Under Eighteen
![Under Eighteen](https://prod-images.tcm.com/v5cache/TCM/Images/Dynamic/i346/undereighteen1932_3080_1024x767_10092014022702.jpg)
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Archie Mayo
Marian Marsh
Anita Page
Regis Toomey
Warren William
Norman Foster
Film Details
Technical Specs
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Synopsis
Teenager Marge Evans, who works as a seamstress to support her widowed mother, is in love with Jimmie, a grocery truck driver, but is worried that their love cannot survive poverty. She envies the models she sees at work, who receive expensive gifts from their wealthy lovers. To make things worse, Marge's sister Sophie, her baby and her husband Alf, who has lost his job, move in with Marge and her mother. Sophie and Alf fight continually over his inability to find another job, reinforcing Marge's reluctance to marry a poor man. One afternoon, when all the models have left for lunch, Raymond Harding, a wealthy playboy, appears at the shop where Marge works. Dress shop owner François asks Marge to model some clothes and Harding is charmed by her. Jimmie is furious when he learns what Marge did and asks her to marry him immediately. That evening, Sophie confesses that she wants a divorce. Marge agrees to help her, but they do not have enough money to pay the lawyer. Marge tries to borrow the money from Jimmie, who refuses when he learns what she wants it for. She then asks François, who also refuses. As a last resort, Marge visits Harding's penthouse where a wild party is in progress. At first, Harding intends to seduce Marge, but impressed by her innocence, offers her the money as a gift. Jimmie arrives in search of Marge and misinterpreting the events, punches Harding in the stomach. They run away, thinking Jimmie has killed Harding, but soon find out that he is fine and still wants to give Marge the money. Then the landlady gives Marge some more money from François, who has reconsidered his refusal, but all the money becomes unnecessary when Alf wins a pool tournament and reconciles with Sophie.
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Director
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/ArchieMayo.125666.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Archie Mayo
Cast
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/MarianMarsh.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Marian Marsh
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/AnitaPage.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Anita Page
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/RegisToomey.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Regis Toomey
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/WarrenWilliam.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Warren William
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/NormanFoster.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Norman Foster
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/JoyceCompton.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Joyce Compton
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/JFarrellMacDonald.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
J. Farrell Macdonald
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/ClaireDodd.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Claire Dodd
Paul Porcasi
![](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/MaudeEburne.55517.jpg?imwidth=188&height=141)
Maude Eburne
Murray Kinnell
Dorothy Appleby
Judith Vosselli
Mary Doran
Walter Mcgrail
Emma Dunn
Crew
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Photo Collections
Film Details
Technical Specs
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Articles
Under 18
Under Eighteen opens on a hopeful note with Sophie (Anita Page) getting married to Alf (Norman Foster) and moving out of the cramped tenement apartment she shares with her sister Marge (Marian Marsh) and her mother. The mood quickly changes to despair as Marge considers her circumstances and realizes that marriage is not necessarily the answer to the grinding poverty she experiences day after day. This becomes even more pronounced when Sophie, Alf and their newborn baby move back in with them because Alf lost his job and won't look for a new one; he keeps blowing the little money they have on billiard tournaments in bars, hoping he'll win the big cash prize. The situation becomes unbearable for Sophie once she realizes she is pregnant with a second child. She begs Marge to help her raise the money for a divorce lawyer, all of which helps convince Marge that she won't make the same mistakes. Her fiancé Jimmie (Regis Toomey), a delivery boy who aspires to start his own delivery service, wants to tie the knot and doesn't share Marge's dismal view of matrimony. In her opinion, "Marriage is a bunk, at least for poor people."
Soon Marge postpones her wedding plans with Jimmie and sets her sights on raising money for her sister's divorce lawyer by using herself as collateral in a deal she proposes to Howard Raymond (Warren William), a well-known tycoon and notorious ladies' man. Marge goes to his penthouse apartment, where a decadent rooftop party is in full swing, and begins to succumb to the inhibition-free atmosphere. When Marge and Howard finally retire to his private suite, however, their rendezvous takes a surprisingly unexpected turn.
More than anything else, Under Eighteen is an impressive showcase for Marian Marsh (best known for her role as Trilby in Svengali [1931]), who displays both fearless determination and raging self-doubt as the desperate Marge. The film builds suspense and a growing tension over what lengths Marge will go to help her sister. And it offers a grimly realistic view of the options available for women born and raised in the slums. This isn't an escapist fantasy but the flip side of the working girls glimpsed in Gold Diggers of 1933. For most of the film, the camera captures the squalid details of tenement life: people sleeping on fire escapes on sweltering summer nights, the congested sidewalks and never-ending street traffic, the rented rooms with walls so thin you can hear the neighbors through them.
Though not as sordid or as entertainingly racy as other Pre-Code movies such as Baby Face (1933) or Employees' Entrance (1933), Under Eighteen has its share of frisky behavior and sexual innuendos, particularly during the penthouse pool party scene. Warren William, who specialized in playing lecherous employers and rich philanderers, is right in his element here. When he welcomes Marge to his alcohol-fueled roof party, he says, "Why not take off your clothes and stay awhile?" Prior to that, he is glimpsed bobbing up and down suggestively in the water with a drunken female guest on a phallic-like float so we know his intentions are strictly dishonorable.
[SPOILER ALERT] For a Pre-Code film, Under Eighteen does have a surprisingly false and unrealistic denouement that smacks of studio compromise and Breen Office censorship. The movie, however, was actually made before the Code was strictly enforced so that was probably the result of screenwriters Charles Kenyon and Maude Fulton trying to give the movie a happy ending. Marge emerges from Raymond's penthouse with her virtue intact because he has a change of heart and decides to not take advantage of such a pure innocent. She now happily accepts her fate and agrees to marry Jimmie and move to New Jersey. And most astonishing of all, Alf finally wins the big billiards tournament and whisks his pregnant wife, child and mother-in-law off to Atlantic City for a vacation followed by an undeniably bright future. Audiences won't be fooled though. We know Alf will be back to his old tricks as soon as the money runs out and that Marge will always wonder what her life would have been like if she had actually acted on her defiant promise to herself: "I've made up my mind that anytime I hand myself over to a man for life, it's cash on delivery."
Director: Archie Mayo
Screenplay: Frank Mitchell Dazey (story), Agnes Christine Johnston (story), Charles Kenyon
Cinematography: Barney McGill
Film Editing: George Marks
Art Direction: Esdras Hartley
Music: Bernhard Kaun
Cast: Marian Marsh (Margie Evans), Anita Page (Sophie), Regis Toomey (Jimmie), Warren William (Howard Raymond), Norman Foster (Alf), Joyce Compton (Sybil).
BW-80m.
by Jeff Stafford
![Under 18](https://prod-images.tcm.com/img/film-participant-detail/Featured-Artilce_Placeholder.png)
Under 18
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The copyright registration credits Maude Fulton with writing the screenplay, although Charles Kenyon is credited onscreen. A news item in Film Daily notes that David Manners was slated for a role in the film.
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