THE AGE OF CONSENT (1932)

Not *all* forgotten pre-Code movies necessarily deserve to be found. I'm not sure if this one, an early production of David O. Selznick's, was actually ever lost, but it's very difficult to find information about in the reference books. Directed by Gregory LaCava (MY MAN GODFREY), it's like a "Reefer Madness" view (both in content and production values) of college students and their dating behaviors. Richard Cromwell (future husband of Angela Lansbury, and looking here a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio) plays a nice college boy who is in love with Dorothy Wilson, but flirts actively with others to stay "cool." The two have a fight and he stays up all night with the exotic but somewhat slutty waitress Arline Judge. Her father, Reginald Barlow, discovers them at 4 a.m. and demands a shotgun wedding. Professor John Halliday, who himself had a sad experience with love as a youth, helps the boy out of his dilemma. Eric Linden plays Duke, the slick lad who winds up, with Wilson, in a serious car crash. Grady Sutton has a small role as a student looking for his missing boxer shorts! The college atmosphere seems a bit more realistic than in a movie like GOOD NEWS, with lots of comic scenes between students stressing their casual attitudes about love and sex--and like most movies about college, there is almost no talk about classes. Moderately interesting if only because of the subject matter, but it certainly has its tedious stretches.