Girl's Town
Director: Charles Haas
Year: 1959
Rating: 7.0
Starting in the late 1950's there were a grubby slew of low budget films
made about teenagers gone bad - talking tough, making trouble and feeling
horny - though compared to films today they are like a trip on a Merry-Go-Round.
Most of these were moral lessons in which in the end the troubled teens learn
that being good and following the rules of society is the way to go. This
film falls nicely into that but before we get to the change of heart it is
a lot of rowdy corny fun. In a few of these films - High School Confidential,
The Beat Generation, College Confidential and this one - Mamie Van Doren
melts the rust off a rusty nail. Here she leads like a Sherman tank - all
thrusting forward. She is trouble like a hand grenade with a loose pin and
she just eats up her role and swallows it like a purring cat with claws.
It begins with a couple making out in a car when a blonde woman comes running
out of a house screaming with a man chasing her and taking her down - she
fights him off and goes running away with him in pursuit attempting to rape
her (though oddly the film shies away from using that word). The guy in the
car - Freddie - is a friend of the man and so laughs it off and goes back
to business. The man falls off a cliff and dies and the girl runs away with
the camera too far away to see who it is. Everyone thinks the girl is Silver
Morgan (Mamie) who was supposed to be on a date with him. With a name like
that how can she not have a future as a stripper but she is in fact a senior
in high school - what the high school is we never learn but I guess she is
taking classes in teasing, pushing her breasts up to maximum speed and taking
so tough that you expect jagged cans to come out of her mouth. It is all
daddio, studs, skags and fantabulous to her. When she walks up the stairs
it is like a mountain is moving, tick tock like the second hand on a clock
jumping back and forth between the 5 and the 7. The girl knows how to walk.
Of course, in the end we find out the attitude is just a front (and what
a front) and she is a squishy marshmallow inside. All she needed was to hear
Ave Maria.
There are of course gangs - the Jags vs the Dragons and they get into
a rumble when the Jags come looking for Silver - even the girls join in like
a dance at the prom. There is no real proof that Silver was the girl in question
but they still send her to Girl's Town (think Boy's Town) run by nuns with
more patience than Father Flanagan. That is like putting a lit firecracker
in a confession booth. Needless to say Silver doesn't fit in and one of the
girls (Gloria Talbot) shows her a few judo moves to show her who is boss.
Silver's 15 year old sister (Elinor Donahue - 192 episodes of Father Knows
Best) gets herself in trouble (this father was in jail) - forced into a no
hands drag race - which was kind of amazing to watch - and then kidnapped
to be sold to a Tijuana brothel by Freddie. Damn, a Tijuana brothel!
Into all of this comes Paul Anka of all people - who is a singer - 17 at
the time but looks 13 - who sings a bunch of songs (also wrote them) and
has a fairly large part - his debut. Throw in a song by The Platters who
always seemed to be available for films and so does Cathy Crosby - daughter
of Bob Crosby, brother of Bing. Now one guy who doesn't sing is Freddie played
by a 33 year old Mel Tormé - kind of strange in that he was quite
famous by this time - much more for his singing than his acting for sure.
Of course, Mamie is 27 years old - I guess she flunked a few times in school.
She sings the final song over the closing credits and apparently she also
had a song Hey Mama that she sang while taking a shower that was too sexy
for 1958 and was cut out. Like all great things it can be found on YouTube.
One final oddity is that one of the nuns is played by Sheilah Graham - who
I expect is long forgotten - but she had been a showgirl, then a popular
and powerful gossip columnist but is most famous for her relationship with
F. Scott Fitzgerald that she wrote about in her autobiography Beloved Infidel
which was made into a movie. A nun named Sister Grace must have seemed just
perfect no doubt in this rather wonderful offbeat trashy film. Mind you this
isn't a good film but I enjoyed every minute of it on some level that I can't
quite define.
