a young social climber who's embarrassed by her humble origins and working class family and dreams of inclusion among the upper crust of society.
Alice is a free spirit among her family of hard working laborers who feels out of sorts when dealing w/the rich & well off gentry they come in contact with so when she falls in love w/the son of her father's rival, will class politics have a say in matters of the heart.
I always thought that was terribly mean of George Stevens, but if you dig deep enough, you'll learn countless Hollywood horror stories.Katharine Hepburn plays the title character, a girl from a poor family who wants a better life.
Drama in which Katharine Hepburn plays a poor young woman who dreams of bigger and better things--but she's stuck with a pushy mother, an ill father and an obnoxious brother.
Alice Adams (Katharine Hepburn) is the young daughter and mother sees father as a failure.
Mother and Alice try to put on airs by throwing a lavish dinner for Russell but it goes all wrong.Katharine Hepburn is a little wrong to be this insecure young thing.
Hattie McDaniel, the first black to win an Academy Award for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, has an incredible scene here as the maid.The famous Hedda Hopper has a small role as Mrs. Palmer, the mother of one of Alice's socialite "friends".It's a sort of low-key movie that really wins if you're in the mood for a real piece of movie history, seeing Katharine Hepburn in a relatively early film role (2 years after Little Women), with a great romantic and poignant story..
Alice Adams (Hepburn) is a lively young woman growing up in a working class family in a small town, with a boorish brother (Albertson), a dissatisfied mother (Shoemaker), and an unambitious father (Stone).
There are similarities between "Alice Adams" and Stevens ' later classic " a place in the sun".In both movies, the hero(ine) wants to climb the social ladder.The scene of the ball introduces a guest who looks like an intruder in this company of rich kids and fussy old biddies who most of the time ignore him/her;but while Monty Clift's George/Clyde remains passive,bashful ,lonesome and ends up in the pool room ,Alice Adams is a go-getter,trying to pick up wealthy guys ;both finally are noticed by the king(Fred McMurray) and the queen (Liz Taylor) of the fetes.Both are ashamed of the milieu in which they were nurtured : George/Clyde 's preachers family is depicted in lavish details by Theodore Dreiser but hardly appears in Stevens' movie,whilst Arthur is invited for a dinner in Alice's house ;this long scene,the most memorable in the whole movie is the ball sequence in reverse :a chic young man in a rather crummy house ,the best place being its porch.Alice tries and tries to make her dwelling a refined place with caviar toasts ,gourmet (En Français Dans Le Texte/"Ris De Veau"- calves' sweetbreads )dishes and melting ice -cream (just like Shelley Winters' in " a place in the sun" ).The harder she tries ,the harder she fails :Dad and Hattie McDaniel as the clumsy servant cannot delude for long .Actually ,all the household world revolves around Alice ;dad and mom get out of their way to secure their daughter's happiness,forgetting poor brother Walt;and before the final father/boss confrontation,the heroine appears as a selfish,self-centered girl ;she does not realize her meek daddy's sacrifices ,she appears as frivolous as Mildred.It's only when she acknowledges that it's not her parents' fault but hers that we really side with her.Alice was not herself,she played a part (doesn't she say she would be an excellent actress?) just like the stuck -up things Arthur generally meets .Hence the denouement .Katherine Hepburn is a great as ever and the supporting cast is up to scratch.My favorite is Frank Albertson's Walter ,happy with his lot in life ,and playing dice with the servants..
Hepburn's charm and some beautiful moments, lift it out of mediocrity.I like the performances of Fred Stone and Ann Shoemaker as Alice's parents.
The title character of "Alice Adams," played by Katherine Hepburn, is a young woman who lives in a small town named South Renford.
But by making it look as though she lives in a town where everyone is rich but her and her family, absurd as that is, we are more forgiving, because we are led to believe that she has no such opportunities.At the dance, Alice meets Arthur (Fred MacMurray), who seems to be quite taken with her, but she is just as much of a phony with him as with everyone else.
George Stevens directed this adaptation of the Booth Tarkington novel about a social climbing mother (Ann Shoemaker) and daughter (Katharine Hepburn, in the title role).
Hepburn and the film were Oscar nominated.Alice is a small town girl whose brother (Frank Albertson) is "forced" to take her to a society party, hosted by Mildred Palmer (Evelyn Venable, who's parents are played by Hedda Hopper and Jonathan Hale), in their dumpy automobile.
This film, based upon a 1920's Booth Tarkington story set before the depression, was a late depression era look at how one family faced despair (certainly not with much dignity), but it is obviously not Alice's fault, something we learn from watching her with her seemingly lazy papa (Fred Stone in a brilliant performance) who is constantly being browbeaten by his wife.
Stone reveals his character's true values in a scene with his former boss ("The Wizard of Oz's" Charley Grapewin) that will truly make you empathize with him over being part of such a ridiculous clan.In a long dinner party scene where Shoemaker and Hepburn desperately try to impress MacMurray, the always funny Hattie McDaniel allows herself to play a stereotypical low-class version of her usual black maid as she slowly shuffles back and forth, chewing gum, and dealing with a maid's cap that keeps slipping down her face.
Encore: Alice Adams (1935) Katheryn Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Ann Shoemaker, Hattie McDaniel.
With a side story of her father and his problems and why the family has lost its' middle class existence, the film winds down to a happy ending when Arthur comes back and he and Alice make up.
Movies like this show you why.Hepburn plays Alice Adams, a young girl ashamed of her family's modest income.
Poor Alice Adams -- a young woman (Katharine Hepburn) who lives in a fantasy world where she pretends to to be happy, while all the time being lonely.
While it's true that middle class Alice wanted social status in the worst way, Hepburn's performance was totally overblown.That being said, the film was excellent thanks in large part to a phenomenal supporting cast.
Fred Stone, Ann Shoemaker, Fred MacMurray and the hilarious Hattie McDaniel were totally memorable.This is a film of small town ideals tested in a big way when the social climbing Hepburn meets the wealthy MacMurray at a time when her father is ailing, and her brother hasn't been exactly very honest."Alice" proved that love can transcend social status and we should be forever grateful to that..