I caught one of my favorite – or at least I watched it many times –  movies when I was a young girl this morning on one of the other classic movie networks (yes, there are a few out there other than TCM).  1959’s Blue Denim, starring Brandon De Wilde and a young and lovely Carol Lynley, is the story of a couple of innocent teenagers who find themselves facing the uncertainty and terror of an unplanned pregnancy.  Hard to imagine, and rather sad, really, that the problems these kids faced back in 1959 are almost on the verge of making a comeback.  But that’s politics, right, and this is about the movies.

Blue Denim was first seen on Broadway in 1958.  It was written by William Noble and  James Leo Herlihy (who would later go on to write Midnight Cowboy), and it was a critical hit.  Carol Lynley played the curious and slightly sexually precocious Janet on stage and when it was brought to the movies, but Burt Brinkerhoff, the original stage Arthur, was replaced by veteran young movie actor Brandon De Wilde.  De Wilde had already starred in several big movies, including The Member of the Wedding and of course Shane, with Alan Ladd.  Both De Wilde and Lynley also were veterans of many TV shows of the 1950s, and in fact Brandon had his own series for a while.   (But don't feel sorry for Brinkerhoff; he's had a fantastic career as a director.) 

Also brought in from the Broadway production was actor Warren Berlinger as Arthur’s best friend Ernie, a tough-talking mini-blowhard who is not quite as worldly-wise as he makes out to be.  Berlinger started his career in live TV then he transitioned to movies and later to hundreds of television show appearances.  The comically-inclined Berlinger, who in fact was Milton Berle’s nephew, is a brash and wise-guy presence in Blue Denim, but he shows his dramatic chops towards the end when the going gets sticky and he comes down hard on his pal Arthur.  It’s a memorable performance.

In the original stage play Janet does manage to get an abortion, though when it was adapted for the screen this solution was not permitted by the codes in practice at the time and she was packed off on a train to have her baby elsewhere.  And just for good measure, Arthur hops on board just in the nick of time to promise to stand by his little lady.  Cute, perhaps, but does it qualify as a happy ending?  That’s open for discussion.  More effective and chilling were the scenes of Janet being whisked off to the doctor, blindfolded in a big sedan, with stern but rather business-like and not-in-the-least-monstrous members of the underground network ready to care for her.  The only real creep in the bunch is the smarmy smart aleck front man, Berlinger's contact when he helps Arthur set up the operation, and who gets beat up (off-screen) by one of the teenagers' fathers. 

The issues in Blue Denim, while also continuing to simmer on the national political scene, are front and center in a couple of movies currently out, Knocked Up and Waitress.  In both movies, young women are faced with unplanned pregnancies, and both go ahead with them.  There’s been a lot of discussion about the fact that there’s no real consideration of terminating the pregnancies in either of these movies (I haven’t seen them yet), but of course we all realize that there wouldn’t be a movie then.  Does it also reflect a capitulation to certain political factions out there?  Is it easier to go along with the baby-making sentiment, after all?  Does it reflect a change in attitudes, or just reflect some male fantasy, as in Knocked Up, that a beautiful woman will bear your child, no matter how unlikely the prospect may be or how unsuited you are to each other.  I wouldn’t bet against that.  

Interesting then, that this year’s top prizewinner at the Cannes Festival was a Romanian drama about athe struggle to obtain a secret illegal abortion in that country.  And a couple of years ago Vera Drake was a critically acclaimed drama about a no-nonsense British housewife who took care of young women who had gotten themselves in trouble.  In America, at least, it seems that we are as conflicted onscreen about the subject as we are divided politically – into the rabid and the tolerant – on the national stage.  There are those who would have us return to the days of Blue Denim – the movie version – but let’s hope that these issues don’t get decided – or unduly influenced – by what’s playing at the local multiplex.