Electric "Youth!"

I see a lot of movies and I've seen a lot of movies, but I've been somewhat remiss when earning my street cred for teen rebellion exploitation flicks of the 1950s. I made an inroad recently when I sat down to view Untamed Youth (1957), a semi-musical, teenage workhouse hoot that hit theaters more than half a year before Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock. Renowned as a camp classic (that once held a measly 2-star rating on imdb.com), it's been riffed, reviled, rejoiced and everything in-between over the years. It's loony and often laughable, but it's got plenty of entertainment value on one level or another. I found myself quite captivated in spite of my skepticism when opting to finally watch it. RE: This poster. #1 - someone has superimposed an incorrect "Guard" armband on one star's sleeve. #2 - someone snarky chose to stamp the film "Approved" right over its leading lady's ample bosom near the bottom! Film may be seen here.

Things get off to a zesty start with a small-town sheriff spying two nubile, nude lovelies skinny-dipping in a pond.

He orders them to come out of there... immediately! He refuses to turn his back, but when a local yokel distracts him momentarily, the gals swan their way over to a huge shrub where their clothes are located.

As they are putting themselves back together, the officer accuses them of vagrancy.

The girls (Mamie Van Doren and Lori Nelson) explain that they are entertainers traveling cross-country to Los Angeles for a booking. (They admit to being 22 and 21, though the ladies were in real life 26 and 24.)

He's not interested in their "booking." He takes them in for hitchhiking, skinny-dipping and vagrancy. Take note that these gals are presented to us as sisters, though there is practically nothing about them that is alike!

We know that something is rotten here when he tells them to put their luggage in the backseat and their own seats in the front with him!

They're called before the local judge Lurene Tuttle under the watchful eyes of George Washington. (We do wonder if he kept his eyes above chest-level as the gals dropped by!)

A not-very-sympathetic Tuttle informs her detainees of two recent killings related to hitchhiking and gives them an option of how they can fulfill her 30-day sentence for them.

They can spend a month in the county jail or they can spend the same amount of time detained, but working, on a local farm, earning money and enjoying the outdoors as the days tick down. They take the second option.

Suddenly Tuttle couldn't care less what they do as she sees her son Don Burnett has just arrived back home following a stint in the U.S. Navy! She flees from the bench to embrace him. (Can't say I blame her...!)

This is where the bulk of the film's action takes place.

The latest crop of newcomers is lined up and read the house rules by the sheriff. Now they are informed that out of their $2.50/day wages, they're expected to buy their own work clothes and cover the expense of room & board, leaving them a final wage of $0.75/day (unless they opt to charge other items at the mess hall!)

Now we meet the owner of this setup, John Russell. Turns out he's paying the sheriff $20.00 per head for each new recruit at the cotton farm.

He gives the newcomers a quick once-over, taking note of one called "Baby."

He's already got a babe back at his quarters, however! One of the farmhands had been promoted to "housekeeper" but he's about to can her and send her back to the bunkhouse for feather-dusting one of his farmhands instead of the furniture...

The inmate, Jeanne Carmen, tries to plead her case, but he's not having it, telling her he doesn't like tramps, male or female.

Back at the bunkhouse, things don't seem to be going too badly as Van Doren has settled in and has immediately broken into a sultry song called "Rolling Stone!"

Her fellow detainees seem to like the song well enough, especially the one in the skimpy towel. I straight-up waited for it to be revealed that this was a guy who'd somehow sneaked into the girls bunk room!! Even her voice was an octave lower than anyone else there. But it never happened.

Nelson accompanies her sister's crooning (in which she has noticeable trouble mastering the new rock & roll sound's melisma) via a guitar, though we can also hear unseen drums on the soundtrack! Get a load of the hooty signs on the wall of the room. 

On the guy's side (which sadly we don't really get to see), they are blessed with an open knothole so that they can see - one at a time anyway - what's going on next door.

What's going on about now is the return of Carmen to the bunkhouse and she wants her old bunk back. Now. But it's the one Van Doren has since been assigned.

Before you can say "catfight!" a protective Nelson begins taking Carmen apart, to the delight of the other inmates.

This little exercise in glorious ladies wrestling is interrupted when Russell comes barrelling in, demanding that they knock it off.

Carmen (hysterically) exclaims that she doesn't want to be hit in the face again by Nelson or it will break her "dental plate!" Before it's all said and done, they drop their fists and become fast friends. Anyway, it's time for chow.

This gives Van Doren the welcome opportunity to demonstrate that she's not dressed for dinner!

Tuttle's son Burnett shows up at the farm for a job and is warmly welcomed by Russell. He's assigned to a harvesting machine and is given the (former) foreman's quarters.

Burnett, who grew up on the farm, has nary an issue operating his new toy as the prisoners toil away in the field.

