Josie Andrews 412 Midterm Projects

Little Women Smashes Box Office Records


During the Depression, movies were a popular form of escapism, particularly for women, and affordable entertainment for audiences ("Women, Impact of the Great Depression On").  With an Oscar under her belt for Morning Glory, Hepburn’s exuberant performance in Little Women broke Box Office records, with 20,000 people sixteen days after opening storming Radio City Music Hall to try and get a seat.  In a two-page RKO promotional piece, Variety Magazine’s  December 26, 1933 ad stated: “Christopher Columbus: Show Business Has Never Known Anything Like It.” The advertisement then provides an entire page of touted excited theater operators praising the film as the “largest gross in history,” “crowds have been standing in line all day,” and the film has “given theater operators a real reason … to be thankful.” The November 17, 1933 New York Times review of the film effused excitement for Miss Hepburn’s interpretation of Jo, stating that “She talks rather fast at times, but one feels that Jo did, and after all one does not wish to listen to dialogue in which every word is weighed when the part is acted by a Katharine Hepburn [who] goes darting through this picture without giving one a moment to think of her as other than Jo.”
 

This page references: