The Careless Years

Jerry Vernon (Dean Stockwell) and Emily Meredith (Natalie Trundy) are Santa Monica High School seniors. He pursues her and they start going out. He comes from a poor family. Her family is well-off. With graduation approaching, he suggests getting married in Mexico.

This is a young Dean Stockwell. He's 20 after being a child actor. That's interesting and he's doing his version of James Dean. More importantly, it's Hollywood legend Arthur Hiller's first theatrical directing job. Barbara Billingsley is the mom and this was released months after Beaver. I don't particularly like this young couple. It doesn't start off well enough. This movie almost feels like a PSA. He's always the guy pushing and she's the one demurring. It moves slowly and with limited drama. It's a melodrama and the climax tries to explode. I guess that it's pushing the envelope of its day just by discussing these issues. Everyone starts somewhere and it's interesting to watch these folks starting their careers.

To me, I am always taken with dramas about a rich girl falling for a fine, yet poor boy. And this movie is just that way, and is very heart-warming.

At a party one night at the rich girl's house, a teenager does fall for the rich girl, and she for him. (Dean Stockwell, who had been a capable movie actor from his childhood, performs his acting feat well in this movie.) It isn't all too long before the two want to get married. The boy's father is not for this, and neither is the girl's mother; Barbara Billingsley, the "Beaver"'s mother, is accomplished as the girl's mother here. While I was taken with the movie, in some places, though not many, there is a bit of frustration. However, the story does have a positive resolve, I feel, and the point of the potential problems of a teen-age marriage are expressed well in this cinematic work.

There's no better, as far as I know, telling of sexual repression in 1950s America than Elia Kazan's Splendor In The Grass with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. That was a big budget film, with an Academy Award winning script (William Inge).

But, The Careless Years deserves an honorable mention.

Produced four years earlier, from a John Howard Lawson script, this film feels like a short character study of two teens falling in love and having difficulty repressing their physical attraction for one another.

The Careless Years is aptly directed by Arthur Hiller. Even though he was directing his first film, Hiller took a firm hold of the material and told it without grandiosity, focused on the sexual mores of the time and the misery experienced by young people.

Some might be bothered by the methodical (slow-moving) nature of Hiller's direction. But, Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy, who, reportedly, was only 16 during filming, handle the material well.

Stockwell, offers a James Dean-like performance as the lower-middle class teen whose intense sexual feelings lead him to make poor decisions.

The script, predictably, given the screenwriter, introduces class differences, however, without making a political statement. Lawson was a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group of moviemaking professionals blacklisted because of their affiliation with the Communist Party. This was his last script.

Stockwell's father, played well by John Larch, is a hard-working blue collar man who has toiled to save money to have his son go to college. When reason with his son fails the two have an intense physical confrontation. When Trundy's parents, the mother is played by Barbara Billingsley (Leave It To Beaver), try reason with their daughter and when that fails they suggest they go to their summer home. But, they never take on the cliched snobbish suburban elites' approach.

Approach the film with low expectations and, maybe, like me, you'll be surprised by its nuanced approach to the topic.

Careless Years, The (1957)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy play a poor boy and a rich girl who find themselves in love but they're starting to feel sexual desires so in order to do things right they want to get married but all of the parents involved thinks that's a bad idea. I was pleasantly shocked to see how well made and at times emotion this film was. The story is told in a very serious manor and outside the title song the film comes off pretty well without any of the camp factor that usually attaches itself to a film like this. What really makes the film worth viewing are the performances, all of which are very good. Stockwell steals the show as the poor boy who finds himself falling apart as he tries to do things the right way. He does a great job at building this character up into someone we can care about. Trundy is also very good as the good girl who wants to do things the right way. John Lynch is terrific as the boys father and Barbara Billingsley from Leave it to Beaver plays the girl's over cautious mother. There's a terrific scene towards the end where the boy steals some of his father's money and how this plays out is very brutal, realistic and quite emotional. The one thing that hampers the film is the fact that we've seen this type of movie countless times before.

When we talk about great male actors, how many times is Dean Stockwell mentioned? Dude worked 70+ years in the entertainment industry. This film proves why he lasted so long.

Typical mid-50s teen romance, yet tackles important topics. It's Mrs. Cleaver before Hugh Beaumont got ahold of her. Worth the watch if you're into that kind of thing.