Some of the boy prisoners go shirtless as they make their way through the acres of cotton.

Carmen, no longer safely situated in the farmhouse, gets pissed because she breaks a nail.

Meanwhile, Nelson and Van Doren give us their best Careen and Suellen O'Hara impressions as they gripe about having to glean cotton and bag it.

One of the newcomers, Eddie Cochran, isn't gonna let this situation ruin his day, so he begins snapping out a number called, "Cottonpicker" - the lyrics of which repeatedly (and I mean repeatedly) state, Oh, you ain't a gonna make a cottonpicker outta me."

This was by far my favorite moment of the song, and I'm sorry I couldn't capture the swift movement of it better and with clearer detail, but the two guys in the foreground... One of them offers up a sprig of cotton as if it's a long stemmed rose. The other guy eagerly takes it, sticks the end into his hat...

...and the two of them proceed to swing dance together, happy as clams. They twirl, embrace and even take turns flipping one-another across their backs! (Anyone know of a small town with a pond where I can skinny-dip in broad daylight and get arrested??)

The fun grinds to a halt when the one known as Baby collapses in the heat and is scooped up by Burnett. As Nelson provides some water, he places the passed-out youngster into the cranky supervisor's truck.

Meanwhile, Russell is paying a visit to judge Tuttle and we're in for another doozy of a surprise...

...They're a COUPLE!

I got nothin' against cougars. I just really was not anticipating this match-up at all. Especially in 1957. Hadn't it been less than two years since Jane Wyman had been raked over the coals for canoodling with the 8 years younger Rock Hudson in All That Heaven Allows (1954?) Tuttle had 14 years on Russell.

Maybe a lot of it was the styling, but she just LOOKS older to me in this. Would you be surprised if I told you she was but 50 years old in this film?

In any event, their romance has the same sensation as seeing the Brawny paper towel guy hook up with Folgers Coffee's Mrs. Olson.

All is not rainbows and lollipops, though, between them as he seems to forever be rushing off somewhere. Sensing that he may lose his built-in connection to virtually free labor for his farm, Russell opts to hang out with her a bit longer than he'd intended.

Back at the farm, Russell and Nelson are on the verge of forming a relationship, though she still resent his mother for sending her there.

One of the field hands is promoted to a tally girl because she can speak Spanish, but Baby has no such luck.

That evening in the mess hall, the party is in full swing.

I don't know about you, but when I've spent a long, long day in the scorching heat picking cotton, the first thing I long to do is stick a dime in the jukebox and dance myself silly. But teens have to work off steam somehow, I guess.

Shenanigans are interrupted by the company cook Wally Brown, who comes in to collect two "volunteers" to help with the dishes and then agonizingly pontificates to them as well. (This guy already annoyed me in The High and the Mighty, 1954) and has managed to do it again here...

I wouldn't say any of them look too eager to please, but he selects the two guys on the left to pitch in.

That out of the way, Van Doren begins to stroke the jukebox.

Next thing you know she's burst into another song, this one "Oobala Baby."

Of Mamie's attributes, her voice doesn't even fall into the top two...!

Nevertheless, her caterwauling draws Brown and his new dishwashers out of the kitchen, whereupon he begins to compliment her on her gift(s.)

He's soon on the phone to Russell, who happens to have part-ownership of the town's only television station, and insists that Van Doren come up and sing to him as an audition for one of their programs. Russell claims to have no such power, but acquiesces just the same.

Van Doren is eager to go show off her pipes to Russell, but Nelson is dead-set against it and unsuccessfully tries to talk her out of it. You can see here that their sisterly genetic connections continue to be minimal at best!

Outside, Burnett is disheartened to find that among the kitchen garbage is proof that the workers are being fed stew made with dog food!!

On the way back to his quarters, he spies a distraught Nelson, worried that Van Doren still isn't back after an hour and a half.

Sure enough, Russell has Van Doren pinned to the wall of his living room. (It's out of frame, but this might have been the closest he was able to physically get to her!)

His maneuvers are interrupted by Burnett, who's there on the pretense that he's worried about the young girl who collapsed in the field from the heat.

This gives Van Doren a chance to slink out the back door.

Thing is, a retaliatory Russell sets the dogs on her for running out!

Depending on one's outlook, we're either denied the privilege or spared from seeing just how Van Doren outran two Dobermans and sprang to the top of this roof! But, anyway, Burnett is there to save the day again.

He and his chinos escort the curvaceous Van Doren back to the mess hall, though it's still Nelson who has truly caught his eye.

I really, really hope that Mr. Al Steele and his wife Joan Crawford made a night of this and hit the drive-in to see their product placed inside the prison farm mess hall. (No word yet on if the prisoners had to pay for or ever got back the deposit on their bottles out of their $0.75/day take home pay!)

