The titles electrified any cinema marquee: Dragstrip Riot, High School Confidential!, Hot Rod Girl, Riot in a Juvenile Prison, Teenage Rebel, High School Hellcats. It was the 1950s, and Hollywood movies could not get enough of America’s flaming, disoriented post-World War II youth. From Marlon Brando’s rebel motorcyclist in The Wild One and James Dean’s tormented high schooler in Rebel Without a Cause to Elvis Presley’s drifter in King Creole, moviemakers competed for the hearts, minds, and wallets of a new generation of moviegoers.
In dozens of rambunctious teen screen dramas known in the business as “programmers”—“B-” or “C”-grade films designed for brief bookings at budget cinemas, drive-ins, and the like—boys in leather jackets and ducktail hairdos pursued girls in saddle shoes and long skirts. No one ever sat still in English lit class because they were too busy throwing paper airplanes at the teacher’s back, passing lurid notes, or listening to rock ’n’ roll records. The kids hated their “square” parents and violated curfew rules. They drank malteds and danced the Twist to jukeboxes at local soda shops. Guys carried switchblades and liked to “rumble” as girls reclined on car hoods to toast and cheer on their jail-bound greaser boyfriends.
Depending on who was delivering the on-screen sermons, those Eisenhower-era youngsters were either no good at all or simply misunderstood. While the onslaught of “juvenile delinquency” pictures offered superficial sympathy for the wayward teens, it was youthful bad behavior that made these films so popular in cinemas and burgeoning drive-ins across the country.
Film historian Max Alvarez takes on the role of school disciplinarian to the likes of John Cassavetes, Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Sal Mineo, Mamie Van Doren, Russ Tamblyn, Tom Laughlin—even Jerry Lewis—in this totally “boss” multimedia lecture examining the 1950s “teen-ager” film cycle.
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