Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Town Went Wild (1944), Ralph Murphy.

Something tells me there's no such guy as Tyremus! 

The Town Went Wild is a goofy teen date movie (I can just hear "Wake up, Little Suzie" in my head now).  The teenage kids of two feuding families go out to get a marriage license behind their parents' back.  But the city clerk discovers that the teens may have been switched at birth, meaning the husband and wife-to-be may actually be brother and sister!  Is this movie an effort to get teenagers to think twice before getting hitched (or worse)?  Aside from the teens (who are fairly natural) the acting is across-the-board hammy resulting in a lot of forced levity.

The script for The Town Went Wild  is attributed to Clarence Greene, Bernard Roth and Russell Rouse, who were all thirty years old at the time the film was released.  Roth had been working for an agent who represented both Freddie Bartholomew and Jimmy Lydon (both of whom appear in the film) and gave Greene and Rouse their "in" in the industry (at PRC).  Even though they started their work in a bottom-of-the-barrel poverty row studio, Greene and Rouse went on to collaborate on a number of classic scripts including D.O.A. and Pillow Talk.  Gotta start somewhere!

This is how teenagers dressed in the 40s!  

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