I just watched the 1933 version of “Little Women” for the first time. I have not seen any other version and have never read the book. The one problem I kept having was the ages of the sisters. They seemed to be in their early-to-late 20s, yet it was clear from their dialog and actions that they were supposed to be considerably younger. It seemed like I was watching adults playing the roles of children. According to Wiki, their ages should have been 12-16, yet at least in this version, they looked about 10 years older and acted much younger.
This is called Dawson Casting.
I think it was more a matter of not having child actors in the 1930s who could handle the parts well enough, or possibly wanting a star vehicle for the current popular actresses.
In the production from the 90s starring Winona Ryder as Jo, Claire Danes played Beth and Kirsten Dunst played Amy, so their ages were more appropriate. I hated Danes as Beth though. I felt she was badly miscast. Dunst was perfect as the spoiled bratty Amy, though.
Just read the book. It is better than any movie version I have ever seen.
In the 1949 version, which was definitely a star vehicle, Mary Astor (43) played the mother of June Allyson (32), Janet Leigh (22), Elizabeth Taylor (17) and Margaret O’Brien (12).
I haven’t seen the 90s one, but I can definitely imagine Kirsten Dunst as bratty Amy. She just has that “I’m a spoiled little brat, nah nah nah!” vibe to her.
The 1933 version makes odd choices (I don’t like it, though apparently it won an adaptation Oscar).
And you guessed right about the ages - Frances Dee (24) was Meg (16), Katherine Hepburn (26) as Jo (15), Jean Parker (18) as Beth(13), and Joan Bennett (23) as Amy (12).
Yeah, she has the upturned nose just as it was described in the novel, and Dunst did a great job with amy’s affected speech and mispronunciations.
Another miscast role in that version for me was Susan Sarandon as Marmee. Sarandon just seems too modern and liberated in her real life to truly disappear into the time and place of the role. The whole time I knew I was watching Susan Sarandon, so it kept me from sinking into the March’s world. Some actors just can’t pull off period pieces.
I do think Winona Ryder was great as Jo, and the actor who played Laurie (Christian Bale?) was excellent, too. The chick who played Meg was a bit, just meh. So, some good performances, but uneven overall.
I have seen the one with June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor years ago, and I wasn’t crazy about it.
Again, I can’t recommend reading the book enough. You’ll like all the characters much better.
I remember reading a criticism somewhere of that performance. That she came off as very much a feminist, “we don’t have to JUST be housewives,” etc. Not that that’s a bad perspective, just that it isn’t really Marmee.
I think you can blame Gillian Armstrong and the screenwriter Robin Swicord for the feminism stuff in the 1994 version – Sarandon didn’t exactly ad lib those lines! 
I find something to love in each version of LW. For 1933, correct age or not, I gotta adore Katharine Hepburn as Jo – she’s definitely coltish, quirky, headstrong, artistic… And Joan Bennett, while way too old for Amy-the-child at the start, works really nicely for the older Amy.
The 1949 version switches Amy/Beth’s respective places in the family hierarchy, but that’s so they could cast Elizabeth Taylor as Amy (and despite the hideously bad wig, she is terrific as Amy!) and child star Margaret O’Brien as Beth. And despite how cloying O’Brien can be, I actually think she tones her tweeness down for the role, and I find her touching. And I really really like June Allyson’s Jo. I think I like her best out of all the Jos, which is heresy. But she’s just ‘plain’ enough (as in Hollywood/MGM plain), tomboyish, warm, and an all-round straight-shooter. She’s so damn likeable! And Rosanno Brazzi! Wrong nationality as Dr. Bhaer but sooooo handsome and charming without being the ladykiller he could so easily have turned into (being, y’know, Rosanno freakin’ Brazzi). And God knows Peter Lawford is a billion times better than Douglass Montgomery’s way-too-pretty 1933 version.
The 1994 edition contains more of the moments I miss so much from the earlier versions, especially the pivotal Amy-falls-through-the-ice scene. (It staggers me that the other versions didn’t include it: there is precisely one “action” scene in the story, and the films cut it out?!!!) and the Laurie-turning-into-a-rake-in-Europe arc, showing him and Amy meeting up as adults.
