Alice Adams

Alice Adams (1935) is RKO's touching, effectively poignant portrayal of small-town, mid-Western American pretenses in the early 1900s. The film's screenplay (by Dorothy Yost and Mortimer Offner) was based on Jane Murfin's adaptation of Booth Tarkington's 1921 prize-winning novel of the same name about a girl in a mid-sized Indiana city. It contains a wonderful and mature performance by Katharine Hepburn, probably her best work in the 1930s, as a social-climbing, vulnerable young woman stigmatized by her family's lower-class origins and lack of ambition, who sees a respectable marriage to a wealthy man as her only means to be fulfilled and find happiness. This film was made earlier in 1923 during the silent era with Florence Vidor.
This film was the first major directing success of George Stevens and it was responsible for inaugurating his career. He was better known for later films, such as: Swing Time (1936), Gunga Din (1939), Penny Serenade (1941), The Talk of the Town (1942), Woman of the Year (1942) (his third and final film with Hepburn), The More the Merrier (1943), I Remember Mama (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), and Giant (1956). The film was nominated for two Academy Awards and lost both: Outstanding Production (or Best Picture) and Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn, her second nomination) - Hepburn lost to Bette Davis nominated for her role in Dangerous (1935).