Daily Dean Stockwell fix

Ah, the happy innocent 1950s. When good girls didn’t and bad boys stayed on their side of the tracks where they belonged. Yeah, uhm, not so much, not so much.

Shots from The Careless Years, 1957 – a movie I really want to see – but can’t find anywhere. It sounds rather William Inge-ish, frankly – a “shocking” expose of the sexual desires of teenagers so popular in the 1950s when “adolescence” became its own demographic, to be feared and also admired. Like Splendor in the Grass. Something like Rebel Without a Cause seems kinda, well, trite today (I love it – but it’s hard to see how shocking it was at the time!) – so the message – that teenagers are people too, even juvenile delinquents – is a bit ho-hum now. The best part in that movie is the relationship between James Dean and Sal Mineo – homoerotic, tender, and oh so sweet. It’s still mysterious and moving today. Dean becomes paternal. Mineo looks up to him. But there’s more there, there’s more.

“Do you think the end of the world will come at night?” asks Sal Mineo, worriedly, his eyes glimmering and huge.

Dean thinks a bit, then shakes his head. “No. Dawn.”

First encounter:

I don’t know … to me, their dynamic is the best in the film. Natalie Wood is great, too – but I just don’t find it “shocking” that a girl would rebel and wear lipstick and mess around with boys, and have problems with her father. Duh. The film doesn’t work on that level anymore.

It’s important, though, to put stuff like that in context. It really is. It’s more interesting that way, I think – to try to see it as part of its time. Same way that a play like Dark at the Top of the Stairs was SO controversial at the time it was on Broadway (Inge again!) … and now? It’s a period piece, basically. No way could you transpose that story into the modern era. Not without a lot of work. (Full disclosure: I was in a terrible production of Dark at the Top of the Stairs which Mitchell, sadly, got to see … so I know of what I speak!)

Dean Stockwell, at around this time in his life, actually wrote a piece for some film magazine in conjunction with the film Careless Years – basically saying, “Teenagers are people, too. The film looks at the issues we teenagers have and takes them seriously.” I’ll have to find the article, I tripped over it somewhere. You can see how WORRIED people were about the impact of showing such things on screen. I suppose on some level that same crap goes on today!

Anyhoo, The Careless Years was about a “good” girl, who falls for a poor boy … and when they’re alone together, they actually consider having sex outside of marriage! Shocking. Didn’t only girls like Rizzo have premarital sex?? Apparently not. Stockwell had dropped out of acting for a good 5 years – he had stopped when he was 14, 15 … and came back at 20 when he realized: Uhm, I can’t do much else, and I also can’t stand a 9 to 5 sched. He was always a little bit embarrassed about being an actor. It seemed almost like an accident that he was so good at it. It made him miserable. He has said that he didn’t start to enjoy himself as an actor until he was well into his 40s. Interesting.

So anyway. On to the shots from The Careless Years.

Oh no … you are a good girl … as is evidenced by your bathing suit … and I am a poor boy (nobody loves me …) … and our families disapprove … yet, in the words of Albert Schweitzer – I FANCY you!

When I was in high school, I also wore woolen traveling suits and heels. Her figure is something to be admired. Hourglass! And, dude … whatcha doin’ on the floor? Just have some premarital sex. It’s all gonna be okay.

Uhm, put a sweatshirt on, bro. You look freezing.