Youth Aflame (1944)

Director:

Elmer Clifton

Writers:

Helen Kiely (story)
Elmer Clifton (screenplay)

Release Date:

10 October 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

SEE...WHAT HAPPENS TO 100,000 TEEN-AGERS YEARLY!

Plot:

A young teen girl tries to get support for a 'milk-club' for peers while covering for her older sister who's got a crush on an older man with antisocial tendencies.

Plot Keywords:

Teen | Hospital | Policewoman | Guard | Juvenile Delinquency

Cast

Joy Reese	...	Katy White
Warren Burr	...	Frank Monahan
Kay Morley	...	Laura White
Michael Owen	...	Al Simpson
Rod Rogers	...	Lester
Edwin Brian	...	Harry Ketchall
Julie Duncan	...	Peggy Baker
Sheila Roberts	...	Jitterbugger
Ed Cassidy	...	Mr. White (as Edward Cassidy)
Mary Arden	...	Amy Clark - Juvenile Officer
Duke Johnson	...	Tom (Nightclub Manager)
Johnny Duncan	...	Jitterbugger
Lindsay Bourquin	...	Nightclub Act (as Lindsay, Laverne and Betty)
Laverne Thompson	...	Nightclub Act (as Lindsay, Laverne and Betty)
Betty Phares	...	Nightclub Act (as Lindsay, Laverne and Betty)
Karl Kiffe	...	Jive Club Drummer
Don Weston	...	Don Weston, Entertainer

Directed by
Elmer Clifton

Writing credits
Helen Kiely		(story)
Elmer Clifton		(screenplay)

Produced by
J.D. Kendis	....	producer

Cinematography by
Jack Greenhalgh

Film Editing by
George M. Merrick		(as George Merrick)

Art Direction by
Harry Reif

Set Decoration by
Eugene C. Stone		(as Gene Stone)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Melville De Lay	....	assistant director (as Mel DeLay)

Sound Department
Glen Glenn	....	sound engineer

Special Effects by
Ray Mercer	....	special effects

Music Department
Frank Sanucci	....	musical director

Distributors

• Continental Pictures (1944) (USA) (theatrical) (states rights system)
• Social Service Pictures (1959) (USA) (theatrical) (retitled re-release)
• William Mishkin Motion Pictures (1960) (USA) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Sinister Cinema (1993) (USA) (VHS)
• Something Weird Video (SWV) (1994) (USA) (VHS) (David Friedman's Roadshow Rarities, Vol. 22)

Also Known As:

"Hoodlum Girls" - USA (reissue title (video title))

Runtime:

61 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved

Movie Connections:

Featured in Sex and Buttered Popcorn (1989)

Soundtrack:

One Good Turn Deserves Another

Milk Club???

Maybe so, but it isn't called that in this film. This one opens with Katy White (Joy Reese), at death's door in an emergency hospital but hanging on long enough to tell her story...Youth secretly struggling to solve its problems. So, in flashback, Katy tells of her widowed father (Ed Cassidy as Edward Cassidy), a bank guard trying to raise two teen-age daughters...Katy the nice girl and her sister, Laura (Kay Morley)the not-quite-nice girl. Pa Smith ain't much help but Katy tries to guide her sister away from bad company, meaning Al Simpson (Michael Owen)who is bad news in uppercase letters. But he has Laura believing he is in love with her and Laura pays no heed to her sister at all, and when Al asks her to steal her poppa's bank-guarding gun she does so as she thinks this will make Al marry her (and Laura is as dippy as she is pretty,) but Al is interested only in her poppa's gun.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Helen Clark (Mary Arden), a kindly policewoman, the better-supervised kids open up a JIVE Club in order to keep off of the Mean Streets and not drift into juvenile delinquency. There, they sip punch and watch Johnny Duncan and Sheila Roberts jitterbug the night away--- when Lindsay, Laverne & Betty aren't juggling away on "One Good Turn Deserves Another" while drummer Karl Kiffe-Master of the Drums- displays his mastery of the drums. Joy and Laura join the club but Laura only in order to keep late hours with Al the Cad. But Joy is keeping a watchful eye on Laura and this irks Al to the extent that he and Laura spike the punch bowl, and then Al calls the cops to tell them about the spiked-punch bowl at the goody-goody JIVE CLUB, and the local gendarmes take a dim view of any club serving hard liquor to kids and they up-and-shutter the JIVE Club. Good-guy Frank Monahan (Warren Burr), in love with Joy, has his suspicions about who-spiked-the-punch but Al has already departed the premises and is no longer available for questioning. And Laura has left to go to Al's place and deliver her poppa's gun to him, and Joy has left to follow Laura.

Joy doesn't get too far before she runs into Harry Katchel (Edwin Brian), Al's tough-guy pal and it is about this point that the film totally falls apart as Edwin Brian is nobody's idea of a tough guy. He tells Joy he will take her to Al's place but when they get there, only Laura's purse (containing her poppa's gun) is present, as Al and Laura have hied themselves over to a club, ran by Tom (Duke Johnson), where real-jivey teen-agers can get a real drink not diluted by JIVE Club punch. Naturally, Harry makes a move on Joy but Joy is not the kind that is going to let any character played by Edwin Brian make any moves on her without her protesting, which she wastes no time doing. The odds are high that Joy Reese could whup up on Edwin Brian to a fare-thee-well but then Frank wouldn't be needed, for plot purposes, to show up in the nick-of-time and sock Harry on the jaw and render Harry unconscious. Al and Katy show up, refreshed from elbow-bending at Tom's Place, but Frank informs Al that he intends to escort Joy and Laura home and Al, viewing the damage that Frank has done to his tough-guy pal does not choose to debate the issue.

He gets the girls home and, first rattle out of the box, Pa Smith has already heard about the spiked punch at the JIVE Club and has good-guy Frank tagged as the villain who has led his daughters astray, and tells good-guy Frank to get out and stay out. But he has also heard about Laura hanging around with Al Simpson and rakes her over the coals about it, but Joy intervenes and lies on behalf of her sister. Then, since this is a J.D. Kendis production and there has to be a cat-fight in it, the sisters get into a fight and this further moves the plot along as Laura ups and packs her belongings and leaves home for good. She also packs her purse with another one of her father's guns but Pa Smith hasn't even missed the first missing-gun yet. She heads over to the bad club and meets Al and tells him why she left home and throws herself upon his mercy to marry her. Al the Merciless declines. Laura, broken-hearted, takes her poppa's pistol from her purse and is discussing a pistol-wedding with Al. This discussion leads to some scufflin' between Al and Laura when Joy and Frank show up. Frank joins the scuffle on behalf of Laura, who watches awhile before picking up the pistol with intent to fire it at Al and do damage to his ability to scuffle...but ends up shooting her sister. Director Elmer Clifton then employs a fade he learned at the feet of D. W. Griffith and the scene shifts back to the hospital where Joy is winding up her explanation of how she got there by being shot by her sister. Some more stuff happens but Joy and Frank are soon back at the re-opened JIVE Club and Laura has learned a hard lesson about hanging out with white-trash and low-lifes.

Tame by JayDeeKay standards what with no underwear shots of the two leads who perform their cat-fight in full-length pajamas, and the only skin on display is that of Laverene and Betty as they stand around in tights watching Lindsay juggle.