Good-Time Girl

Miss Thorpe recounts the troubled story of good-time girl Gwen Rawlings while trying to scare-straight delinquent teenager Lyla Lawrence. In her story, 16 year old Gwen gets caught 'borrowing' from her workplace and the store owner fires her, not before trying to grab a kiss. Her father beats her for it. She leaves home and sets off on her own. It is a long downward spiral for her.

This British noir has a scared straight idea wrapping around the central story which seems to be camouflage for various codes and boards. It wasn't completely successful and may not have gotten much play outside Britain. This is more like soft exploitation for its time. The men are almost all bad. The story is a bit meandering. The acting can get melodramatic at times. It is a matter of waiting for her ultimate downfall.

The 27-year-old Jean Kent plays 16-year-old Gwen in this excellent and harrowing British film that looks at the downfall of a good-time girl.

Told as a cautionary tell by Flora Robson (a court officer) to Diana Dors (a possible delinquent), the story of Gwen combines parts of all those Hollywood movies starring Lana Turner or Susan Hayward in which the good girl goes bad---and PAYS for it.

Gwen is a well-meaning girl who comes from a violent home and likes nice things. After a final beating from her father on being fired from a job in a pawn shop, she runs away and gets an apartment in London. There she meets a man who gets her a job in a nightclub. From then on she's on a descent into a world of booze and sleazy men. She never really does anything wrong but she crosses the wrong guy and he gets even by framing her in a jewel heist. She's sent to a reform school, learns to be really tough, and escapes to live an even wilder life of men and booze. The final sequence of events is mesmerizingly horrible as Gwen gets framed one last time.

Jean Kent is terrific and totally believable as the willful teenager and party girl. She's as good as any tough girl in any Hollywood film. Supporting cast offers a few great roles here: Griffith Jones, usually a nice guy, plays a sadistic thug; Jill Balcon (mother of Daniel Day-Lewis) is great as the vicious Roberta; Herbert Lom is subdued as Maxie the nightclub owner; Beatrice Varley is good as the hapless mother; Dennis Price is memorable as Red; and Flora Robson scores again as the court official.

Just a terrific little film.....

The thought that people like Jimmy Rosso exist makes my skin crawl. While the movie was pretty good, I did find one glaring plot hole. This was during the hearing in juvenile court. It came down to he said, she said. She said that Jimmy had put her up to pawning the jewelry, and he said she had asked him to. This leaves reasonable doubt. The tie-breaker was the fact that she had used her own name when pawning the jewelry, which is consistent with innocence.

Michael Farrell's testimony was disregarded in its entirety when he disclosed that he had sheltered the girl for the night. The magistrate took the word of the oily Jimmy Rosso over the word of the accused and that of Michael Farrell, who had a job and a flat, as opposed to Rosso, who had nothing, and was implicated in a slashing.

Hard to believe it was like that, but I imagine it was.

Good-Time Girl is directed by David MacDonald and collectively adapted to screenplay by Muriel Box, Sydney Box and Ted Willis from the novel Night Darkens the Street written by Arthur La Bern. It stars Jean Kent, Dennis Price, Herbert Lom, Bonar Collleano, Peter Glenville, Flora Robson and Jill Balcon. Music is by Lambert Williamson and Clifton Parker, and cinematography is by Stephen Dade.

This is the story of Gwen Rawlings (Kent), a 16 year old British girl who ran away from home and met trouble around every corner she turned...

The under represented genre of film dealing with juvenile female delinquency has always been a tricky subject for film makers to tackle, even more so back in the day as it were. Here in 1948 is one of the best of its kind, and this even after the BBFC enforced some tone downs of violent scenes and requested that a moral message framing device open and close the story. It's even thought that the Government of the time got involved, such is the wariness of how authority dealt with a troubled female teenager.

The whole film is relentlessly bleak, even as young Gwen strides out with determination and stoic strength, her ebullience infectious, there's sadness or tragedy about to enter the fray. Her whole life spins out of control the moment she is caught returning a brooch she borrowed from the Pawn Shop where she works. She had been out dancing the night before and wanted to look smart, so she took the brooch thinking nobody would mind as long as it was put back the next day, but her boss catches her returning it and isn't as understanding as she had hoped. In fact he is prepared to turn the other cheek in return for sexual favours! To which she promptly says no and slaps him one. From this point on Gwen's life slips into a vortex of misery and disaster.

After a savage beating by her father, who is incensed about her "theft" and sacking from the Pawn Shop; which is filmed skillfully by MacDonald who fades the scene to black, she runs away to start a new life, a 16 year old girl alone in the big city. She seems savvy enough, but she is quickly duped by a fellow lodger at her boardings (Glenville on wonderfully spiv oily form) and even though she lands a hat-check job at Max Vine's (Lom) nightclub, things quickly turn sour. Either by bad luck, bad judgement or just being around bad people, Gwen is on course to be wrongly sent to an Approved School, which is basically a euphemism for Girls Borstal it seems! The only bright spot in her life is Michael "Red" Farrell (Price), a genuinely kind man but one who is also married.

While there at the "school" Gwen goes through metamorphism and turns into a warrior bad girl, a plot line that John Cromwell's 1950 film Caged would follow. She befriends the tough cookie "mommy" inmate, played by Daniel Day-Lewis' mom, Jill Balcon, and before you know it she is the hard nut who thinks of nothing to bullying other girls and escaping at the first chance she gets. Now she's a fully fledge escapee, a hardened hard drinker and smoker, sexually matured and venturing still further down life's dark alleyways. And worse is to come, because fate dictates that she again will fall in with the wrong people, but willingly so this time, until finally fate deals its fatal blow, a coup de grace that stuns with the bitterest of ironies.

Cast are excellent, with Kent a revelation playing a girl ten years younger than her actual age. Direction is smart and brisk, while Dade's photography is always in the realm of film noir, with perpetual shadows and darkened streets, smoky clubs and depressingly foreboding institutions lighted accordingly. The message of the movie is a bit hazy, is Gwen's downfall the product of her torrid home life? A failure of the authorities to get her the help she needed? Or is it that Post War British Society had changed its outlook and was now looking after number one? Either way, Good-Time Girl is a biting bit of British noir, thrusting the female lead into a world where she is abused and used by those around her, harassed at regular intervals, and of course guided by that old devil of film noir, the vagaries of fate. 8.5/10

Jean Kent plays Gwen--a poor girl from a screwed up family. Her sense of right and wrong are sadly diminished and her father is abusive. So, she leaves home at 16 and tries to make her way in the world. But, she always seems to hang out with low-lifes--the sort of jerks that are constantly preying on society. Eventually, she's caught for one of their crimes but she runs away from prison. At this point, she's a mess but she's not necessarily evil. But, soon after escaping, she begins to hit the bottle and becomes a very active and willing participant in a life of crime. And, in the process, she becomes a total mess.

All in all, an entertaining film. And, while it could have been made as a purely sensationalistic movie, this one is able to tell a gritty story and yet not revel in it. Enjoyable and entertaining.