Synopsis:
A widowed editor (Anna Neagle) reluctantly dates a handsome client (Norman Wooland) while becoming increasingly concerned about her rebellious daughter (Sylvia Syms), who is spending more and more time with a jive-loving hepster (Kenneth Haigh).

Genres:

• Juvenile Delinquents
• Teenagers

Review:
Reportedly made as a British response to Rebel Without a Cause (1955), this collaboration by husband/wife team Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle is a competently directed but uninspired teen-angst flick. Neagle’s stoic-mother performance is just a tad shy of Joan-Crawford-territory — but that tad makes all the difference, in the wrong direction; her reactions and expressions are predictable through and through.

Meanwhile, Wooland is simply forgettable as her conveniently understanding and handsome suitor. The best feature of the film is Sylvia Syms (in her screen debut) as the pretty young protagonist, who’s torn between a desire to remain her mother’s “good” eldest daughter, and her itch to explore the wild-and-woolly world of soul-corrupting jive. The screenplay becomes needlessly melodramatic in its final third, as Neagle and Syms are provided with further opportunities to explore their complicated mother-daughter dynamic, and the overall tenor of the film begins to feel more like a “women’s weepie” than anything else.

Redeeming Qualities and Moments:

• Sylvia Syms as Janet Carr
  

Must See?
No; feel free to skip this one. Listed as a Sleeper in the back of Peary’s book.

Links:

• IMDb entry
• All Movie Guide Review