Though Hepburn fits the part perfectly, the rest of the movie's casting may seem odd to our present-day perspective. The movie was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won the latter. In addition to putting Hepburn on the map, the first 'talkie' version of Little Women was a critical and box office hit. Little Women was only Hepburn's fourth movie credit, though she'd go on to win the first of her four Oscars (for Morning Glory) the following year, in 1934. Like Jo, Hepburn would also become an icon for independent women. Katharine Hepburn's performance as Jo, serious and yet somehow bursting with joie de vivre, solidified her as a movie star. You could say that watching George Cukor's 1933 Little Women is a lot like watching a star be born. Let's take a tour through Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy in all their possible variations. That said, 2019's Little Women is not the first to make bold choices. More than any other version before it, Gerwig's film leans into the discussion of money and economic independence that's woven into the subtext of Alcott's novel. The latest-and most groundbreaking-version was written and directed by Greta Gerwig ( Lady Bird). Within the past two years alone, Little Women has been adapted for the screen three times. Many musical adaptations remain legendary, but impossible to watch, like the 1955 London musical A Girl Call Jo, the 1964 off-Broadway musical Jo, or CBS's 1958 TV musical starring The Brady Brunch's Florence Henderson as Meg March.īut fear not, Little Women fans: There are plenty of adaptations that haven't disappeared. According to The New Yorker, between 19, there were 48 radio dramatizations of Little Women. Some adaptations are lost forever, like a 1917 British silent film, three TV movies in the '40s, and a six-part BBC mini-series made in 1950 (the ones made in 1958, 1970, and 2017 remain). Since the novel was first published in 1868, the classic coming-of-age story about the four March sisters in Civil War-era Concord, MA has been adapted countless times. Louisa May Alcott probably didn't expect to start a media empire when she wrote Little Women.

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