The trailer for Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” hit this week, with Gerwig promising that audiences will swoon for the pairing of Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet, playing beloved characters Jo March and boy next door Laurie.
“There is some true pairing between them that feels like what’s in the tradition of great cinematic pairings,” Gerwig told People and Entertainment Weekly. Ronan and Chalamet previously were paired in Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” with Chalamet cementing his heartthrob status by playing Ronan’s sexy bad boyfriend.
“They have an energy between them that is like they become a bonfire when they’re together,” Gerwig added. “They’re both so alive and they’re both so talented and so smart and so young. When you put them together it’s like combustion.”
Audiences probably are well aware that Gerwig’s adaptation isn’t the first screen version of Alcott’s 1868 novel, which centers on one of literature’s most beloved heroines: Josephine March, an aspiring writer, occasional tomboy and fiercely loyal sister, daughter, friend and eventual wife.
Chalamet, therefore, isn’t the first actor to get the chance to smolder as one of Jo’s love interests. Future “Batman” Christian Bale was the young heartthrob who enjoyed palpable chemistry with Winona Ryder’s Jo March in the 1994 film adaptation.
And then there was William Shatner …
That’s right, the pop culture icon was in a TV miniseries version of “Little Women” in 1978 — and he offered his own take on a 19th-century man in love.
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Shatner, now 88, did not play the young adult Laurie. Instead, he took on the role of Friedrich Bhaer, the older German professor Jo meets when she goes to live as a struggling writer in New York City. Shatner played opposite Susan Dey, then best known for playing teen rocker Laurie Partridge in “The Partridge Family.”
Shatner played Bhaer nearly a decade after he had finished his run as Capt. James T. Kirk in the original “Star Trek” series; by the late 1970s, “Star Trek” had developed a crazed cult following. The next year, the “Star Trek” saga would be transformed into the first of six movies — the start of a film and TV franchise that continues to this day.
Ever the thespian, the Shakespearian-trained Shatner no doubt chose to appear in NBC’s “Little Women” because it offered an acting challenge, a chance to show he could do more than play a dashing starship captain who romances women across the galaxy. (You can watch the miniseries in two parts on YouTube.)
To play Bhaer, Shatner had to dial back the charisma and put on a German accent to play the tutor as a soft-spoken European gentleman with a tender heart.
Shatner gets to smolder while his Bhaer gazes adoringly at Jo as they talk literature, and he encourages her to write serious novels. He smolders some more in the film’s climax, when he travels all the way to her home outside Boston to propose marriage.
Shatner’s Bhaer catches her in the rain outside the train station, then blurts out his proposal. He tells her he has finally secured a university teaching position, and in a year he should have saved enough money to marry.
“Zey don’t pay me a great deal,” Shatner’s Bhaer begins, with Shatner deploying his take on a German accent. “If I am frugal, and I vill be, zen in a year I vill have enough to take a wife.”
Dey’s Jo initially misunderstands, thinking he is talking about marrying someone else in a year.
Bhaer corrects her: “Yes, Miss Josephine, I vill take a wife next year if you vill have me.”
“My little dove, vill you have me?” he asks. “I know it is a long time to wait. I vill never be man of great means. I have nothing to give you but a full heart and empty hands.”
Dey’s Jo melts. She starts to cry and says: “But your hands aren’t empty. They hold my full heart in them.”
They kiss.
The Shatner-Dey version of “Little Women” is one of more than a dozen film and TV adaptations that Hollywood and the BBC have produced, starting in Hollywood’s silent era.
Every generation gets its “Little Women.” With its coming-of-age story, filled with young love, sisterly bonding and family tragedy and unity, “Little Women” has always been considered an excellent showcase for an era’s most promising young stars.
Katharine Hepburn played Jo in a 1933 version, and Janet Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and Rat Packer Peter Lawford played, respectively, Meg, Amy and Laurie in the 1949 version. Film fans may best remember Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation with its luminous cast. In addition to Ryder and Bale, the film also featured Kirsten Dunst as a young Amy, Claire Danes as Beth, and Susan Sarandon as Marmee.
The 1978 TV version starred that era’s most promising young stars of the small screen. In addition to Dey, who would later win a Golden Globe for playing prosecutor Grace Van Owen in “L.A. Law,” the series also starred Meredith Baxter Birney as Meg and Eve Plumb — aka Jan Brady — as the doomed Beth. Golden Age Hollywood actress Greer Garson appeared as Aunt Kathryn March, the role Meryl Streep assumes in Gerwig’s adaption.
According to Indiewire, debate has long raged among “Little Women” fans about the book’s romantic storyline: Who should Jo end up with? Many fans are disappointed that Alcott, and therefore the screen adaptations, don’t let Jo find lasting love with Laurie. Though the neighbors appear to love each other, Jo rejects Laurie’s marriage proposal because she pledges to never marry, wanting to stay independent so she can pursue a career. Laurie then turns his attentions to younger sister Amy.
Alcott, who based the book on her own life, herself remain unmarried and said she would have chosen to keep Jo single, but presumably that was not an option for selling books in the mid-1800s, according to Indiewire.
So, her compromise was Bhaer, Indiewire said. A contingent of fans are fine with this compromise; they prefer the mature and tender love Jo finds with Bhaer.
How the screen adaptations handle what Indiewire calls “the Laurie and Professor Bhaer dichotomy” probably depends in part on who’s playing who and the dynamic among the actors.
In the 1994 version, the chemistry between Ryder and Bale meant that audiences felt a little let down when Jo ended up with Bhaer, who was played by the “admittedly handsome” Gabriel Byrne, Indiewire said.
Gerwig seems to promise the same emphasis in her version — with the “bonfire” of feeling generated by Ronan and Chalamet. The elder Bhaer is played by French actor Louis Garrel, who is probably not familiar to many American audiences.
On the other hand, Shatner was very familiar to American audiences when he appeared in the 1978 series. The actor’s well-known tendency to demand attention also meant that his storyline would swoop in midway through the series and hold sway.
But Shatner actually plays Bhaer in a low-key way, and he comes across as believably smitten. He’s rather charming in the role, and he’s well matched by Dey, a strong actress. So, in a 1970s TV mini-series way, he is one half of what Gerwig would call a memorable romantic pairing — if you can get accept Captain Kirk with a German accent.
