Pauline Kael

"Apart from her comedies, Katharine Hepburn has been best in Little Women, in Alice Adams, and, later in her career, in Long Day's Journey Into Night. As Alice Adams, her beautiful angularity and her faintly absurd Bryn Mawr accent are perfect for Booth Tarkington's desperately pretentious small-town social climber. The scene in which Alice, dressed in simple, exquisite taste, attends a party full of plushy, over-dressed "society" belles is a pointed commentary on American taste and social standards. Hepburn's pantomiming in some of the scenes is as fine as the best American acting I've ever seen--she makes Alice one of the few authentic American movie heroines...."

Pauline Kael
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), p. 282

(Unlike Ferguson, Kael found this about the ending: "Alice's disbelieving "Gee whiz!" is matched by the audience's disbelief.")