Good-Time Girl

Technically a juvenile delinquency film long before they became the rage, David MacDonald’s Good-Time Girl perhaps served as a warning to girls with “loose morals” and in fact is framed as a story told by Juvenile Court chairman Miss Thorpe (Flora Robson) to admonish a troubled, young girl played by Diana Dors in her first credited film role. The protagonist of her story is former reform school ward Gwen Rawlings (Jean Kent), a pretty, young runaway who continually falls in with the wrong crowd, becoming a night club hostess at 15, then framed for theft and sent to reform school (this section of the film feels like a nastier Jane Eyre) from which she later escapes and returns to the deadly lows of night club culture. Peter Grenville plays Jimmy Rosso, Gwen’s neighbor who expects sexual favors for getting her the club job, Herbert Lom plays Max Vine, her boss at the club who feels protective toward her, and Griffith Jones plays Danny Martin, her abusive drunk of a co-worker. MacDonald maintains a mounting sense of doom, each incident more intense than the last, Gwen’s combination of desperation and cockiness a realistic depiction of teen-aged rebellion. Making generous use of rainy, nighttime street scenes, the film boasts plenty of the beautiful B&W compositions expected of 1940’s noir, alleys and walkways lit by lamps and visited by fog, darkness perhaps symbolizing the ignorance of youth.