Too Young to Love (film)

Too Young to Love
Original British quad poster
Directed by	Muriel Box
Written by	Muriel Box Sydney Box
Based on	Pickup Girl (play) by Elsa Shelley
Produced by	Herbert Smith Sydney Box
Starring	Thomas Mitchell Pauline Hahn Joan Miller
Cinematography	Gerald Gibbs
Edited by	Jean Barker
Music by	Bruce Montgomery
Production company	Welbeck Films Ltd.
Distributed by	J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors (UK)
Release date	1959 (1959)
Running time	88 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Too Young to Love is a 1959 British drama film set in New York. It was directed by Muriel Box and starring Pauline Hahn, Joan Miller, and Austin Willis. It was based on the play Pickup Girl by Elsa Shelley. An adaptation of the story was broadcast on British TV on 6 December 1957 in the ITV Television Playhouse series.

Plot

In New York, a policeman and a neighbour watch as a middle-aged man and a young man enter a house where a young girl can be seen getting ready for bed. After the young man leaves, the policeman enters the house to make an arrest. In a juvenile court hearing, it emerges that the 15-year-old Elizabeth has been found in a compromising position in her bedroom with a 47-year-old man, Mr Elliot. Elizabeth is one of four children in a struggling working-class family, her mother a hard-working cook, her father ran into debt while he was unemployed and found a job working in California. In the evenings, at the home of an older girl Ruby Lockwood, teenagers have frequent dance and necking parties, sometimes attended by older men. Eventually, Elizabeth recounts her story (in flashback) before the judge. Elizabeth's life is grim and joyless, and she has been neglected after the constant absence and lack of guidance from her parents. Led astray by Ruby, she has sex with a sailor and has an abortion. The judge is sympathetic, but a report sent to the judge puts Elizabeth's fate in the balance.

Cast

• Pauline Hahn as Elizabeth Collins
• Joan Miller as Mrs. Collins
• Austin Willis as Mr. Collins
• Vivian Matalon as Larry Webster
• Jess Conrad as Peter Martin
• Sheila Gallagher as Ruby Lockwood
• Alan Gifford as Mr. Elliot
• Miki Iveria as Mrs. Martin
• Cec Linder as Mr. Brill
• Bessie Love as Mrs. Busch
• Thomas Mitchell as Judge Bentley
• Cal McCord as Owens
• Robert Henderson as Kellerer
• Bee Duffell as Society Matron (Uncredited)

Reception

TV Guide wrote, "Mitchell does all he can to keep this picture from failing, but it's not enough ... this is hurt mainly by its excess of courtroom scenes."

Monthly Film Bulletin said "Apart from being pointlessly toned down, Elsa Shelley's old club theatre success has been adapted to the screen with depressingly unimaginative fidelity and an almost total lack of cinema sense. The result is another teenage problem picture in the manner of The Young and the Guilty, at its worst distinguished by Vivian Matalon's tiresome Method parody as the young pimp, and at its best by the reassuring sympathy and strength of Thomas Mitchell's judge."

In British Sound Films David Quinlan writes: "Modern-day morality play, heavy going."

Leslie Halliwell said: "Tepid filming of a popular exploitation play of the fifties, mysteriously made in England."

External links

• Too Young to Love at IMDb
• Too Young to Love at AllMovie