George Stevens Lecture: Alice Adams (1935)

George Stevens Lecture
Featuring remarks by Academy Governor Robin Swicord
And a screening of Stevens’s classic

With an exhibition featuring material from the Stevens Family collection

The Academy celebrates the recent donations by the Stevens family to the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive with a screening of Alice Adams and an exhibit of materials from the Stevens family collection. Prior to the screening, screenwriter and director Robin Swicord will share her thoughts on the work of George Stevens and his classic film, Alice Adams. Swicord was nominated for an Adapted Screenplay Oscar® for her work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and is the writer-director of The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) and Wakefield (2017).

Booth Tarkington’s novel Alice Adams was published in 1921 and won the Pulitzer Prize a year later.  Katharine Hepburn, a fan of the book, was tapped to star in the film.  She specifically wanted to work with a director with a strong sense of comedy, and who was also genuinely interested in the material; George Stevens was the man for the job. 

The film tells the story a young woman, Alice Adams (Hepburn), trying desperately to elevate her social status. She meets the man of her dreams (Fred MacMurray), a rich, handsome and kind man who falls in love with her despite her attempts to hide her true circumstances. Stevens’s Alice Adams garnered Oscar nominations in both the Best Picture and Actress categories.

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The George Stevens Lecture was established in 1982 in honor of the legendary director whose films are best remembered for combining social conscience with artistic excellence. The lecture is designed to provide a forum in which eminent directors and film scholars can address the art and craft of motion picture direction.

Directed by George Stevens. Produced by Pandro S. Berman. Screenplay Dorothy Yost, Mortimer Offner. Adaptation by Jane Murfin. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington. 
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable, Frank Albertson, Ann Shoemaker, Charley Grapewin.
99 minutes. 35mm.  Courtesy of Warner Bros.