No Time to Be Young

Buddy Root (Robert Vaughn) is a slick bad boy up to no-good. He was kicked out of college and is desperate to avoid the draft. Stu Bradley claims to be a successful writer but it's a lie. He needs $500 as a fake advance selling his book to fool his new wife and her father. Store clerk Bob Miller is obsessed with his girlfriend Gloria who refuses to marry him. She has a backbreaking accident and needs money for medical. They come up with a plan to rob the supermarket.

With hindsight, it's obvious to make Robert Vaughn the undeniable lead of the movie. The other characters are only supporting cast. I actually like Stu's predicament and it's a great opportunity to go on a crime spree. He's the lying type and a good second fiddle in a crime duo. Bob's predicament is less compelling. The fall looks silly and Bob whines too much. It's sillier than the other two and I would just cut him out. I would make Buddy even harder. I really like Buddy and Stu as a duo. This may as well be a part of Crime doesn't pay.

Buddy Root exits the office of Local Board No. 20 Selective Service. At the bottom of the stairs he lights a cigarette and the music swells. And as he steps to the camera the title "No Time To Be Young" flashes across him. The next title reads: "Introducing Robert Vaughn."

That's how this 1957 Columbia Pictures film begins. And, this is unmistakably Vaughn's picture.

Root (Vaughn) is upset that he's been drafted into the military. He's ruined his chances at a deferral by dropping out of college. He's from a fatherless home and his mother appears to be too busy to offer the type of parental guidance he needs.

Root has been having a relationship with his former college professor. She can't reach this troubled young man either as he wants to leave the country and desert his military obligation.

Root enlists the help of two friends to rob a grocery story and fund their escape. Each of these men face dark futures, too. One, has fallen for a reckless woman and now needs money to help her and the other guy has secretly married the daughter of a wealthy man and faces pressures to achieve financial success. Each of these men has been irresponsible and impulsive.

The filmmakers seem to have trouble with women.

No Time To Be Young tries explore the problems of criminal behavior from young men but it never offers more than superficial reasons.

What Vaughn provides is a vivid screen debut of a sociopath with self-destructive behavior.

And, for that reason, this film is worth a look.

It's fun to see Robert Vaughn, his smug, hissable screen persona so fully formed early in his career, starring in the mixed-up soap opera/generation gap/crime drama suffering from a horrible screenplay. But getting to the end of the show is quite a chore given the phony-baloney situations and characters of writer John McPartland's screenplay.

Best performance is not by the leads but by perhaps the least famous of the prinicpal players: Doris Dexter who is Vaughn's sympathetic college porfessor and an early example of what is now termed a MILF. The mother fixation of Vaughn is one of the worst elements of the half-baked story, that devolves into stupid melodrama.

One personal sidelight: McPartland, who like the co-lead Tom Pittman died young the next year (making the title of this movie pay off) wrote the Adult soap opera "No Down Payment", also shot in 1957. I saw the movie in a unique fashion: at my Junior High School they would screen fairly recent feature films at lunch time, one reel a day for 4 cents admission. Most were from 20th Century-Fox and science fiction ("The Fly", "Kronos" and "Spacemaster X-7" for example), but this one proved to be too steamy for us kids (no time to be young, I guess). It was my first encounter with censorship: the final reels were cancelled by the school, as the film was deemed not suitable for us to watch!

This low budget film was much better than I anticipated. The story is slow starting but it becomes interesting and compelling and the direction and acting are on par with an A production.

To say the leads and the girl friends are college students is ridiculous. Robert, wasn't that good of an actor period. Same goes for Roger Smith, just a face, no depth, and the third guy, seen him on a couple of movies. He seemed to play losers most of the time. Merry anders nothing special about her either. This movie makes me think of, Robert in the movie called teenage cave man. Talk about a stinker. I don't know why back then they used actors that didn't fit the parts. Too old to play teens or college kids, didn't make sense. They still do it now. Give me the real talent, like the 30s and 40s, when actors had real talent.