Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Alice Adams (dir by George Stevens)

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Katharine Hepburn was famous for both her relationship with Spencer Tracy and the films that she made with him. They were such frequent co-stars and so associated with each other that “Hepburn-Tracy” became a film genre in and of itself, one that promised a bit of comedy, a bit of drama, and some sharp-witted romance. That said, I have to admit that one of my favorite of Katharine Hepburn’s film is one that she made not with Spencer Tracy but instead with Fred MacMurray. Alice Adams is a Tracy-Hepburn film without Tracy.

First released in 1935 and based on a novel by Booth Tarkington (who was quite a big deal back in the day even if, like Arrowsmith‘s Sinclair Lewis, he’s somewhat forgotten today), Alice Adams stars Hepburn as the title character. Alice is the daughter of Virgil Adams (Fred Stone) and his wife, who is only referred to as being Mrs. Adams (Anne Shoemaker). Virgil is a sickly man who has worked as a clerk at a glue factory for several years. Despite living in a rather large house and having a maid named Malena (Hatti McDaniel), the Adams family is not wealthy. However, Mrs. Adams desperately wants the family to be rich and Alice carries herself with the airs of a wealthy woman, despite the fact that everyone in town knows that she’s not. Alice love her family and is loyal to them, even if her younger brother (Frank Albertson, who later played Sam “Hee Haw” Wainwright in It’s A Wonderful Life) appears to be addicted to gambling and her mother is constantly browbeating her father for not being more ambitious. Her family may embarrass her but we know she wouldn’t trade them for all the money in the world. That’s why we like Alice, even if she does sometimes act like a snob.

However, when Alice meets and falls for the wealthy Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray), she lies about her social background and tries to present herself as being just as rich as him. When she invites Arthur and his parents to her house for a dinner party, she frantically tries to keep up the charade of being wealthy. Meanwhile, Virgil finds himself wrongly accused of stealing from his boss (Charley Grapewin) and, as a result, the family’s financial future is put in jeopardy.

Alice Adams is a mix of screwball comedy and social drama. On the one hand, Alice’s desperate attempts to throw the perfect party are frequently very funny. Katharine Hepburn was always at her best when she played a flighty character and the contrast between Alice’s sophisticated airs and Alice’s actual personality makes me laugh every time that I watch the film. At the same time, there’s a definite undercurrent of melancholy to the film. Alice and her mother are both so desperate to be rich that they’ve both been blinded to just how wonderful their lives really are. Alice may like Arthur and Arthur definitely likes Alice but one never forgets that a part of Alice’s attraction to Arthur is that Arthur can give her the life to which she aspires.

Alice Adams features one of Hepburn’s best performances and it’s a rare Hepburn performance to which anyone watching should be able to relate. At some point in our lives, we’ve all felt like Alice. We’ve all been Alice, even if we don’t want to admit it. Fred MacMurray’s natural likability serves him well as Arthur. He comes across like a genuinely nice guy and we definitely want him and Alice to end up together.

Alice Adams was nominated for Best Picture but it lost to a much bigger production, Mutiny on the Bounty. Bette Davis beat Katharine Hepburn for Best Actress. Davis later said that she felt Hepburn should have won.

Shattered Politics #15: Sunrise at Campobello (dir by Vincent J. Donehue)

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I can still remember that day like yesterday.

I was either 10 or 11 and I was at a big family gathering in Arkansas. I was at my aunt’s house. My great-grand uncle was sitting in a corner of the living room and watching the TV. Because he was nearly blind, only an inch or two separated his face from the screen. And, because he was almost deaf, the television was blaring. When we first arrived, he was watching what sounded to be a cartoon but, after a few minutes, he changed the channel.

Apparently, whatever channel he was watching was showing a program about the Great Depression because my great-grand uncle snorted a little and yelled (not because he was mad but because he was deaf), “Some people like Roosevelt! I say he was a dictator!”

That blew my young mind. It wasn’t because I necessarily knew that much about Franklin D. Roosevelt, beyond the fact that he had been President. Instead, it shocked me because that was the first time that I had ever heard anyone call a U.S. President a dictator. It was the first time that I truly understoodd that not everyone shared the same opinions, especially when it came to politics and history.

Looking back, so many of the things that define me as a person — my skepticism about conventional wisdom, my mistrust of authority, and my tendency to dismiss “experts” — are the result of that day, that documentary on the Great Depression, and my great-grand uncle’s opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

(Want to know why I hate it when the headlines of clickbait articles say stuff like, “Neil deGrasse Tyson gave his opinion on the movies and it was glorious?” Blame me great-grand uncle. Nobody was going to tell him FDR wasn’t a dictator. Nobody’s going tell me what’s glorious. I’ll make up my own mind.)

And, let’s face it — FDR is a controversial figure. Most of what you read about Roosevelt is positive but if you glance under the surface, you realize that the legacy of the New Deal is far more ambiguous than most people are willing to admit. You realize that there are serious questions about whether Roosevelt knew about the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor. You discover that Roosevelt wanted to reform the Supreme Court so that it would be a rubber stamp for the executive branch. And, of course, his decision to run for a third term set up exactly the type of precedent that — if not for a constitutional amendment — could have been exploited by the wrong people.

