Young Ideas **½ (1943, Susan Peters, Herbert Marshall, Mary Astor, Elliott Reid, Richard Carlson) – Classic Movie Review 11,297

‘HERE COMES TROUBLE! MOTHER’S FALLEN IN LOVE AGAIN!’

Director Jules Dassin’s 1943 comedy Young Ideas stars Mary Astor and Herbert Marshall as a widowed lady novelist and a staid and stuffy, small-town college professor who plan to marry.

But her grown-up kids (Susan Peters, Elliott Reid) – who are also his students – think differently, and try to break up what they consider is an inappropriate relationship, also so that they can go back to New York. Then the girl falls in love with one of her teachers (Richard Carlson).

The charming playing in this pleasant minor MGM black and white comedy is better than the sometimes rather flat and flabby script, modest material for previously big stars Astor and Marshall.

But here’s hope for everyone: MGM bought an unsolicited screenplay by student Bill Noble, and employed veteran screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter to polish it. Less good, though, is that this is Noble’s only produced screenplay.

Ava Gardner has a tiny uncredited part as a co-ed in already her 15th feature film in her first three years in movies, all but one uncredited. Her feature debut is in Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) as Passerby at Racetrack.

Also in the cast are Richard Carlson, Allyn Joslyn, Dorothy Morris, Frances Rafferty, George Dolenz and Emory Parnell.

It is directed by the legendary Jules Dassin (The Naked City, Rififi, Never on Sunday, Topkapi), in his fourth feature.

Young Ideas is directed by Jules Dassin, runs 77 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Ian McLellan Hunter and Bill Noble, is shot in black and white by Charles Lawton Jr, is produced by Robert Sisk, is scored by George Bassman, and designed by Cedric Gibbons.

It was used to showcase MGM’s new talent like top-billed Susan Peters and Elliott Reid. Tragically, Susan Peters [Suzanne Carnahan] was paralysed from the waist down in a hunting accident on January 1, 1945. She died on October 23, 1952 of pneumonia, chronic kidney problems and starvation, aged 31. She was Oscar nominated as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Random Harvest (1942).

Astor, born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, won an Oscar as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Great Lie (1941).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,297

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