Teenage Rebel

A very insightful character study. This movie carries excellent credentials: Charles Brackett as one of the screenwriters and Edmond Goulding as director. (Goulding fares less well as writer of the pre-Elvis title song, which dates the movie more than anything else in it but can be skipped over.) Ginger looks great -- better than she did in some other movies from the 1950s. She sports some revealing clothes, such as a tennis outfit reminiscent of the clothes worn by Lana Turner in her best outing, "The postman Always Rings Twice." And her acting is good, as is everyone else's.

A very insightful character study. This movie carries excellent credentials: Charles Brackett as one of the screenwriters and Edmond Goulding as director. (Goulding fares less well as writer of the pre-Elvis title song, which dates the movie more than anything else in it but can be skipped over.) Ginger looks great -- better than she did in some other movies from the 1950s. She sports some revealing clothes, such as a tennis outfit reminiscent of the clothes worn by Lana Turner in her best outing, "The postman Always Rings Twice." And her acting is good, as is everyone else's.

The actress who plays her daughter and the actor plying the neighbor enticed to pay attention to her are fine. And Mildred Natwick, as the boy's mother, is as always excellent.

Her character is not so much a rebel, like Brando and Dean and Mineo from this decade, as a sad child of divorce.

The air of hauteur and aloofness she puts on is very plausible in the portrayal of an insecure teenager.

Rogers's and second husband Michael Rennie little boy is quite a character. He seems a fugitive from some other movie, though he is excellent and works well here. He is more eccentric than little John Henry as played by Brandon De Wilde in the classic "Member of the Wedding." And, though an observation, that is also very high praise.