Burnett has become a fly in the ointment out at the farm, so Russell begins to suggest to the smitten Tuttle that maybe he ought to pursue something better than cotton harvesting (and in the process, leave town!)

'Course now Burnett ("Take your shirt off!") has a vested interest in more than the cotton on Russell's farm. In fact, he'd probably like to roll in some hay with Nelson!

But, once again, Baby has taken a tumble. This time she's really out, so Burnett defies the supervisor and takes her to the hospital.

The prognosis would fall under the category of grim...

This prompts Burnett to appeal to his mother for help in changing the conditions out at the farm. She claims (rightfully so) to be unaware of the horrendous conditions there. (One of them, which Burnett rails about, is that there are 20 guys, but only 2 showers, which sounds more like pretty nice odds to me....! Ha ha!)

Finally, she has to reveal (not in these exact terms, of course) that she's been riding Russell's muscle, which horrifies her son. He vows to leave town, which fits into the current scheme anyway. 

Distraught as she is, she still asks a deputy to prepare an order.

Russell is enraged that  Burnett commandeered a vehicle to take Baby to the hospital, but Burnett is equally peeved at him for the conditions at the place.

As he's about to pack up and go, Nelson (rightfully!) asks what's going to happen to the rest of them. Does he care about her future on the premises?

Just then, the deputy collects Nelson and takes her back to Tuttle's house where she spills all the beans about the payment racket, the food, the sexual pressure, etc...

Meanwhile, things are so tough back at the farm that Van Doren has to deliver another one of her salacious numbers. This time it's called "Salamander" and she warbles about how slippery it is...!

She swings and sashays and hurtles around the mess hall, finally landing on her back atop a cotton bale!

Burnett appears once more, unable to locate Nelson and asking Van Doren if she knows what's become of her. I had to howl at the sign at left, which is partially cut off. It seemed to be somehow saying "Give Me a Place to Fart" or something...!

As the camera dollied left I was able to see that it reads, "Don't Give Fires a Place to Start."

As the big finale nears, Russell braces himself for a fight, accompanied by his small crew and his pair of Dobermans. Would you believe me if I told you that the movie winds up with Van Doren shaking around in a slit skirt that reveals her ruffled panties while singing Calypso style? And that four capri-pants-wearing backup singers surround her as she peels a phallic banana? I didn't think so....

South Dakota born Van Doren moved with her family to L.A. when she was 11. At 15 she was a theater usher and by 17 she was married (briefly) for the first time. She sang in nightclubs, won various local pageants and soon caught the eye of Howard Hughes who put her in some of the films at his RKO Studios. She later worked at Universal Studios and was offered the Broadway play that made Jayne Mansfield a star (Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?), but remained mired in minor movie roles. From there, she found a certain success, but it came mostly in pictures like this one and others like Born Reckless, High School Confidential (both 1958), Girl's Town (1959) and Sex Kittens Go to College (1960.) In time, the titles became even worse such as The Las Vegas Hillbillys, The Navy vs the Night Monsters (both 1966) and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968.) Stage and night club appearances proved more satisfying, though she ultimately emerged as someone best known for her body, her love life and often-outrageous get-ups at various functions. When Youth was filmed, she'd already had a son born the year before, her only child. Married a fifth and final time, the indefatigable Ms. Van Doren is still with us today at 91. 

Throughout this film, she kept reminding me of someone, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then it dawned on me. Ann Blyth, of all people! This is a young Blyth with Mamie's hair tacked on. Do you see it?

It finally came to me during the final number. She recalled Veda from Mildred Pierce (1945!) Only Veda was supposed to be pretty rotten in that movie...

Nelson led a far more obscure life and career than Van Doren in comparison. She did begin in pageants, though, like her screen sister, eventually segueing to local theatre which drew the attention of a talent scout. She toiled in Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952) and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955) as well as in Francis Goes to West Point (1952.) Van Doren had also taken her turn with the talking mule in Francis Joins the WACS (1954), so they had that in common as well! Probably one of her most enduring movies is Revenge of the Creature (1955) with yummy John Bromfield. Right after Youth, she starred in the TV series How to Marry a Millionaire, but left after one season. Marrying in 1960 (after contemplating a union with conflicted Tab Hunter!), she left the biz soon after and had two daughters. After having suffered from Alzheimer's disease for a period, Nelson passed away in 2020 at age 87.

One other notable distinction between these ladies is that while Van Doren had a light-sounding voice, Nelson possessed a very mature growl and a highly unusual way of talking that was a bit at odds with her youth.