And, yet, as ambiguous as his legacy may be, how can you not be inspired by FDR’s personal story? He went from being a dilettante who was often dismissed as being an intellectual lightweight to being four-times elected President of the United States. In between running unsuccessfully for vice president in 1920 and being elected governor of New York in 1928, Roosevelt was crippled by polio. It’s always been a huge part of the Roosevelt legend that his battle with polio transformed him and made him into the President who led the country during the Great Depression and World War II.

It’s an inspiring story, regardless of what you may think of Roosevelt’s political ideology or his legacy of government intrusion.

It’s also a story that’s told in our 15th entry in Shattered Politics, the 1960 film Sunrise at Campobello. This film opens with FDR (played by Ralph Bellamy) as an athletic and somewhat shallow man who, while on a vacation with his family, is struck down my polio. The film follows he and his wife, Eleanor (Greer Garson), as they learn how to deal with his new physical condition. Throughout the film, Roosevelt remains upbeat and determined while Eleanor remains supportive and eventually — after being out of the public eye for three years — Roosevelt gets a chance to relaunch his political career by giving a nominating speech for Gov. Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention.

(A little bit of history that everyone should know: Al Smith was the first Catholic to ever be nominated for President by a major political party.)

Sunrise at Campobello is one of those films that tends to show up fairly regularly on TCM. It’s a well-acted film with Ralph Bellamy and Greer Garson really making the aristocratic Roosevelts into sympathetic and relatable characters. At the same time, whenever I’ve watched the film, I’ve always been struck by how long it seems. (The movie itself is only 144 minutes, which means its shorter than the average Christopher Nolan flick but it’s one of those films that seems longer than it actually is.) Sunrise at Campobello was based on a stage play and it’s directed like a stage play as well, with little visual flair and emphasis on dialogue and character. The end result is a film that I can’t really recommend for the casual viewer but one that is, at the very least, interesting for students of history like me.

Shattered Politics #2: They Won’t Forget (dir by Mervyn LeRoy)

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The title of the 1937 film They Won’t Forget works on many levels.

It describes the reaction of a small Southern town, following the brutal murder of teenager Mary Clay (played, in her film debut, by Lana Turner). The town won’t forget Mary and they won’t forget the terror caused by her murder. They also won’t forget that local teacher Robert Hale (Edward Norris) was accused of the crime.

The district attorney, Andrew Griffin (Claude Rains), hopes that the people of his state won’t forget his efforts to see Griffin convicted of that crime. Griffin wants to be elected to the U.S. Senate and he knows that the high profile case could be just what his career needs.

The Governor (Paul Everton) knows that, if he steps into the case and acts on his suspicion that Hale is innocent, the voters of his state will never forget. And they certainly won’t be willing to forgive.

And, on a larger level, the title lets us know that the South and the North will never forget the Civil War and the conflict between the two regions. The film opens with three elderly veterans of the Confederate Army, preparing to march in the town’s annual Confederate Memorial Day parade and admitting to each other that, after all these years, it’s difficult to remember much about the war other than the fact that they’re proud that they fought in it.

It’s while the rest of the town is busy watching Griffin and the governor ride in the parade that Mary Clay is murdered. It’s easy to assume that Hale was the murderer because Hale was one of the few townspeople not to go to the parade. You see, Hale is originally from New York City. When he’s accused of murder, it’s equally easy for Griffin and tabloid reporter William A. Brock (Allyn Joslyn) to convince the town people to blame this Northern intruder for both the murder of Mary Clay and, symbolically, for all of the post-Civil War struggles of the South itself.

Meanwhile, up North, Hale is seen as a victim of the South’s intolerance. A high-profile lawyer (Otto Kruger) is sent down to defend Hale but, as quickly becomes clear, everyone involved in the case is more interested in refighting the Civil War than determining the guilt or innocence of Andrew Hale.

They Won’t Forget is a hard-hitting and fascinating look at politics, justice, and paranoia. It’s all the more interesting because it’s based on a true story. In 1913, a 13 year-old girl named Mary Phagan was murdered in Atlanta. Leo Frank was accused and convicted of the murder. (In Frank’s case, he was born in Texas but was also Jewish and had previously lived in New York before moving to Atlanta, all of which made him suspicious in the eyes of many.) On the word of a night watchmen, who many believe was the actual murderer of Mary Phagan, Leo Frank was convicted and sentence to death. After spending days reviewing all of the evidence and growing convinced that Frank had been wrongly convicted, Georgia’s governor committed an act of political suicide by commuting Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment. Leo Frank was subsequently lynched and the man who had prosecuted the case against him was subsequently elected governor.

Well-acted and intelligently directed, They Won’t Forget is probably one of the best films of which few people have heard. Fortunately, it shows up fairly regularly on TCM and, the next time that it does, be sure to watch. It’s a great film that you won’t easily forget.