My Teenage Daughter [Teenage Bad Girl] ** (1956, Anna Neagle, Sylvia Syms, Norman Wooland, Kenneth Haigh, Wilfrid Hyde White, Julia Lockwood, Helen Haye, Wanda Ventham) – Classic Movie Review 8629

‘SYLVIA SYMS ‘teen and terrific…in an explosive role!’ ‘She’s a doll !… she’s a dish !… she’s a delinquent!’ ‘Born good with a desire to be bad!’

Sylvia Syms (playing 17 but actually 22 and starring in her first film) plays Jan, the basically sweet but delinquent teenage daughter of widow Valerie Carr (Anna Neagle), in director Herbert Wilcox’s 1956 troubled youth drama My Teenage Daughter [Teenage Bad Girl].

Jan (Syms) becomes involved with posh but broke no-gooder sleazy boyfriend Tony (Kenneth  Haigh), who is charged with manslaughter after an old aunt dies while he is trying to squeeze her for money. Involved with such a ruffian, Jan is naturally soon in trouble with the police too.

My Teenage Daughter [Teenage Bad Girl] is a tale from long ago and far away with acceptable performances and a mild, unsubtle, moralising screenplay by Felicity Douglas.

Unfortunately, though of interest, it hasn’t the charm and allure of American youth-slanted movies on this teenage rebel topic, or aged as well as some of them, most notably Rebel Without a Cause of course. But it has a very interesting cast to recommend it.

My Teenage Daughter [Teenage Bad Girl] (1956) is the film debut of Sylvia Syms but it is Kenneth Haigh who receives ‘and introducing’ credit. It is also the debut of Wanda Ventham, the mother of Benedict Cumberbatch.

Also in the cast are, Norman Wooland, Wilfrid Hyde White, Julia Lockwood, Helen Haye, Josephine Fitzgerald, Murray Mayne, Michael Shepley, Avice Landone, Michael Meacham, Grizelda Hervey, Ballard Berkeley, Edie Martin, Myrette Morven, Betty Cooper, Lesley Osmond, Launce Maraschal, Diana King, Daphne Cave, and Laidman Browne.

Julia Lockwood (1941–2019).

RIP Julia Lockwood, the daughter of glamorous British film star Margaret Lockwood, who died on 24 March 2019, aged 77. Julia married the character actor Ernest Clark in December 1972 and retired to their 14th century Somerset farmhouse in 1976, raising three children, Nicholas, Lucy and Katharine.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8629

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