Barney Brio | Through the Shattered Lens

I always enjoy it when a film opens with a message statement that announces that it was made to shine the light on one of “today’s most controversial subjects.” Even better is when that message statement states that the film could be my story or that it could serve as a warning to people like me about what might happen.

Of course, it’s too late for me to be warned. I’m not in high school anymore. I’ve already made my decisions and had to deal with the consequences of my mistakes and all the other melodrama that makes life interesting. But I can watch a film like 1959’s The Diary Of A High School Bride and I can read the message statement at the beginning and I can think to myself, “If only I had seen this movie before I decided to sneak out that night and drink alcohol or smoke weed or let my boyfriend take pictures of me naked or have sex with a married man or rob a convenience store or read that forbidden book or become a bride of Cthulhu or agree to spy for the communists or whatever the Hell it was that I did that night!” If only…

Actually, it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Life doesn’t come with a message statement and whenever I see one at the beginning of a film, it usually makes me less likely to take that film seriously. In fact, I tend to seek out films the open with message statements because they’re usually a lot of fun.

Take The Diary of a High School Bride, which is silly in a way that only an American International Pictures youth film could be. The film opens with 25 year-old law student Steve (Ron Foster) driving home from Las Vegas with his new wife, 17 year-old Judy (Anita Sands). When Steve gets pulled over by a police officer, Judy starts to tremble in terror. When the cops asks Judy how old she is, she lies that she’s 21 and then starts to cry. When the police officer asks if she’s really married to Steve, she wails, “Yes, and this record proves it!” At this point, she holds up a vinyl record.

However, a vinyl record is not the only thing that Judy has. She also has a teddy bear and oh my God, she literally carries that teddy bear with her everywhere! When she and Steve tell her parents, she has the teddy bear. When she wails at them, “AND NO — I’M NOT PREGNANT!,” she has the teddy bear. When she and Steve go out to a coffeehouse and listen to some pretty good flamenco music, Judy has that teddy bear. When they get back to Steve’s apartment and Judy finally see Steve with his shirt unbuttoned, Judy drops the teddy bear on the floor.

Why are Steve and Judy married? That’s never really made clear. They have absolutely nothing in common and Judy is so naive and so innocent that she spends most of the movie struggling to speak in coherent sentences. (And, of course, she also won’t let go of her teddy bear.) Steve, meanwhile — well, listen, when you’re 17, any man in his 20s is automatically attractive. But still, there’s something undeniably (and, judging from the film’s script, unintentionally) creepy about Steve’s marriage to Judy.

Anyway, when Judy goes back to school, she has to deal with people singing Here Comes The Bride at her. She also has to deal with her ex-boyfriend, Chuck (Chris Robinson). Chuck wants her back and soon, he’s harassing the newly married couple and making such a menace out of himself that the whole “She’s only 17!” thing gets forgotten about…

So, that’s Diary of a High School Bride. It’s a film that, if I had seen it when I was an out-of-control teenager, would have made absolutely no difference whatsoever. But, if you’re a fan of 1950s B-movies (and who isn’t!) and if you have a group of friends who like to be snarky while watching old movies (and who doesn’t!), you’ll probably enjoy The Diary of a High School Bride. At the very least, it features a fun little theme song from someone named Tony Casanova.

The Diary of a High School Bride was directed by Burt Topper and written by the poet Robert Lowell. (Okay, it was probably a different Robert Lowell…) It’s currently available on Netflix and it’s a lot of fun if you’re in the right snarky mood.

“The story you’re about to see is true. It’s happening right now. The subject is illegal abortions.” — The narrator (Barney Brio) at the beginning of The Shame of Patty Smith (1962)

I began this series on embracing the melodrama by taking a look at one of the most anti-abortion films ever made, 1916’s Where Are My Children? It, therefore, seems only appropriate that the first melodrama that I review from the 1960s should be a film that argued for the right to legal and safe abortion eleven years before the Supreme Court’s historic Roe v Wade decision, 1962’s The Shame of Patty Smith.

As with many a great melodrama, this film features a narrator. He informs us that Patty Smith (played by an instantly sympathetic actress named Dani Lynn) is an “average girl with an average life and average dreams.” One night, while she’s out on a date with Alan (Carlton Crane), she is attacked and raped by three thugs in leather jackets who speak like they’ve wandered over from the set of High School Confidential. Afterwards, Alan tells her, “Three against one … there wasn’t much I could do…still, it was horrible to watch.” He follows this up by advising her to “Try to forget about the whole thing.”

When Patty discovers that she’s pregnant, Alan refuses to speak to her and the stress causes her to make so many mistakes at her job that she ends up getting fired. Not wishing to tell her religious parents what has happened, Patty goes to sympathetic Dr. Miller (J. Edward McKinney) and tells him that she simply cannot have a child. Dr. Miller tells her that he sympathizes with her situation but, legally, he cannot help her. All he can do is offer to help her put the baby up for adoption after she gives birth.

With the help of her roommate Mary (Merry Anders), Patty starts to search for a doctor who will perform the illegal procedure. She manages to find one reputable doctor but he explains that he will need 600 dollars in cash because he could quite literally end up in jail for helping her. Patty does not have that type of money.

Growing increasingly desperate, Patty eventually does find someone to help her. This “doctor” (who, the narrator informs us, is actually a former pharmacist) works out of a massage parlor. From the minute that Patty is picked up by one of the doctor’s associates to the moment that she finally steps into the pharmacist’s filthy operating room, The Shame of Patty Smith takes on the feel of a true nightmare. For the final 30 minutes or so of the film, the screen is filled with such seediness that you literally feel the need to take a shower after watching it. Director Leo A. Handel directs these scenes as if he were making a horror film (and, in many ways, he was) and Dani Lynn’s sensitive and frightened performance make these scenes all the more disturbing and tragic.

The Shame of Patty Smith is a real surprise. Largely based on the title and the fact that Something Weird Video included The Shame of Patty Smith as part of a double feature with You’ve Ruined Me, Eddie!, I assumed that this would be your typical low budget melodrama. I figured that it might be good for a few laughs and that it might have a few moments of unintentional clarity.

Instead, it turns out that The Shame of Patty Smith is a serious-minded, well acted, and thought-provoking look at one of the most important issues facing America today. One reason that I found Patty Smith to be such a fascinating film was the fact that it was made before Roe v. Wade. I think sometimes we hear a term like “back alley abortion” so many times that the words run the risk of losing their ominous power but Patty Smith, in detail that is chilling precisely because it is presented in such a matter-of-fact way, actually takes us into the back alley. Those of us who were born long after the Roe V. Wade decision are often too quick to take for granted the idea that abortion has always been legaland safe and that it always will be.

A film like The Shame of Patty Smith serves to remind us of how things once were and how they very well could be again.