Katharine Hepburn
Alice Adams
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The original script by Dorothy Yost and Jane Murfin ended with Alice and Russell in love, but Stevens was so unhappy with the script and the ending that he, his friend Mortimer Offner, and Hepburn discarded most of it and rewrote it by using dialogue taken from the novel.
It's impossible to deny Alice her happy ending, so sympathetically and engagingly does Hepburn play the part. At this early stage in her career, some of her later irritating ticks and mannerisms are largely absent so that you really want things to turn out well for her.
- (4.6K)
- Comedy, Drama, Romance
- George Stevens
- 1935-11-13
Mar 23, 2003 · The actual ending is a typical Hollywood romantic comedy ending, but in the book Alice becomes independent and ends up going to secretarial school. This is a better ending because for most of the movie Alice is a social climber, obsessed with what people think of her and her family's social standing.
May 12, 2015 · Since the picture was released in the midst of the Depression, the ending of Alice Adams was changed from the original Tarkington novel, which was much more downbeat. The optimistic ending altered the tone of the whole film and it became a huge favorite with audiences and helped put Hepburn back on top at the box office.
- The Metzinger Sisters
While the film version of Alice Adams followed Booth Tarkington's story relatively closely, there was one major change that the studio made: the ending. The novel's finale had Alice losing her suitor, getting a job and finally facing the grim reality that she would never be a part of high society.
- George Stevens
- Katharine Hepburn
Tarkington’s ending is not tragic, nor even as sad as it could have been; Alice will work hard for a living, she will eventually be alone, but no longer will she be nibbled to death by the complaints and demands of her family.
At the end of the evening, Alice wept bitterly at her rain-spattered bedroom window after returning home from the Palmer dance - feeling completely humiliated by her bedraggled bouquet of flowers, her insensitive escort brother Walter, and dashed hopes of respectability with new-in-town suitor Arthur