6'3," angular, former UCLA athlete and WWII Marine Russell was raised in Los Angeles and came back there after contracting malaria in Guadalcanal. Pursuing acting in his mid-20s, he started with bit parts as soldiers or authority figures in movies like A Bell for Adano (1945) and Somewhere in the Night (1946.) Having worked for Otto Preminger in A Royal Scandal (1945), he graduated to a better role in Forever Amber (1947), though that film cost too much to be a success. Many supporting roles followed such as in Frenchie (1950), Fair Wind to Java (1953) and The Last Command (1955), but it was on TV that he had the greatest fame. From 1958 to 1962 he starred in the western show Lawman. Afterwards, he guest-starred on many other westerns as well as crime shows while also becoming a favorite of Clint Eastwood, who cast him in three of his movies. Russell died in 1991 of emphysema at age 70.

Los Angeles native Burnett went from the U.S. Army to roles as soldiers in movies like Hell's Horizon (1955) and Gaby (1956.) He also popped up in Tea and Sympathy (1956) prior to this film. Interestingly, he soon did Jailhouse Rock as well. In 1958, he costarred on the TV series Northwest Passage and did several other Warner Brothers shows thereafter, but by 1961 work had become scarce. He went to Italy for Damon and Pythias (1961) and The Triumph of Robin Hood (1962), the second one costarring his then-wife Gia Scala. He soon departed acting for a successful career as a stockbroker, though his marriage to the very-troubled Scala fell apart. He married Ironside's Barbara Anderson one year later and they remain together today. Scala committed suicide nearly one year after his marriage to Anderson in the wake of much turmoil, though he served as a pallbearer at her funeral. He is currently 92.

Born to a family with roots in public performing, Tuttle grew up amid entertainers and eventually moved onto the stage herself. She then became a staggeringly successful radio actress, portraying any sort of role with elan and enthusiasm. When television arrived, she segued there with great success, too, playing caring mothers, busybodies, landladies, teachers, aunts and everything else imaginable. A few years after Youth, she played the sheriff's wife in Psycho (1960) and later became familiar to viewers as a nurse on Diahann Carroll's series Julia. That part earned her her sole Emmy nomination (losing to Karen Valentine in Room 222.) Trivia Tidbit: Ms. Tuttle was the mother of actress Barbara Ruick (of Carousel, 1956, and Cinderella, 1965) which made her the mother-in-law of, first, Robert Horton and then composer John Williams. A high-achiever, Tuttle was the first female president of AFTRA. She was claimed by cancer in 1986 at age 78, having acted nearly up to the end of her life.

Cochran, who really was a teen at this time, had previously appeared in The Girl Can't Help It (1956), which starred that other busty blonde, Jayne Mansfield. A rockabilly sensation near the dawn of the rock & roll era, he was innovative and proved to be influential as well. He sang the hit we all know, "Summertime Blues," along with several others, and penned a tribute tune called "Three Stars" regarding the loss of Big Bopper, Richie Valens and Buddy Holly in a 1959 plane crash. He audibly struggled to hold it together at times during the recording. Sadly, though, before he could complete the triad and work with Marilyn Monroe in a film, not to mention produce more music, he was killed while touring in England in 1960 at only age 21. As the taxi he and some associates were riding in recklessly headed towards a lamppost, he strove to protect the female sitting next to him and was flung from the vehicle, sustaining massive head trauma. His legacy of style and composition earned him a posthumous place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

I don't have any valid reason for why I referred to the character of "Baby" as such instead of by the performer's name as I nearly always do! The role was essayed by Yvonne Lime. Prior to this movie, she'd appeared in The Rainmaker (1956) as well as a raft of TV parts. She would proceed to projects as diverse as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) with Michael Landon and Elvis Presley's Loving You (1957) along with genre flicks like Drag Strip Riot and High School Hellcats (both 1958.) Throughout the 1960s, she popped up on many TV series as a guest, but after marrying producer Don Fedderman in 1969, she quit acting to raise their family and concentrate on charity work, particularly with orphans. Though he passed away in 1994, she is still with us today at age 87.

Surely one of the more colorful participants in a film that contains several is Carmen. Born in Arkansas to a poor family, she truly did pick cotton prior to running away from home at age 13. After working as a dancer in New York, she became a model, a pin-up girl in men's magazines and a trick-shot golfer. The already-married Carmen left her husband to take up with a mobster where, in Las Vegas, they used her skills at golf to fleece visitors out of money. Frank Sinatra found her there and took her to Hollywood where she began to earn parts in minor movies. Best known as a platinum blonde for most of her career, she occasionally, as in this film, reverted to darker locks. When Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, Carmen disappeared from public view and fled to Arizona. Decades later, she reemerged, claiming that she'd been warned to go into hiding for knowing too much about Monroe, The Kennedys and so on. For a while, she made countless appearances and gave many interviews about the demise of Monroe, much of which was debated by industry insiders and fans. She passed away in 2007 at age 77 from lymphoma.

If you were a fan of tabloid TV or 1990s gossipfests like E! True Hollywood Story, then you might recall Carmen looking like this.

The End!