blanche-2 Someone said on this board that they liked the film but were uncertain was to the plot for most of the film. Actually, that person is correct, now that I think about it. I read the plot so I knew what it was supposed to be, but actually that plot didn't unfold right away.Margie, played by the beautiful Marian Marsh, lives with her mother and wants nothing more than to get her out of the hot apartment and into someplace cool. It's summer in New York - I've lived there, and for those who have "summer in New York" needs no explanation. Just add, "in 1929" and you have an idea of the suffering of these people.Margie's boyfriend Jimmie is relentlessly cheerful, which aggravates Margie even more. Then the final blow -- her sister Sophie (Anita Page), her sister's unemployed husband, and their baby move in with them. The couple bickers constantly because Sophie's husband can't seem to find a job.Margie ends up modeling a fur for a wealthy man, Mr. Harding (Warren William) in the salon where she works, and really catches his eye. The coat went for $16,000. I looked it up in today's money. Six figures. Well, $16,000 isn't exactly cheap now.Margie notices some of the models in the shop are kept by wealthy men. She actually starts to consider it. Then Sophie's husband hits her, and Sophie wants a divorce. But the lawyer costs $200. Margie tries to get it from her boss, who refuses; Jimmie has it but he won't give it to her so her sister can get a divorce.Finally, she goes to see Mr. Harding, who is in the midst of a wild party. This is the best scene in the film. Boy, were they having fun.This is an okay movie, but supposedly the studio had high hopes for it. When it didn't become a massive hit, it hurt Marsh's career. However, I don't believe she cared all that much about acting. She was in it to help her family, and once she married, she retired.The end of this film is fun but strange. Warren William as usual is marvelous. He could be sly, mean, funny -- he's one reason I love TCM as it gives people an opportunity to see him. He died in 1948 at the age of 53.Marian Marsh is adorable here, with an angelic and doll-like beauty which she showed to good advantage as Trilby in Svengali. When John Barrymore asked her if anyone had commented on her resemblance to his then wife, Delores Costello, she said yes, the butcher who gave her liver for her cat had remarked upon it.Worth seeing for the performances.

calvinnme Though it only has one star usually associated with Warner Brothers in the early 1930's - Warren William - and even he has a supporting role in relation to the now forgotten Regis Toomey, this film is just bursting with the attitude of precode Warner Brothers.It's subject is very definitely the depression and specifically how fortunes quickly changed for families when the male head of the household died. The beginning of the film is full of hope as the movie opens on the wedding day of Sophie (Anita Page), oldest daughter in the Evans family. However, three still-shots later - Dad's grave stone reading 1872-1928, a room for rent sign, and a pawn broker's store sign, and the audience is standing in the middle of a crowded tenement neighborhood in New York City in 1931. Youngest daughter Margie is working as a seamstress, living in a complete dump with her mother, and her boyfriend is making annoying happy talk about how their next big break is just around the corner. What is just around the corner is that sister Sophie, her husband Alf (Norman Foster), and their baby are moving into Margie and Mom's cramped quarters because they have just lost everything. Worse, Alf doesn't think that getting a regular job is a priority.The daring subject that is insinuated here but never mentioned specifically is abortion. After Alf hits Sophie when she objects to him taking what little money they have and betting on himself in a billiards tournament, she reveals to Margie that she wants a divorce from loafer Alf, and furthermore she's pregnant again. Margie talks about taking her to someone the other girls have talked about, and you do see her talking to a lawyer next, but you've got to wonder what else happened since that baby is never mentioned again.Unfortunately the girls are shocked to find out from the lawyer that a divorce costs 200 dollars, which they don't have. Margie has two places she can go for the money - her boyfriend, who has 800 dollars saved to start his own business but is dead-set against divorce under any circumstances, much more so against financing one. She could also go to playboy millionaire Raymond Harding (Warren William) who took a liking to Margie when he saw her stand in as a model at the fashionable dress shop where she works. He would certainly give her the money, but what will she have to do in return? This film is headed to a dark depression precode outcome when several credible good things happen and one rather outlandish thing happens that results in a rather preposterous happy ending. It's sad to think that Marian Marsh's career never really went anywhere. I've found her a delight in the three films in which I've seen her - Svengali, Beauty and the Boss, and this one. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes the precodes.

