In the book Flaming Youth the character of Patricia
Frentiss, the youngest of three daughters, finds she has a taste for fooling
around with boys, flirting, drinking, going to petting parties. This was quite
a different portrait of American youth then that which had had previously envisioned
young girls as paragons of innocence. The portrait was never accurate, as
women, even the most sheltered and protected by their families, are subject to
human nature just like everyone else. However, there was little public appetite
for acknowledgement of these realities. The ideal of the innocence of youth
were more comforting.
Up to that point the feminine ideal was based upon the agrarian ideals of the
American frontier and the “Cult of Domesticity” that sprang up in reaction to
the industrial revolution. The ideal held that women had specific roles to
adhere to: men went into the hard world to make a living while women stayed
with the family. The maternal presence of Queen Victoria, mother of the Empire,
had served to reinforce this ideal in the popular imagination until her death
in 1901.
However, even before the end of the Great War women had been moving out of
their parent's homes and taking jobs, becoming educated, and controlling their
lives; this was an unprecedented shift in American Society. Industrialization
had made it possible for women to hold jobs that did not require the strength
of their male counterparts. Armies of newly-minted stenographers and typists
descended upon the cities where they could make a living. The cities themselves
made it easy for a woman to live alone and yet be able to acquire all the
necessities of life.
By the 1920s, it was clear that women were not sticking to the expected ideals.
There were jobs available in big cities, comforts undreamed of on the farm. They
smoked and drank and had sex. They wore makeup, discarded their restraining
corsets, and enjoyed sinful jazz music. Their whole generation was going to
hell in a hand basket, their dismayed elders exclaimed. Flappers were women of
questionable morals and subject of both fascination and fear by the public.
It was this fascination that the book Flaming
Youth had tapped into, and it dealt with subjects seldom
spoken of in decent company. The book was very frank for its time, even if
framed as the journal of an older man watching the turmoil of the Frentiss
family with dismay and occasional humor. Patricia Frentiss finds herself in a
teasing, flirting, and vexing romance with the former lover of her deceased
mother. Her father keeps a floozy on the side who, much to the dismay of the
Frentiss sisters turns out to be an intelligent individual. Patricia’s sisters
both end up in loveless marriages, the middle sister marries a man she dislikes
and continues to see her true love behind the husband’s back. When she finds
herself pregnant, it is Patricia who arranges for her to terminate the
pregnancy. It almost kills her, and then the despised husband unexpectedly
commits a heroic act—saving a child from certain death, and is maimed and left
crippled in the process—the sister is then unable to bring herself to leave
him. Hot stuff, certainly not the staid Victorian material the public was used
to.
The movie was being made fast on the heels of the publication of the book.
Hollywood had long looked towards literature for its inspiration, and First
National was no exception: two of First National’s acquisitions were had been The Huntress for $2500
and Painted People for $5000. And, of course, Flaming
Youth. The idea that Colleen might
play the child/woman Patricia Frentiss seemed counter-intuitive, but in fact it
was a stroke of genius. Throughout the book, the character of Pat was always
flirting with the adult pleasures, but remained at heart a good girl. In her
fashion, Pat decided to marry (a trial marriage of a few decades, in which she
reserved the right to leave should her husband not please her). The choice of
Colleen to play the part of Pat would underscore for a potentially touchy
audience that in spite of a few spectacular, youthful indiscretions, Pat was
really just a wholesome girl waiting to land the right guy. It also gave the
studio the cover of Colleen’s unimpeachable character. The advertising would be
racy, titillating, but Colleen was, after all, still Colleen. |
|