This month-long Spotlight examines the “juvenile delinquent” movies of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, when the subject of youthful alienation and anti-social behavior was a popular one in both exploitation flicks and more serious studies. Movies about youthful crime had been made throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, but it was in the following decades that the issue was presented as a social problem in need of solutions.
Our Juvenile Delinquent films cover the period 1945-1967 and include three TCM premieres. They are divided into categories as shown below, with highlights from each grouping.
School’s a Drag includes two of our premieres. Youth on Trial (1945), released through Columbia Pictures, was an early effort from director Budd Boetticher (1957’s The Tall T) under the name Oscar Boetticher Jr. Mary Currier plays a tough juvenile court judge who discovers that her own daughter (Cora Sue Collins) is part of a gang of youthful criminals.
The Diary of a High School Bride (1959), an American-International release directed and co-written by Burt Topper, tells the story of a 17-year-old student (Anita Sands) who marries a 24-year-old law student (Ron Foster). Among their problems are objections by her parents and a delinquent ex-boyfriend (Chris Robinson) who still has designs on the bride.
This category also includes two classic films about sympathetic teachers who break through to their tough students: Blackboard Jungle (1955), starring Glenn Ford; and To Sir, With Love (1967) starring Sidney Poitier. Also screening: The Careless Years (1957), Street of Sinners (1957), High School Confidential! (1958), and High School Hellcats (1958).
The category Jail Birds has one premiere, No Time to Be Young (1957), a Columbia Pictures production directed by David Lowell Rich. Robert Vaughn stars as a college dropout who plots to rob a supermarket with two fellow delinquents (Roger Smith and Tom Pittman). The film’s ads referred to the “Get Lost” generation, proclaiming that “They were too old to be teenagers and too young to be adults!”
Untamed Youth (1957), an exploitation film directed by Howard W. Koch and released through Warner Bros., stars Mamie Van Doren and Lori Nelson as sisters who are arrested for skinny-dipping and sentenced to labor on a farm run by corrupt owner John Russell. Van Doren, playing a would-be musical star, has some musical numbers in which she reportedly became the first female to perform rock ‘n’ roll songs on film.
Other films with jail or prison settings: Bad Boy (1949), So Young, So Bad (1950), The Shadow on the Window (1957), Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959), So Evil, So Young (1961) and The Hoodlum Priest (1961).
Our category Running Wild takes a look at a group of films in which teens are running wild in the streets. The Young Savages (1961) is a powerful film from United Artists, directed by John Frankenheimer and based on a novel by Evan Hunter that was inspired by the 1959 “Capeman” killings in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Burt Lancaster stars as an assistant district attorney working on a case in which three Italian youths are charged with killing a blind Puerto Rican boy.
In the Warner Bros. drama Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back, Never Say Never Again) in his directorial debut, a group of teenage boys find a briefcase that contains uncut heroin, unbeknownst to them. The boys pawn the briefcase only to realize its true contents later, setting them on a journey through the streets of Los Angeles to find the narcotics while a gang is also on the hunt for it. The film was financed by legendary exploitation director and producer Roger Corman.
Also showing: Crime in the Streets (1956), Rumble on the Docks (1956), Four Boys and a Gun (1957) and 13 West Street (1962).
Bad Boys include James Dean in his iconic performance as anguished, misunderstood teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), directed by Nicholas Ray for Warner Bros. It did as much as anything to establish him as a cinematic legend despite the brevity of his career before he died in an automobile crash the same year the film was released.
Nicholas Ray also directed Columbia’s Knock on Any Door (1949), another film with a troubled young protagonist. In this case, the character played by baby-faced John Derek is already a hardened criminal who is accused of murder, with Humphrey Bogart as the lawyer who defends him. This was Derek’s first important role and, if it failed to do for his image what Rebel did for James Dean’s, it set him on the path to a successful career.
Other “Bad Boy” films include Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955), The Young Stranger (1957), Hot Rod Gang (1958), Violent Playground (1958), Look in Any Window (1961) and Wild Seed (1965).
