Blue Denim
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blue Denim was a successful 1958 Broadway play by writer James Leo Herlihy, made the next year into a successful movie starring Brandon De Wilde and Carol Lynley (who had appeared in the stage version), and dealing with the issues of teenage pregnancy and (then-illegal) abortion. Macdonald Carey, Warren Berlinger and Roberta Shore appear as supporting characters.
The story is set in Dearborn, Michigan, during the 1950s, and revolves around fourteen-year-old Arthur Bartley (DeWilde) and his schoolmates, fifteen-year-old Janet Willard (Lynley) and Ernie (Berlinger). While widower's-daughter Janet laughs at Arthur and Ernie's forays into smoking, drinking, and playing cards, she's always been interested in Arthur, and as Arthur's parents try to shelter him from negative things in life (like the euthanasia of the family dog, done while he's at school), he turns to Janet for comfort.
The relationship between Janet and Arthur results in her becoming pregnant. Unable to ask their parents (who misinterpret their pleas as "ordinary" teenage curiosity about sex and adulthood) for help, they turn to Ernie, who'd boasted earlier about "helping a sailor who got his girl in trouble" by directing him to an abortionist – only to discover Ernie made it all up, based on secondhand stories. The three seek together to arrange an abortion and raise the funds, only to be discovered by their parents. In the meantime, Arthur and Janet find out how much they don't yet know about life – and how much they truly care about each other.
In the original stage version, Janet does have her pregnancy aborted, and she and Arthur talk it over later as they settle their feelings for one another. When the play was adapted for Hollywood, however, strict production codes forbade anything but the condemnation of abortion, so the storyline was changed; Arthur and Janet instead go off together, to get married and stay with Janet's aunt in another city until the baby is born.
While the play and then the movie came and went, at first causing a minor controversy, then becoming part of the 'canon' of Broadway adaptations, and studied for its sociological impact, Blue Denim was still being decried as late as the 1980s by Fundamentalist preachers.
