The Green-Eyed Blonde

Moving story of a group in a home for wayward girls who find an illegal opportunity to be a family. A new girl, Betsy and a new staff member, Miss Wilson find that they and the rest of the girls in the home, have a lot in common. Miss Wilson finds herself at odds with her employers.

The love scenes with the chain-link fence, not replicated by any as far as I know, is not to be missed.

Greened-Eyed Blond is at times a tear jerker, especially if you have a soft spot. As well as a warning for all teenage girls and the establishment!

I used to catch this film fairly regularly back in the days when local TV stations ran the Late Show, the Late-Late Show, the Omigosh Are YOU Still Up? Show etc. instead of infomercials (**sigh...**) "Gone With the Wind" it's not, but I found it surprisingly memorable anyway and would like to find it on VHS or DVD someday. a lot of the movies I saw in those days--well, I don't remember having seen them until I see them again on AMC or Turner, or on the bargain-basement video rack at Wal-Mart. for some reason, "The Green-Eyed Blonde" stuck (I can even remember the downbeat theme music!) I've never seen it in any company's video catalog, though... (***SIGH...***)

It was a good movie t'il the end which made basically no sense.

I guess this 1957 film was a wake up call for many families who were in the midst of either raising teenage children, or more importantly being teenage children, especially if you were of the female persuasion. I realize that teenagers in the 1950's were more likely to incur an unexpected pregnancy compared to children in the past half century are due to the advances in sex education, and acceptance of women being on the pill (without shame) and men purchasing rubbers over the counter as easy as they can buy a package of gum and/or a chocolate bar.

Nonetheless I recognize the need even in today's society for shelters for young ladies to exist not as much to be imprisoned as this film seems to depict but to protect these young ladies who may have had a one night affair that got them into a bit of a jam, or been associated at a very young age with someone who was a bad influence on them.

The acting in this film was superb, and the (then) 25 year old actress Susan Oliver who plays the green-eyed blonde was certainly a mature leader of this wayward ban of unwed mothers and juvenile delinquents with mental problems or criminal pasts. I won't include any spoilers but I must say on a personal note I did find the storyline a bit hard to relate to even though the circumstances these young ladies found themselves in are very real, even in todays standards.

I give the film a respectable 6 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Susan Oliver's movie debut has her in a reform school, where the Jean Inness character is convinced that she and the other women in charge are just going through the motions, while Sally Brophy thinks they have to do something to save these young women. Meanwhile, we watch the young women in a script that pitches itself halfway between MADCHEN IN UNIFORM and LADY IN A CAGE, but without any sexuality or overt violence.

The script by Dalton Trumbo and Sally Stubblefield (who had worked in a reform school) makes the point that the inmates are still essentially children, even if they are hiding and caring for one of their babies. There's something unengaged about the performances, that distance the real issues. That may be deliberate, intended to reflect that the young women do not view the reform school as more than a waiting time, and they will re-enter the world with no change. If so, that makes this a tragedy, but it also means that there is no change, and hence no story.