Taken from the Booth Tarkington novel, Alice Adams tells the story of a social climbing young woman and her attempts at fitting in with the wealthy citizens of her small town in nineteen-twenties America. Katharine Hepburn is luminous as the innocent title character, gushing out her lines while putting on a brave face to the world in order to deny her families lack of money and social position. Then she meets and falls in love with the rich, handsome and understanding Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray). At first she manages to hide the truth about her shabby home-life but eventually she must invite him to a family dinner that turns disastrous.

Katharine Hepburn brings so much to this role. There are several images in the movie that have become classic. Alice in last years dress clutching her corsage of wilted violets at a fancy ball and later after the humiliating evening she stands looking out her bedroom window sobbing as sheets of rain cascade down the pane. Yet Hepburn evokes Alice's pride and spirit as well. She makes Alice sympathetic but never pathetic.

Fred Stone plays Alice's rather easygoing father, Frank Albertson is her slacker brother Walter, and Ann Shoemaker plays her equally ambitious mother. Charley Grapewin (better known as Uncle Henry) has a few good scenes as Old Man Lamb, the owner of the drugstore where Alice's father and brother work as clerks. Hattie McDaniel has the funniest scene in the movie as the gum-chewing maid that Mrs. Adams hires to serve the gourmet meal they have prepared for Arthur's visit. Celebrated gossip columnist Hedda Hopper has a small part as a rich dowager.

Without the presence of Katharine Hepburn this movie would most likely have been long since forgotten. And although, at its best, Alice Adams provides only modest entertainment, it does give modern viewers a peek at a slice of homespun Americana that may or may not have existed outside of the movies. In a word: quaint.

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