Joan Bennett

Father of the Bride (1950)

[7] Spencer Tracy fronts this lighthearted Vincente Minnelli film about a father experiencing the emotional and financial turmoil of marrying off his only daughter. Elizabeth Taylor plays the daughter and Joan Bennett plays the mother, but this is all Tracy’s show. His droll narration and ‘grin and bear it’ attitude are what give the film its momentum and its low-key comedy. Apart from an effective …

Little Women (1933)

[6] George Cukor directs Katharine Hepburn as Jo March in one of the earliest screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a chronicle of the lives and loves of four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War. There’s intrinsic nostalgia and sentimentality to the storytelling, but Cukor never lets the film become maudlin. That’s largely owed to Hepburn’s contribution. The then-controversial …