Little Women

Little Women is a 1949 American comedy-drama film with script and music taken directly from the earlier 1933 Hepburn version. Based on Louisa May Alcott's 1868–69 two-volume novel of the same name, it was filmed in Technicolor and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay was written by Sally Benson, Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, and Andrew Solt. The original music score was composed by Adolph Deutsch and Max Steiner. The film also marked the American film debut of Italian actor Rossano Brazzi. Sir C. Aubrey Smith, whose acting career had spanned four decades, died in 1948; Little Women was his final film. Plot In the small town of Concord, Massachusetts, during the Civil War, the March sisters—Meg (Janet Leigh), Jo (June Allyson), Amy (Elizabeth Taylor), and Beth (Margaret O'Brien)—live with their mother in a state of genteel poverty, their father having lost the family's fortune to an unscrupulous businessman several years earlier. While Mr. March (Leon Ames) serves in the Union Army, Mrs. March (Mary Astor), affectionately referred to as "Marmee" by her daughters, holds the family together and teaches the girls the importance of giving to those less fortunate than themselves, especially during the upcoming Christmas season. Although the spoiled and vain Amy often bemoans the family's lack of material wealth and social status, Jo, an aspiring writer, keeps everyone entertained with her stories and plays, while the youngest March daughter, the shy and sensitive Beth, accompanies Jo's productions on an out-of-tune piano. The spirited Jo, a tomboy in search of male companionship, strikes up a friendship with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence (Peter Lawford), the grandson of the March's wealthy, but cantankerous neighbor, James Laurence (C. Aubrey Smith). Later that winter, Jo so impresses Mr. Laurence with her forthrightness and her beneficial effect on the brooding Laurie, that he invites the March sisters to a fancy dress ball at his sumptuous home. At the ball, Meg is courted by John Brooke (Richard Stapley), Laurie's tutor, and Jo consents to dance with Laurie while Amy and Beth breathlessly view the scene from their perch atop the staircase. Mr. Laurence's gruff demeanor is softened upon meeting Beth, who reminds him of the beloved granddaughter he lost, and when he learns of her musical talent, he offers her the use of his grand piano. The beautiful evening ends on a sour note, however, when Amy and Beth overhear the snobbish Mrs.