The Delinquents

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The Delinquents
Directed by	Robert Altman
Written by	Robert Altman
Starring	Tom Laughlin Peter Miller Richard Bakalyan
Release date(s)	1957
Running time	72 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Delinquents is a 1957 motion picture which Robert Altman wrote, produced, and directed in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri during the summer of 1956 on a $63,000 budget.

Although The Delinquents is best known today for being the big-screen directorial debut of a young Robert Altman, it is also known as a classic example of the many melodramatic juvenile delinquent exploitation films of the mid-1950s and as being a part of a rather innovative and pioneering independent film production effort in Kansas City during this time.

Contents 1 Background 2 Plot 3 Production 4 External links

[edit] Background

Elmer Rhoden Jr. was a Kansas City motion picture theater exhibitor, president of the prominent Commonwealth Theaters chain in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Rhoden Jr. wanted to get into producing movies. After all, he had the distributing apparatus at hand and the necessary capital to invest. He observed the film industry of 1955 to see if there was a need or a new craze for something new. There was. Although television was drawing viewers out of the theaters, the teenagers still went to the drive-ins with their dates and what they wanted to see were exploitation films which appealed to them, with stories of rebellious delinquents and drag-racers (Rebel Without a Cause), monster invasions and sci-fi stories (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers), horror stories (I Was a Teenage Werewolf), and rock and roll musicals (Rock Around the Clock). The teens didn't care if these films were low-budget and "schlocky," they just wanted entertainment.

There was also another factor at work. Due to the "consent decree" of 1953, the major studios were constrained from booking their own chains by this antitrust ruling. But the Commonwealth circuit and other small regional independent film companies, by virtue of not having previously existed as film producers, were exempt from this rule. It was the days of the low-budget regional filmmaker and exploitation pictures, and Rhoden Jr. figured that if he budgeted his "teen-flicks" cheaply enough and peddled them to his own Commonwealth chain, he would be guaranteed a tidy profit. So, in early summer of 1956, he raised $63,000 with the help of other local businessmen in Kansas City, decided his first teen film would be about troubled teens, thought up a title for it and nothing else (The Delinquents), and he hired local filmmaker Robert Altman, who had been directing industrial films and documentaries for the local Calvin Company and knew Rhoden Jr. slightly, to write and direct the film with just the information about the budget and the title.

Using several starting points such as The Blackboard Jungle, The Wild One, and Rebel Without a Cause for influence, Altman wrote the screenplay for The Delinquents in just five to seven days. He might have been able to complete it that soon because he was used to writing scripts in even less time for Calvin industrial films, and maybe he finished it so quick because The Delinquents didn't really present a real writing challenge.

[edit] Plot

In suburban Kansas City, 18-year-old Scotty White and 16-year-old Janice Wilson are very much in love, but their parents stand between them because Janice is "too young to go steady" and Scotty "hangs out with the wrong crowd." At the drive-in alone one night, Scotty decides to go to his hot-rod greaser pal Cholly, who heads a gang of carousing delinquents, and ask for help. Cholly cooks up the idea of posing as Janice's new boyfriend, and bringing her to meet Scotty every night. The plan works well, and the teen crowd all meet at an abandoned mansion on the edge of town. However, the party gets out of hand, with drinking and dancing, and Scotty and Janice leave to be alone. Soon after, the police mysteriously appear and break up the drunken free-for-all. Cholly and his right-hand-delinquent Eddy suspect Scotty of tipping off the police, and the whole gang kidnaps Scotty the next day and forces him to gulp down an entire bottle of Scotch when he won't admit to being the informant. In confusion after Scotty passes out from drinking, the gang takes the besotted Scotty for a ride, and just happen to see a service station where they pull in to get some gas. Eddy decides to hold up the station, but unfotunately Scotty unknowingly bungles it when he wakes up. Cholly hits the station attendant on the head with a gas pump, and the gang speeds off, leaving Scotty behind with the cash and the attendant. Scotty staggers home, finds the gang has kidnapped Janice, has several fights, and then has a switchblade fight with Cholly in a remarkably inventive kitchen fight scene (Scotty flings sugar bowls and baby fences into Cholly's face as he approaches), and goes to the police, who will surely clear him of the gang's crimes.

