Juventude Impetuosa

Robert Hutton is a pilot in the Flying Tigers on R&R in India when he runs into Dolores Moran. She tells him that his ex-wife, Joan Leslie, had born his son soon after he had joined the Air Force.. and had immediately given him up for adoption. With his concentration gone, he's given leave to return home for eighteen days, while he tries to find his son and gain him.

Most of this movie is well done under first-time director Frederick De Cordova, with a fine cast that includes Arthur Shields and Rosemary DeCamp as Hutton's parents, and Harry Davenport as a sympathetic judge. Hutton and Miss Leslie play unlikable and selfish individuals during their failing marriage; it's the sort of truth-telling script you could get away with during the latter half of the War. Unhappily for the story, the Production Code kicked in with the sort of ending that I find totally unconvincing.

Miss Leslie gets to stretch a little in her performance, but the 20-year-old actress was getting tired of this sort of role. She was anxious to show she could be more than the young ingenue. Over the next couple of years, while her Warners contract continued, she played more of the same three more times. Then she struck out with some more adventurous performances, only to discover that being a star meant that people went to see you in the same sort of part.