Article: Jena Malone sparkles in `Lucy Whipple'.(VARIETY)

I f Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain had collaborated on a novel, it might have turned out something like Karen Cushman's Newbury Medal-winning "The Ballad of Lucy Whipple" - the basis of CBS' charming, disarming Sunday night movie (3 1/2 stars out of 4 stars; 8 p.m. Sunday, WCCO, Ch. 4).

Glenn Close is the big name in the cast, and she's splendid as Arvella Whipple, a plain and tall widow who takes on running a boardinghouse in the California gold-rush hamlet of Lucky Diggins. But the movie's magnetic center is Jena Malone, the young actress who wowed everyone who saw Showtime's 1997 "Bastard Out of Carolina."

Malone plays Arvella's oldest child, ...

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