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| SPITFIRE (1934) |
An RKO Radio Picture
B&W, 88 minutes
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CAST
Trigger Hicks: Katharine Hepburn
J. Stafford: Robert Young
G. Fleetwood: Ralph Bellamy
Eleanor Stafford: Martha Sleeper
Bill Grayson: Louis Mason
Etta Dawson: Sara Haden
Granny Raines: Virginia Howell
Mr. Sawyer: Sidney Toler
West Fry: High Ghere
Mrs. Sawyer: Therese Wittler
Jake Hawkins: John Beck
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CREDITS
Director: John Cromwell
Executive Producer: Merian C. Cooper
Associate Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Scenarists: Jane Murfin, Lula Vollmer
Based on the Play Trigger by: Lula Vollmer
Photographer: Edward Cronjager
Art Director: Van Nest Polglase
Associate Art Director: Carroll Clark
Editor: William H. Morgan
Sound Recorder: Clem Portman
Musical Score: Max Steiner
Costumer: Walter Plunkett
Makeup Artist: Mel Burns
Assistant Director: Dewey Starkey
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SYNOPSIS
Trigger Hicks, a young tomboy faith healer in the Ozark mountains, believes that her prayers can heal the sick and raise the dead. However, she is feared by her neighbors, both for her temper and her strange religious fervor.
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CRITIQUES
"There is, unfortunately, nothing about Miss Hepburn's very modern, extremely urban personality to suggest a mystic healer from the far hills. John Cromwell, usually a lucid director, never makes quite clear the author's attitude toward young Trigger, whether she is to be accepted as a great healer or sympathized with as a self-deluded child. Miss Hepburn seems equally bewildered."
- Eileen Creelman, New York Sun, 1934
"Miss Hepburn plays so splendidly that she makes the girl a surprisingly real creation....Her fine and straightforward work in Spitfire, however, should be pretty convincing proof that she is as striking a screen actress as those of us who have always admired her have insisted."
- Richard Watts Jr., New York Herald Tribune, 1934
"The picture would suggest that Katharine Hepburn is condemned to elegance, doomed to be a lady for the rest of her natural life, and that her artistry does not extend to the interpretation of the primitive or the uncouth. That her producers have not bothered to give her a scenario of any interest or quality whatsoever is another aspect of the situation."
- The New Yorker, 1934
"In the wide world of the cinema, the art of Miss Katharine Hepburn has too small a place - small, perhaps, because she has never courted popularity by appearing in a quick succession of sophisticated and sentimental stories. Popularity means little to her; she is content with films that do not require her to throw away her rare gift of being able to touch us in an emotion usually free from the sentimentality which audiences have become accustomed to expect. She creates a feeling in the audience by a kind of vital expectation which causes a feeling to flow towards her."
- The Times (London), 1934
"Cromwell, who played the doddery priest in Altman's A Wedding, had a lengthy career as a director particularly adept with women leads; and certainly the entirely wonderful Katharine Hepburn constitutes the main interest in this otherwise plain sentimental comedy of backwoods superstition confronting civilization in the form of a dam construction company. Not remotely dismayed by the role of hillbilly, nor by having to mouth down-home Christian cracker mottoes, she cuts an acidic path through the general coyness, and runs counter to the formulary script by suggesting that finally she remains a shrew."
- Chris Peachment, Time Out
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HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Links are provided for information only, and are not endorsements. Please ensure that your player is compatible with the region or standard before purchase.
Region 2:
NTSC Standard:
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Lobby card
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Poster
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Robert Young, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: John Cromwell, Robert Young, Katharine Hepburn
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