Welcome to the third and final part of my ASU study of teen male constructions in Hollywood media!
While James Dean blazed a new path of white, disaffected middle-class youth crying out to be understood by adults in Rebel Without A Cause, Elvis Presley gained a foothold among the nation’s young with a revolutionary new music “threatening” traditional family values. Sidney Poitier was the first African-American negotiating the pitfalls of a racially contentious, white dominated society and also trying to find a sense of belonging in Blackboard Jungle. However, no discussion of adolescent male cinematic constructions would be complete without acknowledgement of Pat Boone. Film writer Thomas Doherty discusses Boone in considerable and fascinating detail as the clean-cut youth idol of the era – in direct contrast to all the others.
Still, it must be understood that no matter how much the film studio publicity machines avidly enthralled teen ticket buyers with flashy, adrenaline pumping music and alluring images of angst and revolt – this was still the 1950s and such representations had to be tempered at the close of the story with remorse for deviant conduct (Dean, Poitier, and Presley). It had to be recognized that authority figures (parents, school teachers, law enforcement, etc.) and even girlfriends may be flawed, but ultimately have the best interests of their students, offspring or love match at heart.
Where Pat Boone was concerned, none of these concessions to conventional, clean-cut, and staid 1950s morality was necessary with his screen portrayals. In Teenagers And Teenpics: The Juvenilization Of American Movies In The 1950s Doherty draws a sugar and spice and everything nice portrait of Boone as: “…whose white bucks, polite manner, and sculpted features made him the first teen idol even Grandma could love.” (Pg. 153) Without question, Boone “was the certified ‘good boy’ alternative to Presley…” as Doherty continued. Interestingly, both Boone and Presley had musical backgrounds and even covered some of the same songs – but the deliveries and performance styles were rather divergent as Boone finessed some of the rock oriented songs with a smoother pop feel and sound.
The straight-arrow construction of Boone may have been more in keeping with those teens who were put off by the nastier and rougher image of Presley – or more likely as Doherty points out in Teenagers And Teenpics: “As the decades most dedicated class of theater patrons, 1950s teenagers supported the whole range of popular movies.” (Pg. 159) Boone basically said the same thing many years later during a 2007 interview about the friendly rivalry between Presley and himself, especially as the songs of both were topping the charts around the same period, and both men had large, fairly even box office grosses during the late 1950s.
Boone’s 1957 film offerings of Bernardine and April Love did not contain raucous bar fights or temperamental outbursts in the Presley manner, dramatic confrontations and family dysfunction as with James Dean or high school delinquency and mayhem of the Blackboard Jungle kind. Boone’s characterizations minimized parental conflict and social deviancy, and focused more on wholesome small-town romance (April Love) or were concerned with the relatively tame and shallow concerns of an upper-crust high school clique.
In any case, the basic teen male constructions as discussed here – whether it’s the disillusioned youth of Rebel Without A Cause, the titillating and “dangerous” rocker of Jailhouse Rock, the outright delinquents of Blackboard Jungle and the more socially acceptable and integrated portrayals of adolescents in Bernardine – are nevertheless among the outstanding filmic examples of a heavily male dominated teen culture that finally emerged as a large, distinct, and influential force of their own in American society.
