The Careless Years

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.

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.

The girls are all blonde and the boys all clean-cut. It is 1957, the peak of those ten years of innocence between the end of the Korean war and the Kennedy assassination. The biggest concern of middle-class white youth is getting a job and "settling down". Jobs are plentiful, Ike's in the White House, and marriage takes care of the sex problem. This earnest little movie rivets on that last element. It's like a one-note laser. The kids are in heat and only marriage is acceptable. But are they responsible enough, adult enough. Stockwell and Trundy say they are, but their parents being certifiably respectable and responsible say they're not. The conflict, I'm sure, resonated from malt shops to drive-ins all over America. Sure, bigger budget films like "A Summer Place" (1959) dealt with the same angst in lavish Technicolor and to much bigger crowds. Still, this minor production presents no distractions to teen mores of the time.

Unfortunately Director Hiller paces events like he's got 10 minutes of script and 60 minutes to fill. Nodding off seems the natural reaction to much of the stretched-out dialogue and Leave It to Beaver action. Stockwell may look like the second coming of James Dean but wisely avoids the temptation, while Trundy makes for a convincing version of Doris Day's younger sister. Even the normally competent John Larch takes the idea of "working stiff" to some lengths. Yet the movie is astonishing in one regard-- it was co-written by Hollywood's top communist of the blacklist period, John Howard Lawson under a pseudonym. I guess Lawson was picking up paying gigs where he could, even drive-in teen movies. Likely he was responsible for Larch's blue-collar status in what is otherwise a strictly white-collar movie. Still and all, the script could easily have come from Dick Clark between sets on American Bandstand. Oh well, as they say, life is stranger than fiction, or something like that.

Anyway, for those interested in what teen concerns were like before Vietnam and an assassin's bullet ushered in a new era, this little Ozzie-and-Harriet artifact is a good place to start.

"The Careless Years" is a film about two teens who fall in love and want to grow up too fast. Jerry and Emily (Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy) are desperately in love and their hormones are raging. As a result, they plan on marrying...even though they are still seniors in high school.

I appreciate this film for two reasons. First, it's realistic when it comes to sex and sexuality. Most films of the day take the 'just say no' attitude towards sex, which is awfully naïve. Second, it has an excellent message for teens...that it IS difficult to control those urges and that patience is important. But it also doesn't come off as preachy or phony...which I really appreciate. Well worth seeing and well made.

By the way, IMDB trivia says that Trundy was only 14 when she made the film. Unless she made it and they shelved it for a few years before releasing it, she was probably 17 or 18 (check her birthdate and year it was released...you'll see what I mean).

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.