My Teenage Daughter (1956)
“You weren’t so outspoken or brutal as young
people are today … if you’d been born at the beginning of a war and reared
through a blitz and always had the bad joke of the H-Bomb with you, might you
have been brutal and perhaps a little cynical.”
This is a juvenile delinquency flick: We all know this ...
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| Sylvia Syms & Kenneth Haigh
... leads to this:
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In the 1950s the world became obsessed by the rise of the
‘teenager’: a supposedly post-war phenomenon, the teenager was – in the eyes of
the media and much of the watching world – dangerous. Juvenile delinquency was
all the rage: journalists condemned it, kids found it exciting and parents
found it terrifying. And, of course, film makers found it enticing. Whether
mainstream (Rebel Without a Cause) or
B-Movie (I Was A Teenage Werewolf),
it was a subject that was ripe for exploitation. For some British filmmakers,
such as Basil Dearden and Michael Relph, it was the perfect opportunity to
raise serious social issues in films such as I Believe in You or Violent
Playground. For others, it was just about getting bums on seats, rather than educating the public.
Whilst it is no surprise that producers wanted to exploit
the teenage sensation, it is surprise to see certain names getting involved.
Who would have thought that the husband and wife team of Herbert Wilcox and
Anna Neagle would have decided that the story of a seventeen year old running
wild was just the thing for them? After all this was the team that gave the
world historical stories of strong women, such as Nell Gwynn; Queen Victoria (Victoria
the Great & Sixty Glorious Years);
Florence Nightingale (The Lady with a
Lamp); Edith Cavell (Nurse Edith
Cavell); Odette Sansom (Odette) and
Amy Jonson (They Flew Alone). Then
there were the London dramas with very specific titles, such as The Courtneys of Curzon Street, The Piccadilly Incident, Spring in Park Lane, Maytime in
Mayfair & I Live in Grosvenor Square. And finally there was the
somewhat unexpected My Teenage Daughter.
Remember, 1956 was the year rock and roll was unleashed on the British public. But look what they got!
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the tale of some
slum girl running wild, but a rather cosy, upper middle-class drama in which a
journalist (Neagle) ...
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| Anna Neagle |
... finds her seventeen year old daughter Jan (Sylvia Syms) ...
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| Kenneth Haigh & Sylvia Syms |
... is
going out with a rather disreputable fellow, Tony Ward-Black (Kenneth Haigh). He
drives a Bentley (it isn’t his), is believed to be running through his
inheritance (he is actually broke) and doesn’t even use his real name (he’s
really just plain old Tony Ward). But he is good looking, loves jazz clubs and
has confidence by the bucketload.
It's easy to see he's disreputable: he gate-crashes parties, wears white-tie when everyone else wears black-tie ...
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| Sylvis Syms, Michael Meacham & Kenneth Haigh |
... has friends who hang out in coffee bars, wearing duffel coats ...
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... and teaches Jan to smoke and drink coffee:
Oh yeas, he also lives like this:
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| Kenneth Haigh |
Yes, that's right. He's the type of man who will turn your nice, classical music listening daughter ...
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| Sylvia Syms |
... into a jazz-loving, bad pyjama wearing, wild-child:
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| Sylvia Syms |
There’s very little booze, no drugs and
barely a hint of sex, but he just isn’t the right sort for Jan – as everyone
but her knows. OK, Jan goes to jazz clubs but she still gets home at the end of
the evening. Rebellious, eh? And she thinks about giving up secretarial
college. But does she do it? Nope. But she does do a bit of driving without a
licence, so that’s her entry into the
world of fully paid up destroyer of western civilisation. Or maybe not.
It’s not a bad film, it’s just a bit tame. If
there was even a hint of teenage pregnancy or of her shoplifting, smoking dope
… even if any of the others in the jazz club were dabbling in drugs, it might
have given the film an edge. But no. This is British cinema at its most tame
and middle class.
When American audiences went to see this, retitled as Teenage Bad Girl, I bet they were disappointed.
Currently available on DVD:
Also look out for:
Arthur Mullard
Norman Wooland
Edie Martin
