Little Women (1933) on Netflix
In Concord, Massachusetts, the four March sisters come of age while their father serves as a chaplain in the Union Army. Jo writes plays and dreams of becoming an author.
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Trailer
Plot summary
The March sisters live with their mother, Marmee, in Concord, Massachusetts, while their father serves with the Union Army as a chaplain and colonel. Jo, a spirited tomboy, writes plays that the family performs and reads to her Aunt March. Meg takes work as a governess, Amy is pretty if selfish, and Beth practices her clavichord. The girls befriend Laurie, a newcomer living with his grandfather, Mr. Laurence, the wealthy neighbor. He invites them to a party where Meg meets John Brooke, Laurie's tutor. At the party Beth and Amy meet Mr. Laurence, who offers Beth the use of his piano. Over the following months, Brooke courts Meg, Jo publishes her first short story, and Laurie comes to love Jo, who thinks of him only as a friend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Little Women (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During Little Women, an exhausted Katharine Hepburn vomited, and a frustrated George Cukor told her, 'Well, that's what I think of the scene, too.' When she stumbled carrying food upstairs and spilled it on her costume, Cukor slapped her and called her an 'amateur'.
SPOILER
The sound crew went on strike during production, so the producers and director used a less-experienced crew for parts of the film; because of their inexperience, Beth's death scene had to be shot several times.- Joan Bennett intentionally said nothing to director George Cukor about her pregnancy when he cast her, so costume designer Walter Plunkett had to redesign several of her costumes to conceal it.
- Cukor, who thought of Joan Bennett as an unemotional actress, decided on impulse to cast her as Amy March after meeting her at a party while she was slightly inebriated; he found her 'sweet and funny'.
- Eric Linden was cast as Laurie but was replaced by Douglass Montgomery, and Louise Closser Hale was to play Aunt March until her death on July 26, 1933, when Edna May Oliver took the role.
- George Cukor did not read the novel before filming, thinking it would be 'awfully syrupy' and 'a little girl's story'; he read part of it afterwards and liked it, and Katharine Hepburn teased him about it.
- Max Steiner's score was written for only a 21-piece orchestra, a small size that was the result of RKO's lack of confidence in the film's success.
- When MGM remade Little Women in 1949, George Cukor declined to direct because Katharine Hepburn was not cast as Jo, and after seeing it he felt it lacked 'magic'.
