Directed by Gregory La Cava and executive produced by David O. Selznick, the screenplay for this Martin Flavin play was written by Sarah Y. Mason and Francis M. Cockrell. The film is a dated drama about "free love" on college campuses. There are a couple of scenes where the characters are seen discussing this and that while sitting on a stone bench engraved with "in loco parentis".The film begins with a montage of several short, poorly acted clips with students discussing "free love", which is all the rage on this particular college campus. Grady Sutton appears uncredited as one of the students in the dormitory (Betty Grable is also listed as being one of the students on campus, uncredited, though I failed to spot her).Betty (Dorothy Wilson) can't quite decide whether she wants to participate or not. On the one hand, she's been dating a young man with high ideals, Mike Harvey (Richard Cromwell), a pretty boy whose "mentor" is Professor David Mathews (John Halliday). On the other hand, she is attracted to the rich, carefree Duke Galloway (Eric Linden). Frustrated by Betty's cavalier attitude and everyone else's "looseness", Mike retreats to a local hangout to be alone. There, he unburdens his "conservative" views to Dora Swale (Arline Judge), a young waitress.Soon, however, Betty is wooed by Mike, who gives her his college pin, and the two of them start to make plans. Mike turns to Professor Mathews for advice. However, he is obviously conflicted and fails to make a compelling case for Mike to stay in school and wait a couple of years before marrying Betty. The primary reason for his failure in this area is his own personal experience. Evidently he too had a love of a lifetime in Barbara (Aileeen Pringle), also now a teacher on campus, and they had decided to wait only to see their love fade such that they never married.Barbara also advises Betty similarly. In fact, it isn't until she is dispensing with her advice that we learn Professor Mathews's love had been Barbara (through a photograph). In a moment of passion, Mike tells Betty he is willing to drop out of college to take a job he knows he can always get in California, so they can marry, but she says she'd feel terrible if he did and that they should wait for him to finish his degree instead.One night, everything changes. A (sexually?) frustrated Mike is "seduced" into walking Dora home from Tolers, the local hangout. Arriving at her home, he discovers that her father (Reginald Barlow) works nights. Acting irresponsibly, the two drink, dance, and spend the night together (though what actually happens is open for debate). Mr. Swale gets home at 4 AM to discover the disheveled couple and invokes the shotgun wedding principle. Dora was underage?In any case, Professor Mathews tries to intervene, acting every bit the liberal one would expect on today's college campuses, and prevent Mr. Swale from ruining Mike's life. But, forced to own up to his error by the Assistant District Attorney (Frederick Burton, uncredited), Mike accepts his fate and agrees to wed Dora.A distraught Betty, upset that maintaining her ideals have earned her nothing, is consoled by Duke and then goes for a ride in his fast car. Naturally, they are in a car crash. Professor Mathews receives a call from Barbara at the Swale's just before the wedding can take place, informing him of the accident.Everyone rushes to the hospital where the doctor (Howard C. Hickman, uncredited) informs them that Duke will not survive, but Betty is expected to recover fully. We witness Duke's melodramatic passing away. Seeing Mike's love for the injured Betty, a tearful Dora refuses to force Mike to go through with it, much to her working class father's disappointment; he had hoped her daughter would marry a college graduate! The last scene shows Mike and Betty departing on a train for California with Professor Mathews and Barbara waving to them.

The Age Of Consent is a terribly dated before the Code film with a Victorian era plot and loaded with sexual innuendo. This would have made a great Cecil B. DeMille silent film.The Age Of Consent began as a play called Cross Roads which had the misfortune of opening on Broadway within two weeks of the Stock Market crash. After that Broadway closed a lot of shows because folks couldn't afford the theater. Cross Roads only ran 28 performances and Franchot Tone and Sylvia Sidney were in the supporting roles that Eric Linden and Arline Judge play on the screen.The leads are Richard Cromwell and Dorothy Wilson who are in love and going through a lot of angst. Dorothy's a good kid who doesn't want to give it up before she has a wedding ring on her finger. Richard's even ready to quit school. But when she says no he goes off with the local waitress at the college hangout Arline Judge.Catching him alone with his daughter puritanical dad Richard Barlow says no one is going to disgrace my daughter, marry her or else because she's still a minor. Poor Cromwell sees his whole life slipping away, all the plans he had for his future, just gone up in smoke.It all kind of works out for most of the cast. John Halliday is her as the wise science professor who acts as mentor and father figure to the college kids. Barlow's part is interesting his type is still around today, ignorant and proud of it. Look for a young Betty Grable as one of the coeds.It's an interesting story and typical of the times. But thank God we seem to have moved away from the attitudes expressed by Barlow in The Age Of Consent.

At State College, while most of the young men are more interested in "free love" than marriage, handsome Michael aka "Mike" (Richard Cromwell, an exact cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and Jude Law) is full of old-fashioned ideals and he loves to get advice and talk things over with his favorite "Prof", a real sort of mentor to our young heartthrob. Meanwhile, Mike's girl Betty seems to like to flirt around, mainly with a hotshot named Duke who has a snazzy new car. As Betty chirps "I'm not my Grandmother - I like to have FUN - I'm modern!". Well - Mike and Betty really *are* in love, so he gives her his fraternity pin and proposes quitting college so they can be married. But when Betty says they should wait until they graduate before they marry (two whole years!), a "frustrated" Mike turns to flirtatious Dora, waitress at the local diner/college hangout, who he ends up getting drunk and spending the night with. Problems ensue for Mike as Dora's angry father walks in on them, then pushes marriage or prison onto poor, poor Mike (seems our little waitress was underage).This film, at first glance, seems like it is going to be a light piece of college romantic fluff, with all the college kids drooling over each other and the guys trying to convince the girls to "drop some of their morals". Instead it takes a turn toward the quite serious, and with an emotional wallop, really comes off to be quite an excellent film. There is a lot of discussion in this film about "what's right, what's wrong" and other morality issues, and most of the performances are pretty top-notch here, I thought Arline Judge especially good as waitress Dora.

I caught this movie on TCM during a tribute to the director Le Cava and was stunned and surprised by its trenchant wit and charm. The movie focuses on the obvious fact that adolescents and teenagers and kids in college spend an inordinately high portion of their waking hours thinking about sex. This is a wonderful breath of fresh air and shows that teen sexuality need not be told on screen by the use of a deus ex machina like the pathetic loser Lucas in "Lucas" and, alternatively, by genuinely depraved social deviants as in "American Pie" or "Porky's". Though this movie is about sex it is suitable for family viewing and even by pre teens. There is also to me a bigger message about the danger of censorship in our society. In an era where prudery and censorship are more and more being viewed by politicians as a way to protect ourselves from ourselves it may be useful to consider how much damage was done to our posterity by the Hays code and the Catholic League. Watch this movie!