AlsExGal

...about teen angst and pregnancy in a nice, middle-class home. The play says it's set in Detroit, but with the movie version and the various accents, it's impossible to tell. Carol Lynley plays the naive high school girl and Brandon de Wilde the even dumber boy. They fool around one night and presto chango she's pregnant.

Her father (Vaughn Taylor) is a college professor and out of touch. His father (Macdonald Carey) is an ex-military jerk. His mother (Marsha Hunt) is a total airhead with Nancy Kelly's singsong voice from The Bad Seed. When the kiddies try to get married, the town clerk turns them away for being too young. They're afraid to tell their parents anything, so all rational thinking drives them to set up an illegal abortion. The only way they can think of to pay for this is to forge one of daddy's checks.

With the abortion set up, a big car comes to carry Lynley away. She's blindfolded (!) so she can never lead to cops to the back room she's going to. When the forged check is discovered, de Wilde breaks down and tells all. They get the location from the soda jerk who told de Wilde about the doctor. Can they get there in time?

Best thing in the film is Warren Berlinger as de Wilde's wise mouth best friend. There's also a sappy subplot about de Wilde's dopey sister and her dentist fiancé. Berlinger also gets to sing with Roberta Shore at the hop! Mary Young shows up as a drunken aunt, and Jesslyn Fax has a funny scene around the punch bowl. The Broadway play was, oddly, billed as a comedy. Yup. You gotta love those 50s abortion comedies!