“Freddie Freddie Freddie! The name goes on and on like William Jennings Bryan!”

Drake’s rating: Before Frankie and Annette there was Freddie and Dodie

Drake’s review: You may or may not know the name Sam Katzman, but he was a very prolific producer whose career spanned several decades as well as a number of studios. He might be best known today for producing the 1948 Superman serial as well as the sci-fi classic Earth vs. the Flying Saucers at Columbia Pictures. But before that he was at Monogram Pictures, one of the many “Poverty Row” studios that turned out low-budget product.

And it was at Monogram that Katzman got hold of the Dead End Kids, a group of young actors from New York who had been brought to Hollywood in the 1930s to recreate their stage play as a film, Dead End, in 1937. More films and serials featuring the Dead End Kids followed, and they traveled from studio to studio thanks to their off-screen antics, with branding changes labeling them the Little Tough Guys, the Eastside Kids and finally the Bowery Boys, which was the name that stuck until their final film in 1958, some two decades after their movie premiere.

Now, all that information is pertinent here because the Dead End Kids proved that a young cast could not only carry a film, but could in fact launch a veritable franchise* that had remarkable staying power even without the star power of names like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. In fact, other studios were trying to cash in on the idea, with Poverty Row neighbor Producers Releasing Corporation releasing a trio of movies featuring the Gas House Kids, a group which included one former Dead End Kid as well as Carl Switzer, most famous for his role as “Alfalfa” in the Our Gang comedies.

But Katzman had something the other studios didn’t, which was former NBC radio singer Freddie Stewart. Stewart had recently signed with Monogram in an attempt to get a film career underway and, at only 21, he was young enough to build a youth-based movie series around. Teaming Stewart with acrobat and dancer June Preisser, whose career at MGM had stalled, Katzman launched a series of movies based around a cast of young actors known simply as the Teen Agers, with their debut being Junior Prom.

So, now that you know just how we got here, what about the movie itself?

Well, you know the term “kitsch?” There are various definitions, but to me it’s basically the leg lamp in A Christmas Story. Yeah, that thing is garish as heck, but every card-carrying Mutant knows that if they owned one, it would be front and center in their living room window, just as Darren McGavin intended. That’s kitsch. It may be ugly, but we’re going to love it anyway.

Junior Prom is kitsch. It’s not pretty, it’s not especially well made, but it’s somehow fascinating and watchable all the same. The only real question is why it isn’t called School Election or something along those lines, since the entire plot revolves around Freddie Trimball (Stewart) running for class president against the well-off Jimmy Forrest (Jackie Moran, former sidekick to Buster Crabbe in the 1939 Buck Rogers serial). Initially reluctant, Freddie goes all-in after Jimmy has the temerity to ask Dodie (Preisser), Freddie’s girlfriend, to the upcoming prom. What nerve, right?

Things get even more complicated when Jimmy’s friend and campaign manager, Roy (Frankie Darro, The Public Enemy) puts the moves on Dodie’s sister Betty (Noel Neill, who would become film’s first Lois Lane in Katzman’s Superman serials), who is also maybe not-so-coincidentally the editor of the school newspaper, and thus has some potential sway come election time.

Along the way Freddie sings some forgettable songs, his best friend Lee visits the principal’s office, Dodie argues with Betty and their other sister Addie makes her single appearance in a Teen Agers flick before she’s written out of the series. None of this is particularly original but it’s somehow captivating nonetheless. It’s a group of young actors either trying to use Monogram Pictures as a stepping stone to something bigger, or working Poverty Row because their careers are drying up.

And for most of them, Neill aside, this was pretty much their last, or only, big hurrah. Freddie Stewart wasn’t going to go on to bigger and better things, with his film career ending as his Monogram contract expired, and June Preisser was never going to have a comeback at a bigger studio. The Teen Agers movies are this weird time capsule showcasing working talent that has their brief time in the very dim spotlight that is a Monogram feature, before Hollywood, and movie audiences, moved on without them.

Still, like the leg lamp, you just have to stop and watch these films if you come across them. And then you drag your friends over and make them watch as well, totally convincing yourself that they’ll be as bewitched by the kitsch of it all as you are.

And then you wonder why you don’t have any friends anymore. But, hey, that’s the hard-scrabble life of a Mutant Reviewer.

*The final tally was 89 films and three serials throughout the various permutations of the cast, which included over 20 different actors through their two-decade run.

Intermission!

• Noel Neill not only played Lois Lane in the Superman and Superman vs. Atom Man serials, but reprised the role for the Adventures of Superman TV series in seasons two through six.
• Jackie Moran’s screen career pretty much died out after the Teen Agers, although he did collaborate with notorious cult film director Russ Meyer in the 1960’s, writing and appearing in a few films like Wild Gals of the Naked West (I wonder if Justin would let me review that one) and Common Law Cabin (well, that sounds innocuous enough, right?).
• Frankie Darro had started out life as an acrobat and trapeze artist in the circus, but soon became a child actor in the 1920s. He probably had the longest filmography of any of the Teen Agers actors, thanks to working as a stunt man in addition to acting.
• If you have RiffTrax, the brilliant duo of Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson have joked their way through the first half of the Teen Ager film series. They are totally worth watching, although the un-riffed versions are enjoyable as well, and can be found in various places on the internet. Just don’t go looking for them if you want to keep your friends.