Movies from the Heart—Little Women

Many, many of the early films in Hollywood—the “talkies”—used plays or novels as their source material. With the advent of talking pictures, they needed to put words in characters’ mouths that sounded realistic, of course, so why not turn to tried and true material that used dialogue?

When you look at the roster of screenwriters who touched the script for this film it’s quite amazing. Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman were the credited writers, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott. But other—uncredited—contributing writers included Alfred Block, Charles Brackett, Salisbury Field, David Hempstead, Jane Murfin, G.B. Stern, Wanda Tuchock and John Twist. Quite a list!

There have been—to date—four major films based on the Alcott book, Little Women. They were in 1933, 1949, 1994 and 2019. It’s really interesting to look at all of the films to see how our idea of presenting this story changed over time. The film is set in the Civil War, so is a period piece.

Take a look at the trailer for the 1933 film.

Some of the dialogue comes directly from the book. And, sometimes, that results in a bit of a stilted exchange between characters. But, overall, it’s amazing that after 90 years this film holds up as well as it does. That’s good writing.

One way to improve your own writing is to give yourself the exercise of writing a screenplay from other source material. But how do you choose the material? Sure, you could choose the latest bestseller. The problem with that choice, however, is that when you’re done you can’t DO anything with that screenplay. You can’t try to sell it because you don’t have the rights to use someone else’s copyrighted material.

A solution to this dilemma, if you wanted to try this exercise, is to write a screenplay based on a fairy tale or an early novel or play that’s in the public domain. At this writing, works written in 1926 and before are in the public domain. Other more recent works come into the public domain 70 years after the author’s death. That’s true for most countries, but always check to be sure.

However, if you don’t want to have to think about public domain dates, why not try a fairy tale? The early ones [which is most of the popular ones we know] are certainly in the public domain.

So The Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood—how might you adapt them for today’s audiences?

You can have a lot of fun with this, and who knows, you might come up with the next hit!

Next week we’ll look at another family setting for a film where the main character thirsts for romance— Alice Adams.

Copyright © Diane Lake

08Oct23

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com