Young and Willing

AKA Young and Willing, AKA Women Behind Bars

An early 'women in prison' movie - minus steamy scenes between inmates, beatings, and group showers!

Glynis Johns and Diana Dors play two girls sent down for their own stupidity. Johns is an otherwise respectable, well-educated woman from a wealthy family, sentenced for fraud after she's unable to pay her gambling debts. Dors is a girl from 'the wrong side of the tracks' who lied to cover-up for her no-good boyfriend's crime and got found out. Despite their differing backgrounds they buddy-up and help each other do their time.

The film cuts back and forth between the 'now' in prison and the backstories of some inmates. Most of the flashbacks are serious - although one plays out as more of a black comedy and does feel out of place. The 'love wins in the end' ending feels tacked on too, as though it was a studio mandate.

It's well-acted, with a cracking cast of the time (including John Gregson, Rachel Roberts, Ursula Howells, Sid James (in one of his earlier straight acting roles), Anthony Nicholls, Irene Handl, and Anthony Newley).

Still a pretty good watch. 6/10.

Glynis Johns is railroaded into prison for insurance fraud, where she initially despairs. However, the knowledge that her young man is waiting for her and the kindly prison warden buck her up. Eventually she is transferred to a 'prison with bars', where she meets, in the words of Anna Russell, all sorts of terribly interesting people, including Diana Dors and Olive Sloan.

It's directed by J. Lee Thompson from a book by Joan Henry, who was one of his wives; it was based on her prison experiences, and she called the Johns character "a bit goody-goody". Indeed she is. Except for one impassioned speech at the end, she's largely a sounding board for others. She's also rather heavy-set and middle-aged looking to add to her anonymity. Miss Dors gets the better role, and does a good job with it. Thompson would work with her later.

Glynis Johns learns the hard way that crime doesn't pay in this melodrama organised round a series of flashbacks.

The usual interesting cast includes Sybil Thorndike, a young Rachel Roberts and Olive Sloane as a professional shoplifter; while Diana Dors' character anticipates her celebrated role for the same director two years later in 'Yield for the Night'.

Although there was probably some serious intent behind the film's premise e.g. the open prison system, social comment on post-war England as class barriers are breaking down which are interspersed throughout, it is the gentle humour that lifts it above the mediocre. Superb cameos from the great Athene Seyler and Sybil Thorndike playing two friends who plot to 'do in' an elderly admirer is made a great deal of by the director. The central story involving Glynis Johns is well told and each of the film's subsequent yarns make for a light but thoroughly enjoyable whole.

Before he became popular directing Charles Bronson films, J. Lee Thompson directed two prison movies based on books written by his future wife, Joan Henry. Glynis Johns does very well as the gambler who is framed for insurance fraud and sent to prison for one year. Here she meets the inmates who relate their stories of crimes that sent them up for time: a shoplifter, a blackmailer, and a neglectful mother. She stops one from stabbing a cruel guard and is rewarded with a transfer to a prison without walls. It's also very touching in the visitation scenes with her fiancé and doctor (John Gregson) how she feels the stigma of her sentence from the outside world. Only beef with the film I have is that there is no flashback to explain what crime her best friend, Betty (Diana Dors) did to serve two years. Her chum is desperate to find a boyfriend, Norman, that never writes or visits.