Little Women has four screen versions here: George Cukor’s 1933 film with Katharine Hepburn, Mervyn LeRoy’s 1949 film with June Allyson, Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 film with Winona Ryder, and Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film with Saoirse Ronan.
The novel is about 201,000 words, roughly eleven hours of reading, and all four versions run between 115 and 135 minutes. Densities are 0.6 to 0.7 minutes of screen per thousand words.
Every screen version at a glance
4 versions are listed here: 4 made for cinemas and 0 for television, released between 1933 and 2019. Runtimes are the length of the version as released, taken from the Wikipedia article for each title and checked against its IMDb entry.
| Year | Version | Director | Length | Leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1933 | Little Women — film | George Cukor | 115 min | Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas |
| 1949 | Little Women — film | Mervyn LeRoy | 121 min | June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O’Brien |
| 1994 | Little Women — film | Gillian Armstrong | 119 min | Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne, Trini Alvarado |
| 2019 | Little Women — film | Greta Gerwig | 135 min | Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh |
How the versions differ
The 1933 film runs 115 minutes with Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett and Paul Lukas, the shortest of the four and the earliest sound version.
The 1949 film runs 121 minutes with June Allyson, Peter Lawford and Margaret O’Brien. It was MGM’s version, sixteen years after RKO had filmed the novel with Hepburn.
Armstrong’s 1994 film runs 119 minutes with Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne and Trini Alvarado. Gerwig’s 2019 film runs 135 minutes with Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson and Florence Pugh, and it tells the story out of chronological order.
Reading time against screen time
The novel runs to about 201000 words, which is roughly 11 hours at the 300 words a minute the rest of this site uses. Every screen version fits its own reading of the story into the times below.
| Screen version | Format | Running time |
|---|---|---|
| 1933 · Little Women | film | 115 min |
| 1949 · Little Women | film | 121 min |
| 1994 · Little Women | film | 119 min |
| 2019 · Little Women | film | 135 min |
| The novel (1868) | 201000 words | ~11 h to read |
The 2019 film has the most screen time at 135 minutes and the only non-linear structure; the 1933 film the least at 115. All four cover roughly the same span of the novel.
Questions readers ask
Which Little Women film is closest to the novel?
By length, the 2019 film at 135 minutes. The novel is about 201,000 words, roughly 670 minutes of reading, so every version compresses the text to about a fifth of its reading time.
Are the films based on the whole novel?
Yes, all four adapt the first part and most of the second. None of them covers the novel’s full eleven hours of reading.
Who plays Jo in each version?
Katharine Hepburn in 1933, June Allyson in 1949, Winona Ryder in 1994 and Saoirse Ronan in 2019.
The novel itself is on editions.ink as a free ebook: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, with EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB downloads. The full list of filmed classics covers 13 books, and the rest of the catalogue sits under classic fiction.
Other books on screen
- Pride and Prejudice on screen — 4 versions from 1940 to 2005
- Jane Eyre on screen — 6 versions from 1943 to 2011
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on screen — 5 versions from 1951 to 2010