Little Women

Little Women (1949)

THRILLS OF YOUNG LOVE!

Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Date of release
1949-03-10
TMDB
7.4 / 10 (233)
Runtime
2h 1m
Genres
Romance, Drama, Family
Director
Mervyn LeRoy

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $2.8M
  • Based on: Little Women
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 2. Including: Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Color

Little Women is a 1949 American coming-of-age romantic drama film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy from a screenplay by Andrew Solt, Sarah Y. Mason, and Victor Heerman, based on the 1868–1869 two-volume novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott. Filmed in Technicolor, the film stars June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Rossano Brazzi, and Mary Astor. The original music score was composed by Adolph Deutsch and Max Steiner. Little Women includes the American film debut of Italian actor Rossano Brazzi, and the final film appearance of C. Aubrey Smith, who died in 1948.

Production

David O. Selznick was originally going to produce the film. Filming began in September 1946 but Selznick decided he could not tackle a major production so soon after the ordeal of filming Duel in the Sun (1946) so he sold the property and script to MGM. The cast for the David O. Selznick version included Jennifer Jones (Jo), Diana Lynn (Amy), Bambi Linn (Beth), Rhonda Fleming (Meg) and Anne Revere (Marmee).

In this version, Beth March (Margaret O'Brien) is portrayed as being several years younger than Amy March (Elizabeth Taylor), while in the book she is a year older. In fact, the age range of the four sisters at the beginning of the book is just five years: Meg (16), Jo (15), Beth (13), Amy (12) and the story spans about 10 years.

Instead of first meeting at a New Year's Eve party, Jo and Laurie first see each other when the March girls are taking their breakfast to the Hummels, and Jo visits Laurie while he is sick and confined to the house before as well.

When the girls attend the New Year's Eve party, all four of the girls go, rather than just Meg and Jo as presented in the novel. They leave early because Beth is upset over hearing from other people that Mrs. March had plans to marry them off well.

At the beginning of the book, when the March sisters are each given a dollar to spend at their pleasure, they all decide to buy something for their mother. In the film, while they eventually do buy presents for their mother, they initially purchase things for themselves.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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