mitchflorida First of all this was a Warner Brothers film.One of several Pre-Code dramas helmed by Warner Bros. contract director Archie Mayo in 1932, Under Eighteen is a cautionary tale for the working girl that was lost in the shuffle of too many similar programmers released that same year. Seen today, it provides a unique window into the past when studios like Warner Bros. catered to blue collar audiences, particularly women, with movie plots that mirrored situations and circumstances in the lives of their audience.Under Eighteen opens on a hopeful note with Sophie (Anita Page) getting married to Alf (Norman Foster) and moving out of the cramped tenement apartment she shares with her sister Marge (Marian Marsh) and her mother. The mood quickly changes to despair as Marge considers her circumstances and realizes that marriage is not necessarily the answer to the grinding poverty she experiences day after day. This becomes even more pronounced when Sophie, Alf and their newborn baby move back in with them because Alf lost his job and won't look for a new one; he keeps blowing the little money they have on billiard tournaments in bars, hoping he'll win the big cash prize. The situation becomes unbearable for Sophie once she realizes she is pregnant with a second child. She begs Marge to help her raise the money for a divorce lawyer, all of which helps convince Marge that she won't make the same mistakes. Her fiancé Jimmie (Regis Toomey), a delivery boy who aspires to start his own delivery service, wants to tie the knot and doesn't share Marge's dismal view of matrimony. In her opinion, "Marriage is a bunk, at least for poor people." Soon Marge postpones her wedding plans with Jimmie and sets her sights on raising money for her sister's divorce lawyer by using herself as collateral in a deal she proposes to Howard Raymond (Warren William), a well-known tycoon and notorious ladies' man. Marge goes to his penthouse apartment, where a decadent rooftop party is in full swing, and begins to succumb to the inhibition-free atmosphere. When Marge and Howard finally retire to his private suite, however, their rendezvous takes a surprisingly unexpected turn.More than anything else, Under Eighteen is an impressive showcase for Marian Marsh (best known for her role as Trilby in Svengali [1931]), who displays both fearless determination and raging self-doubt as the desperate Marge. The film builds suspense and a growing tension over what lengths Marge will go to help her sister. And it offers a grimly realistic view of the options available for women born and raised in the slums. This isn't an escapist fantasy but the flip side of the working girls glimpsed in Gold Diggers of 1933. For most of the film, the camera captures the squalid details of tenement life: people sleeping on fire escapes on sweltering summer nights, the congested sidewalks and never-ending street traffic, the rented rooms with walls so thin you can hear the neighbors through them.Though not as sordid or as entertainingly racy as other Pre-Code movies such as Baby Face (1933) or Employees' Entrance (1933), Under Eighteen has its share of frisky behavior and sexual innuendos, particularly during the penthouse pool party scene. Warren William, who specialized in playing lecherous employers and rich philanderers, is right in his element here. When he welcomes Marge to his alcohol-fueled roof party, he says, "Why not take off your clothes and stay awhile?" Prior to that, he is glimpsed bobbing up and down suggestively in the water with a drunken female guest on a phallic-like float so we know his intentions are strictly dishonorable.For a Pre-Code film, Under Eighteen does have a surprisingly false and unrealistic denouement that smacks of studio compromise and Breen Office censorship. The movie, however, was actually made before the Code was strictly enforced so that was probably the result of screenwriters Charles Kenyon and Maude Fulton trying to give the movie a happy ending. Marge emerges from Raymond's penthouse with her virtue intact because he has a change of heart and decides to not take advantage of such a pure innocent. She now happily accepts her fate and agrees to marry Jimmie and move to New Jersey. And most astonishing of all, Alf finally wins the big billiards tournament and whisks his pregnant wife, child and mother-in-law off to Atlantic City for a vacation followed by an undeniably bright future. Audiences won't be fooled though. We know Alf will be back to his old tricks as soon as the money runs out and that Marge will always wonder what her life would have been like if she had actually acted on her defiant promise to herself: "I've made up my mind that anytime I hand myself over to a man for life, it's cash on delivery."

HarlowMGM Marian Marsh was a creamy complexion blonde ingénue best remembered for playing Trilby opposite John Barrymore's SVENGALI in 1930. Warner Bros. briefly considered her star material in the early 1930's, needlessly to say this gentle starlet did not last long on the mean streets of Warners although she had a surprisingly long career as a B movie lead that lasted into the early 1940's. She was at the height of her fame in 1931 when Warners starred her in UNDER EIGHTEEN, a drama about a young girl who considers the primrose path. The movie is remarkably tame for a pre-code with Miss Marsh's virtue never really compromised or in doubt. Miss Marsh is a pleasant performer but it's easy to see how audiences of the era were underwhelmed by her compared to so many charismatic actresses starring at the time. She's also overshadowed here in the acting department at least by her MGM contemporary, lovely Anita Page, borrowed from Metro to play the older (age 21!) sister who learns marriage ain't quite all wedding cake especially when you have a husband who won't work and is not above smacking you one. (The movies' most shocking scene is the suggestion that Anita is considering having an abortion rather than have another child for a man who won't support the first one. It's never stated outright but clearly suggested. "I know where to go from girls at work for things like that," Marian volunteers, but after teasing us with Marian's hand scanning down on the list of business offices on a building directory wall with "doctor" among them, she stops at "attorney", thus showing us she meant she would help her get representation for the divorce.) It's Anita's dilemma in fact that causes Marion to wonder if does any good to be a good girl and Marian's desperation to get the $200 (rather pricey for the era) needed for Anita to obtain a divorce that causes her to turn to presumably big bad wolf Warren William. There's a remarkable unintentionally comic sequence when maid Marian goes up to Billy boy's art deco penthouse where a pool party with a bunch of fairly sauced party goers is in full swing (the depravity!), playboy Warren informs her this is just a typical night with his friends and instructs his butler to get the new chick a swimsuit, leading Marian to a room well stocked with swimwear and robes for visiting females. But wait, Marian's virtuous boyfriend, milkman Regis Toomey is on the way to rescue his girl from this den of iniquity and gives WW a rather mild punch that sends the maligned lech to death's door but since he really isn't a bad egg he survives (old Reg turns out was no dangerous pug, Warren merely had eaten some bad shrimp!!) and so our lovebirds are happily reunited and we also learn sister Anita off-camera has been happily reunited with hubby Norman Foster who has won $1,000 in a pool tournament (and another $500 besides for betting on himself!!) Of course, the fact that bro in law had earlier in the film LOST his pool hall and savings in an earlier bit of gambling is conveniently forgotten.The cast is pretty good here but the billing on the film is curiously strange. J. Farrell MacDonald as the girls' father keels over minutes into the film but is billed high whereas mom Emma Dunn has quite a large part but isn't billed at all. Similarly, Joyce Compton is billed quite high for a part so small I didn't notice she was in the picture on first viewing.The picture may not be for the history books, but the star starlets sure were survivors. Marian Marsh passed away last month, November 2006, at age 93, while Anita Page is still with us at age 96.