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“Here is the screen’s most shocking exposé, of the ‘Baby-Facers’ just taking their first stumbling steps down Sin Street U.S.A.!” Robert Altman’s first feature film is far too good to be described as any but an expert step toward an impressive career. But he had to deal with a young actor who drove him up the wall, Tom Laughlin.

The Delinquents

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1957 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 72 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Tom Laughlin, Peter Miller, Richard Bakalyan, Rosemary Howard, Helen Hawley, Leonard Belove, Lotus Corelli, James Lantz, Christine Altman, George Mason Kuhn, Pat Stedman, Norman Zands, James Leria, Julia Lee, Lou Lombardo.

Cinematography: Charles Paddock

Film Editor: Helene Turner

Second Unit Director: Reza Badiyi

Produced, Written and Directed by Robert Altman

The hoods of tomorrow! The gun molls of the future!

Ah, the glorious Juvenile Delinquency film, or J.D. Epic,...

Editor's Note: RogerEbert.com is proud to reprint Roger Ebert's 1978 entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica publication "The Great Ideas Today," part of "The Great Books of the Western World." Reprinted with permission from The Great Ideas Today ©1978 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

It's a measure of how completely the Internet has transformed communication that I need to explain, for the benefit of some younger readers, what encyclopedias were: bound editions summing up all available knowledge, delivered to one's home in handsome bound editions. The "Great Books" series zeroed in on books about history, poetry, natural science, math and other fields of study; the "Great Ideas" series was meant to tie all the ideas together, and that was the mission given to Roger when he undertook this piece about film.

Given the venue he was writing for, it's probably wisest to look at Roger's long, wide-ranging piece as a snapshot of the...

Director Robert Altman.

Robert Altman: Eclectic Maverick

By

Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the April 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

It's the Fall of 1977 and I'm a bored and rebellious ten year old in search of a new movie to occupy my underworked and creativity-starved brain, feeling far too mature for previous favorites Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Return of the Pink Panther (1975), and wanting something more up-to-date and edgy than Chaplin's City Lights (1931). I needed a movie to call my favorite that would be symbolic of my own new-found manhood (and something that would really piss off my parents and teachers). Mom and Dad were going out for the evening, leaving me with whatever unfortunate baby-sitter happened to need the $10 badly enough to play mother hen to an obnoxiously precocious only child like myself. I scanned the TV Guide for what...