Blue Denim: Another Lost Film
I’ve written about Blue Denim (1959, a moving and scary film about teen pregnancy, before. I read the play in high school and saw the film once or twice on TV in the late 1960s or early 1970s. and never forgot it. Like That Hagen Girl, Blue, Blue Denim has virtually disappeared from public memory. It has never been released on DVD or video. It’s listed in the TCM online catalogue, but I’ve never seen it run there. The film might be available for viewing on the ‘net. Blue Denim gets short shrift from feminist scholars, too, who concentrate on the abortion narrative and complain about the focus on Arthur’s “coming of age.” As someone who considers herself a feminist scholar, I find their kvetches short-sighted and as a bastard, annoying.. Professional feminists, of course, rarely consider bastards and our mothers and fathers of much interest or value.anyway. We’re the crap in their punchbowl. To make it worse, unlike its bookend A Summer Place, released the same year, which can qualify as anybody’s guilty pleasure, Blue Denim isn’t deliciously smarmy or entertaining. It’s one of those films that makes me sort of sick to my stomach–even the out-dated parts which Continue Reading →