[edit] Production

Rhoden Jr. approved this script and gave Altman the go-ahead on the casting, scouting of locations, etc. For much of the cast, Altman turned to the local Kansas City actors whom he'd worked with in community theater and in industrial films, including James Lantz, Leonard Belove, and Kermit Echols, as well as his then-wife Lotus Corelli and his eight-year-old daughter Christine. However, hoping for a Hollywood-style film, Altman and Rhoden Jr. took a trip to California and cast for the three leads there. They came up with Peter Miller from The Blackboard Jungle to play the nervous teen Cholly, and Richard Bakalyan to play Eddy. A young, James Dean-imitating Tom Laughlin was cast in the lead role of Scotty, here making his motion-picture debut. Altman and Rhoden Jr. also came back from California with soundman Bob Post and camera operator Harry Birch.

Altman, by now employing his friends and Calvin co-workers, including Reza Badiyi as assistant director and associate producer and his sister Joan as production manager, scouted locations in Kansas City, and chose to film in Loose Park, as well as at the Jewel Box Nightclub, one of his favorite hangouts, and also at several Kansas City teenage hangouts including the Crest Drive-In Theater (which Rhoden Jr. owned) and Allen's Drive-In. Through Kansas Citian George Kuhn, one of the younger cast members, they secured two houses to be those of Scotty and Janice in the film. One of them was Kuhn's and his parents', the other was his neighbors'.

Altman filmed The Delinquents in two weeks in the summer of 1956 with the low budget of $45,000. Although Rhoden Jr. officially was the producer, Altman did most of that work himself. As Altman said years later, "I wrote the thing in five days, cast it, picked the locations, drove the generator truck, got the people together, took no money, and we just did it, that's all." Altman had the cooperation of local businesses as well as the Kansas City Police Department. Altman and Rhoden Jr. had actually gone to the police to make sure their portrayal of delinquents and their problems was accurate, and also contacted them in order to get their cooperation for blocking off streets and using the police station for filming scenes. They also used several police officers as actors playing, well, police officers.

Altman's film crew was made up mostly of his Calvin co-workers. Calvin photographer Charles Paddock was director of photography, and the aforementioned Reza Badiyi was assistant director. Calvin artist and designer Chet Allen was art director, and Altman's sister Joan served in a production executive capacity. Also with Altman's Kansas City crew were Californians Harry Birch (camera operator) and Bob Post (sound recorder). According to cast and crew members, the filming of The Delinquents was full of fun, spontaneity, good humor, and happy incident---like a party. Except there was one situation that presented the filmmakers with more than their share of problems. The egomaniacal star, Tom Laughlin, and the director Altman had conflicting theories of acting. To Altman, Laughlin was "an unbelievable pain in the ass," guilty that he had not become a priest, "with a big Catholic hangup and a James Dean complex." There was one particular incident where Altman was ready to shoot a scene in which Laughlin was supposed to appear physically exhausted, and Laughlin excused himself with, "I've got to get in the mood now." Laughlin would then insist run around the block a couple of times while cast and crew cooled their heels. Laughlin would try anything he heard about James Dean doing on Rebel Without a Cause, and then when his "living-the-part" pretensions were not welcomed by the cast or crew, Laughlin wanted to quit the film before Altman worked out a compromise for communication whereby Altman would tell Laughlin exactly what he wanted in any given scene. However, Laughlin still "performed the last half of the picture under protest."

The main reason The Delinquents is remembered today is that it was the feature directorial debut of Robert Altman. And although it is a hopelessly primitive and unimpressive film compared with Altman's later works, there were some signs of the developing genius. In order to reduce the frequency of overblown melodramatic moments constantly present in all of the films of this type, Altman had the actors recite their dialogue in a casual, naturalistic tone. His young group of performers portraying the gang could be described as an ensemble cast, and in several scenes, including one memorable, very Altmanesque sequence after the opening where the gang argues about what they are going to do that night for "kicks," he uses the techique of overlapping dialogue and soundtracks. Altman also purposely set up different challenging scenes for himself, including one during the opening credits where the camera follows the gang as they drive recklessly down a busy city street for about one minute and a half, starting with the Eddy character jumping through traffic into the back of the gang's convertible, with no cut-aways. This might be easily accomplished in Hollywood on a sound stage, but a matter of some ingenuity on a low budget on-location in Kansas City. Altman actually filmed this on a real city street there. Altman's camera also followed alongside the gang in their car in another scene as they drive down a country road, without using any rear or front projection and the actors attempt to perform their scene of dialogue over the sound of a rumbling car engine and moving tires, far away from the camera on the other side of the road. That didn't work, so Altman had to have the actors rerecord (or dub) their dialogue in a studio later.

