Under Eighteen
            
Director: Archie Mayo
Year: 1931
Rating: 5.5
With a title like this for a 1931 pre-code film, one might be led to expect something sleazy and immoral    – and I expect that was the purpose of the misleading title. Bring in the audience and then throw cold water on them. There is no one under the age of 18. There is no frolicking with under-age girls. The film is actually as wholesome as freshly baked bread. There are a few potential pitfalls for our heroine but in the end love finds a way. A little disappointing really – especially with Warren William being the expected corrupting force. He was that in a number of pre-code Warner Brothers films. Perhaps the most shocking aspect was the drinking. Prohibition was still in force in 1931 and the film opens with a group of men and women celebrating at a wedding and everyone imbibing in big mugs of beer. Then later at a high society party, alcohol is flowing like the Hudson River. It takes place in New York City and it was a very wet city.

 

The wedding is taking place in 1928 between Sophie (Anita Page) and Alf (Norman Foster) and love is in the air. Sophie’s younger sister Margie (Marian Marsh) is an innocent romantic. The idea of love and marriage thrills her and she swears that when she gets married it will be forever, just like she knows her sister’s will be. In the blink of an eye three years have passed – the Depression has come on and the sister’s father has died. Margie and her mother have had to move out of their duplex to a small apartment in a tenement building. And it’s hot. Sweltering summer weather. Margie has a boyfriend (Regis Toomey) but she is no longer the bubbly girl with a smile so wide, you could see it from Jersey. She hates being poor, her job as a seamstress, the heat, the apartment and she sees around her girls leaving their ethics in a trash can and going out with wealthy men who use them and toss them away.

 

Then the sister returns with her husband and a baby – and the sister can’t stand her husband any longer – a bum without a job and not trying too hard. And he gives her a black eye. So, this is marriage, Margie thinks. Not for me. And then William shows up like a slithering eel always looking for a good time and a woman of adaptive morals. He is marvelous as always but doesn't really get enough screen time for me. He throws parties where men toss pearls into his pool and tell the girls to go diving. But just when you are ready for some sex and sin, the film takes a corner into family values. Family values being a low-paid job, taking care of your husband and him threatening to punch you. The only reason to watch this really is Marian Marsh. She is radiant and adorable and has an accent that is very affecting but that I can’t quite place.  80-minutes and directed by Archie Mayo.