Obviously being the most modern version, it has the most naturalistic performances rather than the stageier style that the earlier productions used, though that isn’t always a blessing. I actually like Trini Alvorado’s Meg, but then I always like her. She’s warm, sweet, homey and pretty but not a stunner like Janet Leigh. I don’t have a problem with Claire Daines at all, and I like both Kristen Dunst as peppery wee Amy and Samantha Mathis as smoother older Amy. Winona Ryder’s Jo… well, physically, she is by far the most ridiculously cast Jo I’ve ever seen. She’s dainty and beautiful where Jo is supposed to be rangey, angular, awkward, with only her hair as her “one beauty.” (A line that’s absurd when Kristen Dunst’s Amy utters it.) But she performs it well, and I believe her as a writer and a secret romantic.
I like Sarandon’s Marmee; she certainly feels the most down-to-earth and steadfast of all the Marmees, and I can absolutely believe of her that she’s hiding a terrible temper. Gabriel Byrne is just as miscast, nationally speaking, as Rosanno Brazzi, and like Brazzi he does a great job in turning Bhaer into a humble yet charming character. But to me the one person who most shines over all previous performers in his respective role is Christian Bale. Finally a genuinely mischievous, quirky, charming, dashing, reckless, temperamental Laurie! And his yumminess doesn’t hurt either.
And Thomas Newman’s music in the 1994 version is glorious.
Edited to add: I forgot that the one LW version I can’t really defend is the 1978(?) version with a soporific Susan Dey as Jo (I take back the Winona Ryder-as-worst-physical-representation of Jo line – Dey is worse by far) and William bleedin’ Shatner as Professor Bhaer! WILLIAM SHATNER. In fairness, I’ve never seen clips of his scenes, but… do I really have to? William Shatner as a brilliant German professor. The mind boggles.
The “staginess” of the acting is probably why I couldn’t sit through the 1933 and '49 versions.
The 1994 version was the movie that introduced me to the very talented and handsome Christian Bale. I thought he did a wonderful job as Laurie. Although Winona Ryder was miscast physically, I like her best out of the Jos; Kirsten Dunst was excellent as Amy, though I found Samantha Mathis a bit cold as the older version, and thought that her relationship with Laurie was rushed.
The feminism parts did kind of annoy me–it seemed too obviously shoed-in, though I did like Susan Sarandon as Marmee.
Also, for fun, here’s a clip from the hilariously bad Susan Dey version! Enjoy.
ETA: Read the book. None of the movies do it justice, not even the '94 one.
I saw the 1949 version when it was released in theaters. I was six years old and cried my eyes out when Beth died. I was hooked on Margaret O’Brien after that and on the story after that. (I can still play the spooky little piece that she played on the piano.)
Katherine Hepburn was my favorite Jo, though, by far! And so was the good German professor in that one. When my husband (whom I met on line) sent me a photo for the first time, I took one look and said, “Professor Bhaer!”
If you go to Concord, Massachusetts, be sure to go by the house where the little women lived. Some of Amy’s drawings are still on the walls and you will be able to sense the girls everywhere.
You can also go to Louisa Alcott’s grave on Author’s Ridge in the local cemetery. I believe that I remember that she is buried with her mother and father. Yes, I know that she is because it took me a moment to associate that she was also buried with her sisters and that I was looking at four women’s names: the little women.
A friend of an aquaintance is one of “Meg’s” great-granddaughters. She has not read the book. This is the only person that I have every wanted to hold captive and force to read a book. (I kid!)
Just last week I downloaded eight Alcott novels to my Kindle. What a feast!
choie, your posts are always worthwhile. Keep 'em coming!
Nitpick: The 1949 version was filmed in June–September 1948, so Mary Astor (42), June Allyson (30), Janet Leigh (turned 21), Elizabeth Taylor (16), and Margaret O’Brien (11).
BTW, the PBS “American Masters” on Louisa May Alcott recently aired. It was eye opening. LMA was completely canny and cynical about the success of Little Women, she aspired to wealth and wrote the sort of thing that sells (although some of the events actually happened). She had some not-very-complimentary words to describe it (“Moral pap for children”).
She had also written over 40 rather racy pulp novels (with drugs, crime, transvestites, what have you) under a pseudonym, that almost no one knows about.
I read some of the pulp stories and short novels in an anthology. It was particularly amusing to see what passed as vice in those days. In one a house party of young people decide to experiment with hashish and thier lives were never the same again. One couple eat a humunguous lump of the stuff (somewhere between a quarter and an ounce so far as I could make out) then go boating on a lake where they have a really bad time. Tremendous!
Ooh! I’ve read one of those (A Long Fatal Love Chase, reissued in the 1990s) – it’s hysterical, especially when read out loud.