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Susan Slept Here (1954)
Director: Frank Tashlin
Writers: Alex Gottlieb (screenplay), Steve Fisher(play)
Cast: Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Anne Francis
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
About: On Christmas Eve, Mark Christopher (Dick Powell) a burnt out Hollywood movie screenwriter who wants nothing more than to write a serious drama...finds a teenage girl at his apartment door. Susan Landis (Debbie Reynolds) is a good kid, but has no home and no place to go.
Because she was picked up for fighting and vagrancy, the cops are going to haul her off to juvenile detention. It's the 50s! But the cops do have a heart, well sort of, and let her spend the evening at the writer's apartment so she can stay out of jail on Christmas Eve and he can write a serious drama about teen delinquency.
Review: This might be one of the very few older films that's more shocking now, than when it was first shown in 1954. Dick Powell plays a 35 year old man who has a 17 year old teenage girl spend the night at his apartment. Of course no hanky panky ensues.
But, what happens is creepy because a romance develops that smacks of wrongness. Dick Powell was 50 years old when he made this movie and he looks older than that. And when a fresh faced girlish Debbie Reynolds falls for him, it just feels plain icky.
In the 50s an older guy shacking up with a younger girl might have been the stuff everyone winked at, but today it seems wrong.
I still enjoyed the movie, Debbie Reynolds was very energetic and funny in this. The movie was shot in Technicolor and was based on a stage play of the same name. The movies story was later redone as 1962's Bachelor Flat. This was Dick Powell's last film role, though he did go onto television where he had his own show.
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Susan Slept Here (1954)
Writers: Alex Gottlieb (screenplay), Steve Fisher(play)
Cast: Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Anne Francis
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
About: On Christmas Eve, Mark Christopher (Dick Powell) a burnt out Hollywood movie screenwriter who wants nothing more than to write a serious drama...finds a teenage girl at his apartment door. Susan Landis (Debbie Reynolds) is a good kid, but has no home and no place to go.
Because she was picked up for fighting and vagrancy, the cops are going to haul her off to juvenile detention. It's the 50s! But the cops do have a heart, well sort of, and let her spend the evening at the writer's apartment so she can stay out of jail on Christmas Eve and he can write a serious drama about teen delinquency.
Review: This might be one of the very few older films that's more shocking now, than when it was first shown in 1954. Dick Powell plays a 35 year old man who has a 17 year old teenage girl spend the night at his apartment. Of course no hanky panky ensues.
But, what happens is creepy because a romance develops that smacks of wrongness. Dick Powell was 50 years old when he made this movie and he looks older than that. And when a fresh faced girlish Debbie Reynolds falls for him, it just feels plain icky.
In the 50s an older guy shacking up with a younger girl might have been the stuff everyone winked at, but today it seems wrong.
I still enjoyed the movie, Debbie Reynolds was very energetic and funny in this. The movie was shot in Technicolor and was based on a stage play of the same name. The movies story was later redone as 1962's Bachelor Flat. This was Dick Powell's last film role, though he did go onto television where he had his own show.
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