Teenager Movies

Hollywood brought this image to the screen in a series of lurid exploitation films. There was Youth Runs Wild; and Teen Age Girls in the Night. Where Are Your Children was advertised with the warnings: “Young Thrill Seekers [Pose] Danger to the Nation.” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned that "this country is in deadly peril. A creeping rot of moral disintegration is eating into our nation."

Girls Under 21 (1940): “Too old for playthings…and too young for love” and “They start by stealing a lipstick…finish with a slaying.”
Youth Runs Wild (1944): The story of a ‘lost generation—the boys and girls who grow up in the turmoil of a world struggle.”
Junior Miss (1945): “She’s stepping out of her bobby sox…into the dangerous world of men.”

Following the war, anxiety over teens escalated. The public was fascinated with bad boys and girls and raging hormonal immorality. The movies, lurid mass-market paperbacks, comic books, television, and advertisements portrayed teenage hellions. There was Live Fast, Die Young: "The Sin-Steeped Story of Today's 'Beat' Generation!" And Date Bait: “Too young to know. Too wild to care. Too eager to say I WILL.” And The Restless Years, starring Sandra Dee: “The Story of a Town with a ‘Dirty’ Mind! Where evil gossip threatened disgrace to two decent youngsters in love!”

Many movies aimed at teens featured juvenile delinquents, gangs, hot rods, and dragstrips.

Teenage Crime Wave: “Out of the sidewalk jungle…The shocking drama of today’s teenage terror.”
Dragstrip Riot: “Murder…at 120 miles per hour”
Girls in the Night: “The tense, terrifying truth about the Big City’s delinquent daughters.”
Runing Wild: “Teen-age tough…and tempted by easy money.”
Eighteen and Anxious: “Parents may be shocked but…youth will understand”
High School Hellcats: “…what must a good girl say to ‘belong’?”

During the 1950s, the image of the directionless, wayward, hormone-driven, angst-ridden teen became a cultural stereotype. The classics of the genre were The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Night, and West Side Story.

Movies (like How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), magazines (such as Teen Life, with features like “Kissing, Petting, Going Steady"), and books and articles (like ("Dating Do's and Don'ts and Maybes" and “Petting: No. 1 Problem”) began to target the teen market.