"The Teen Agers" is a Time Capsule of a Period of History No One Probably Cares About

 Happy Canada Day!  I'm sure a lot of people are taking today off for a 4-day 4th of July weekend.  I would probably not be one of them.  So anyway, I'm just going to talk about something no one cares about since no one will probably even notice.

Back in 2019-2020 the Rifftrax B-team of Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl (who both were also writers/performers on MST3K) did four movies in this old B-movie series called "the Teen Agers" by an outfit called Monogram Films that I'm 99% sure no longer exists.  Doing very little research, there are actually 8 movies in the series that ran from like 1946-1948.

So as I said, it's a time capsule to a period of history that no one really gives a shit about because it's sandwiched between more interesting periods of history.  If you think about it, the "kids" in these movies are the ones who were too young to have fought in WWII like "the Greatest Generation" but getting too long in the tooth to have really been on the front lines in Vietnam like the Boomers.  They did have Korea, but except for M*A*S*H no one really gave a shit about that.

Anyway, it is safe to say these movies are not really very good, nor were they really intended to be.  Mostly they seemed to be intended as a showcase for various swing or big band acts and the high crooning voice of Freddie Stewart, who was the central figure in most of these.  A combination of lame musical numbers, bland stories, and really lame comedic bits make these pretty bad and yet I'm oddly fascinated by them.  I don't necessarily go out of my way to watch them, but if they're on Pluto TV or Xumo TV then I probably won't turn the channel.

The first of the 4 they show is called Junior Prom and the thin story is about a rich guy threatening to withhold donations for the school's football team unless his son is named class president.  Freddie runs against him and with the help of his friends and singing on a truck, he manages to win.  And there's a school dance too.  Of course the rich guy gives the school the money anyway.

The next one is Freddie Steps Out where there's a supposedly comedic mishap where Freddie is confused for famous singer Frankie Troy, who wouldn't you know looks exactly like him?  Weirdly though this is a high school, there are dorms where Freddie and his friend live and somehow Frankie Troy's infant daughter ends up with them and then being passed around.  Hilarious!  Eventually everything is sorted out and Freddie and Frankie do a musical number together, which really stressed low-budget special effects of 1947.

The third one they show is High School Hero about the woeful football team the school is fielding.  That is until Freddie's girlfriend Dodie takes the field in place of Freddie's annoying friend Lee.  She helps them win a game or two but is discovered before the big game.  But then she devises a clever strategy so they're able to win the big game.  Hooray!

The fourth one is called Vacation Days and I really only watched it once on Amazon.  One of the teachers at the school inexplicably has a ranch and even though the teens are all graduated, they go with her to do stuff.  Singing and supposedly hilarious things happen. 

For all my virtue signaling friends, of course these movies do not deal with heavy issues like segregation or homosexuals having to live in the closet and so on.  In fact, they don't really deal with any real issues at all.  No one drinks and even though it's the late 40s I don't think anyone smokes either.  You can give them props that Betty Rogers is the editor of the school paper; score one for female empowerment!  The "issues" were mostly about dating, popularity, and too much homework.  Maybe it was even controversial back then to suggest kids didn't like doing homework.  They of course didn't have to worry about school shootings or online bullying or stuff like that in our supposedly "better" modern world.

Though only one of my parents was even born when these came out, I'm pretty sure they were not an accurate depiction of teen life in the late 40s.  It's maybe how some people wish life had been like back then.  I guess in these times with Covid, war, climate change, and so on these rather bland little movies are kind of comforting to watch.  They definitely won't make you think or really challenge your ideals.  If you can tolerate the music then it's easy to tune out for about 75-80 minutes.

I did very little "research" on Wikipedia and it was kind of sad that after these movies not much happened for the nominal star Freddie Stewart.  He had a club for a little while in Miami or something but that went out of business.  Between changing tastes in music (like the advent of rock n roll) and that he was kind of short and wimpy, he could never really be a big star in music or movies.  It's kind of sad that these movies were pretty much the peak of his career; that's like someone whose athletic career peaked in middle school.

Actually the one who probably had the best career was Noel Neill who played Betty Rogers, the aforementioned school paper editor.  That wound up being a good warm-up for her role as Lois Lane in the Superman TV series.  She also appeared in cameos in a couple of the later Superman films.  She's actually my favorite character in this series of movies because she's the nerd who wears glasses and reads books but of course in Hollywood fashion she's not ugly and/or fat like nerds in real life.

An interesting fact is in the credits of Junior Prom it says she appears courtesy of Paramount, which is a reminder of how movies worked back then.  In those days an actor was basically property of whichever studio signed them.  To work for another studio, the actor (or his/her agent) would have to work out a deal with the studio who had their contract.  It wasn't until the 70s that actors became free agents and the old "studio system" was broken.

Historical stuff like that is probably also what interests me about these.  A couple little historical tidbits:  in Junior Prom the annoying Lee (seriously, he is so annoying) while they're waiting for election results mentions how tight Woodrow Wilson's election was back in 1918 because the movie was a year or two before the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that until 2000 was the most famous example of a presidential election "too close to call."  In Freddie Steps Out, Freddie brings in a fancy new jukebox that shows movies with the music; essentially these were early music videos like what became popular on MTV in the 80s.

There you go, a trip down a cul-de-sac of Memory Lane that no one really cares about.

Fun Fact:  Watching the 1952 "movie" (about 75% of it is just stock footage) Invasion USA, both Lois Lanes from the Superman TV show appear in it.  Noel Neill and Phyllis Crowley appear in I think just one scene as airport clerks.  I'm not sure if having both of them was a coincidence or maybe the casting agent worked for that show or whatever.  One of the MST3K sketches during the movie then mentions this.  I don't think any other main cast members really did much, though the riffers point out that Frankie Troy's manager in Freddie Steps Out was a director in Singin' In the Rain.  That's not nothing, I guess.