Producers - Nancy Porter and Harriet Reisen

In Distribution

Louisa May Alcott: The Real Woman Who Wrote Little Women is a 90-minute documentary about one of New England’s most notable literary figures, the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott.

The film, a co-production with WNET’s American Masters, will explore the surprisingly complex, dramatic and compelling life of Alcott, a world-renowned personality whose true story has never before been told on film. Best known as the author of wholesome stories for young people, Alcott was also the pseudonymous author of pulp fiction thrillers featuring exotic characters doing things no Victorian lady was supposed to know about – for instance, smoking opium and hashish. Alcott’s secret authorial identity was not discovered for more than a half-century after her death, and even now is little known beyond academia.

The documentary will weave a variety of elements — on-camera interviews with scholars, dramatizations shot in historic locations, feature film clips, archival illustrations, contemporary animations, photographs and footage — into a complex, dramatic portrait of this “gutsy, acerbic, down-to-earth, powerfully driven” independent woman. The true story of Alcott is an eyewitness account of the Transcendentalist era, the Civil War, and the Gilded Age, that is full of startling discoveries and significance for your times.

Project Co-Directors Nancy Porter and Harriet Reisen, after several years of development funded by both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts, received full production funding, beginning with a major grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities. Subsequent sources were WNET, PBS/CPB, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and The Simons Foundation. Pre-production is underway with the assistance of Jennifer Pearce as Line Producer, and Anna Saraceno as Associate Producer. Filming is scheduled to begin in April, 2007.

The film is scheduled for national PBS broadcast on American Masters in Fall 2008.

Nancy Porter Productions - Louisa May Alcott: The Real Woman Who Wrote Little Women