High School Big Shot

**SPOILERS** Not at all popular with the girls in high school young Marvin "Marve" Grant, Tom Pittman is at the end of every school bullies fist for showing them up with his vast knowledge and dedication to study that made him a straight A student.

One afternoon the class bully's girl Betty Alexander, Virginia Aldridge, makes a play for Marve. This has her brutish boyfriend Vince Rumbo,almost punch him out. Betty is failing in English and wan't Marve to do her term paper in order for her to pass which Marve does without thinking of what he's getting into. Later at class the English teacher Mr.Carter, Peter Leeds, realizes that the bird-brained Betty couldn't have wrote such an in-dept report of Shakesepare's works and fails her. Mr. Carter also withdraws a recommendation for Marve, who Mr.Carter knows wrote Betty's report, to get a scholarship for college.

Depressed over what happened Marve tries to get back into the good graces of Betty but the only way she would even talk to him is if he can give her jewelry and furs as well as loads of cash which the poor nerd doesn't have.

At home Marve's dad Mr. Grant, Malcolm Atterbury, a widower is down on his luck and in the dumps being a hopeless alcoholic and out of work which doesn't help Marve's already depressing situation a bit. Later in the film Mr. Grant's depression leads him to hang himself.

Working part-time as a shipping clerk Marve overhears his boss. Mr Mathews, Byron Foulger, talk about a big $1,000,000.00 dope deal he's get planned with one of his gangster friends. Marve realizes this is the chance for him to make it big with Betty by giving her all the things that she always dreamed of. As smart as Marve is in school he's a stupid jerk when it comes to girls not realizing that Betty has no interest in him at all and is only using the poor sap for her own selfish gains.

Getting together with a local hood, who doubles as a liquor store owner, Samuel Tallman, Louis Quinn, and his safe cracking brother-in-law Harry March, Stanly Adams, the three plan to rip off Mr. Matthews office safe before he can make the switch and take off with the million dollars. Mave makes a fatal mistake by boasting to Betty later of his plan and the two-timing gold digger gets in touch with the Neanderthal Vince Rumbo to rip off Marve and his fellow crooks after they get Mr. Mathews cash.

Sad ending to a sad story with Betty getting gunned down by an outraged Vince who finally realized what a snake she really is with him getting shot and killed in return in a shootout with the police and the Mathews gang. Marve who had a bright future ends up behind bars with nothing to look forward too but a six by eight foot cell and a social security check when he's finally released from prison in some 30 to 50 years.

It's sad that actor Tom Pittman died on Halloween 1958 in car smash-up on a California highway. Pittman's brief film career included his first movie in 1957 with director's John Frankenheimer's first motion picture "The Young Stranger" and his last cult director Samuell Fuller's very underrated and almost unknown post World War Two Germany classic "Verboten" in 1959 released, like High School Big Shot, the year after Pittman's death.

High School Big Shot (1959)

** (out of 4)

Drive-in era drama about a nerdy teen who gets his shot at the big time when he hears about a million dollar drop off. If you're a fan of these teenage "B" films of the 50s then this here is certainly one of the better ones but we're certainly a long way off from Rebel Without a Cause. The film runs out of steam around the fifty minute mark but the bad acting leads to some nice laughs.

High School Caesar (1960)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A bully fixes a vote so that he can be elected Class President where he then plans on stealing even more money from students. Here's another drive-in era teen flick that tries to tell a message but even at just over 60-minutes this thing drags along. No camp value whatsoever and not bad enough to get any laughs. Just plain dull.

Date Bait (1960)

* (out of 4)

Romeo and Juliet type story of a rich girl who falls for a poor kid. Her father is against them dating as is her ex-boyfriend who just happens to be crazy and has a gangster for an older brother. Bad acting, bad direction and a bad script make for a pretty bad film that feels five times longer than it actually is. The title song is a real hoot however.

Several performances that young Tom Pittman did were released posthumously the following year after his tragic death in an automobile crash in 1958. High School Big Shot was the last of them and I feel bad that this is the epitaph of young Tom's career. He should better be remembered as one of Dean Jagger's sons in The Proud Rebel.

But for better or worse Pittman was the lead in this independent B feature probably popular in drive-ins at the time. He plays a poor and sensitive kid who for love of the high school vixen Virginia Aldridge embarks on a life of crime.

Truth be told he's not got much of a life to begin with, but he has a shot at a college scholarship that his English teacher Peter Leeds is going to recommend him for. But when Pittman is discovered doing a paper for Aldridge, Leeds withdraws his recommendation. I think that was a bit much. If Leeds had any understanding he would have known it was the kid's hormones in overdrive which they are at that age.

Anyway Pittman finds that the warehouse he works at after school is to be used as a drop for syndicate money, untraceable syndicate money to be used to purchase heroin. And Pittman finds a safe-cracker in Stanley Adams to help him with the job.

But it all goes wrong, not the least of which is that Pittman tells Aldridge and she tells her hoodlum boyfriend Howard Veit who decides he wants the loot. It all ends in a bloody mess.

Adams is good as the philosophical safe-cracker and Malcolm Atterbury contributes a nice performance as Pittman's alcoholic father. But the film such as it is belongs to Pittman who is a sensitive soul gone terribly wrong. And I'm sure Pittman knew this one was a Thanksgiving feast yet his performance in this very cheaply made film is good.

And this review is dedicated to Tom Pittman another sad Hollywood tragedy.

I'd never heard of actor Pittman, but it turns out he was quite a talented, though ill-fated, young guy. Here he goes from painfully shy to confidently assertive in abrupt, but convincing, fashion. I just wish he and the rest of the cast were better served by the script that loses its way about halfway through.

Almost matching Pittman in the talent department is actress Aldridge. Her teenage vixen is enough to send Joan Crawford into fits of jealousy. Betty (Aldridge) is so good at using her wiles to manipulate the hapless Marv (Pittman) in the first part that I thought the movie would be exceptional for a drive-in cheapie.

Had the screenplay stayed at this sensitive level, namely the ordinary-looking Marv yearning for self-respect amid sneering peers, the potential for something sublime was great. However the script veers off into a sudden and wildly implausible tangent of Marv leading a gang of criminals on a million-dollar heist, ending in as phony a shoot-out as I've seen. Too bad, because the rest of the cast, with the exception of an awkward Veit (Vince), is also unusually good for a cheap production.

In my little book, this was a missed opportunity, a teenage film that could have distinguished itself from the many other drive-in specials of the time. Nonetheless, I now know who Tom Pittman is, and in spades.

I often get a kick out of watching movies from the 1950s and 1960s aimed at the youth market, since more often than not they have a campy edge. (I wonder what people several decades from now will think of youth movies from my generation!) "High School Big Shot" does have its share of unintended humor. It isn't filled with big laughs (though the line about Rock Hudson is a howl), but there are plenty of chuckles, such as the "teen" actors who haven't been teenagers for years. Actually, the surprising thing about the movie is that it has a real cynical edge - most of the characters are flawed and/or corrupt to some degree or another. The one problem I had with the movie is that even at a brief running time (just 60 minutes), it feels considerably padded. However, I will admit that all the same the movie made me interested to see how things would be wrapped up at the end. Maybe it's not worth actively seeking out, but if you should stumble across it, it does have some entertainment for those into ancient juvenile delinquent quickies.