Altman's experimental directing style was also developing, of course, especially with the party scene, which for Altman was a kind of signature as he loves parties and has featured one in at least half of the films he has done. SuEllen Fried, a local dancer and actress who played a small part in this party sequence, recalled: "He rented an old house off Walworth Boulevard and told us to pretend we were having the wildest party of our lives, while he moved the camera from room to room and just filmed whatever was going on. We didn't know when the camera was going. We were just having a wild party."

Finally, The Delinquents has also been noted (and praised) for its "technical excellence," especially the surprisingly sharp and rich quality of the black-and-white photography, far better than similar fare produced under studio conditions in Hollywood, and particularly amazing for a film made independently in Kansas City for so little money. This may have been the influence of Altman, who had learned quite a bit in lighting and photography during his industrial film experience, but more likely it was the doing of the Kansas City photographer, Charles Paddock, who was skilled and experienced not only in photographing Calvin industrial films but had also done research on photography and studied the art of photos for almost a decade in college. Paddock, in 1958, would leave the Calvin Company to form his own industrial film and video production company, Paddock Productions, in Kansas City which quickly became one of the major industrial film companies in the U.S. and remained constantly on the cutting edge of film technology. Paddock said that, just before beginning filming on The Delinquents, Altman advised him to watch the film The Asphalt Jungle and imitate that style of lighting.

The filming was completed by August 1956. In his contract with Rhoden Jr., Altman had a clause stipulating that The Delinquents post-production and editing would be executed under professional conditions in Hollywood. In late August, Altman and Reza Badiyi traveled across the country by car (Rhoden Jr. would not approve the air fare) to edit the film in California with Helene Turner. Fred Brown contributed the sound effects. The finished film was picked up for distribution by United Artists, who wanted some teen exploitation films to compete with the other studios. United Artists purchased The Delinquents for $150,000 and were basically purchasing a cheap "problem teen" film. They did see a need to fix it up---so it was even worse. So the film wouldn't be branded by adults and critics as senseless violence and melodrama, United Artists added a rather ridiculously moralistic and santimonious narration for the opening and closing credits without even telling Altman or Rhoden Jr. Altman was angry about this narration, but didn't care. As long as this cheapie film would help get his foot in the door in Hollywood, he wasn't going to attack a major studio for something they did to his film---not yet at this point in his career.

The Delinquents received its "gala world premiere" in Kansas City in February 1957. It was a major event. The showing of the film was preceded by live music, a dance contest, and a parade of the Kansas Citians who worked on the film. It was all covered by a live radio broadcast and was hyped up with house lights around the theater. United Artists released the film around the country the next month, giving it a rather brief, not very wide release. It played mostly in drive-ins. However, it did gross $1,000,000 for United Artists and led to Altman's television work which led to his feature film work in the 1960s.

Rhoden Jr. produced one more film in Kansas City, The Cool and the Crazy, and was featured in Time magazine as one of the "new wave" of producers. He then produced a delinquency film in Hollywood, Daddy-O, but his mini-mogul reign was short-lived. A hard-living man, he died of a heart attack in 1959 before the age of forty.

The Delinquents, is not very well remembered today and hasn't been shown theatrically for some thirty years. It has never been released on video and there is currently no prospect of it ever doing so. Though by no means a great, undiscovered classic, The Delinquents is decidedly a minor work by a major artist, and actually is nothing to be embarrassed about, even for one of America's greatest filmmakers.

[edit] External links

• The Delinquents at the Internet Movie Database

Films directed by Robert Altman

The Delinquents  • The James Dean Story • Countdown • That Cold Day in the Park • MASH • Brewster McCloud • McCabe & Mrs. Miller • Images • The Long Goodbye • Thieves Like Us • California Split • Nashville • Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson • 3 Women • A Wedding • Quintet • A Perfect Couple • HealtH • Popeye • Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean • Streamers • Secret Honor • O.C. & Stiggs • Fool for Love • Beyond Therapy • Aria • Vincent & Theo • The Player • Short Cuts • Prêt-à-Porter • Kansas City • The Gingerbread Man • Cookie's Fortune • Dr. T & the Women • Gosford Park • The Company • A Prairie Home Companion