SPITFIRE - Sylvia Scarlett in Reverse??

NOW the consensus is SPITFIRE is a bad film with a bad performance from a miscast Katharine Hepburn but in 1933 she received quite good reviews for her work and as late as the 1980's Leonard Maltin gave the film three stars. NOW, however people can't get pass the idea of high-brow Hepburn playing a hillbilly and pan the movie outright. It's quite the opposite of SYLVIA SCARLETT, which was a widely panned flop when it was released in 1936 but since the late 1960's has a much better reputation.

Personally, I think SPITFIRE is a charming and often very moving little film. Hepburn may not be wisely cast but she does an excellent job in the part and I find it much easier to suspend disbelief and accept her as an uneducated rural southerner than I could as Kate being Chinese in DRAGON SEED (1944). I really love her scenes with Sara Haden and her scenes alone with the Jesus cards she snitched from Sunday school.