No Time to Be Young (1957) User Reviews

Watchable J.D. slash noir drama

[gordonl56 · 7/10 · 22 February 2011]

This is a Columbia Pictures low renter with Robert Vaughn in the lead role. Vaughn is suffering from the mad at the world complex. He recently quit college and now finds out he has been drafted. He has no intention in going.

He needs money so he can head south to a sunnier climate. He meets a couple of buddies, Roger Smith and Tom Pittman at the local burger place. Smith and Pittman have troubles of their own. Smith has it bad for the daughter of his boss. The daughter, Merry Anders, is not interested in a guy who fills grocery bags for a living. Pittman has just got married to Kathy Nolan and needs to impress his new father in-law. He has been lying about selling a novel for a big wad of cash.

Complicating Vaughn's life, is his over protective mother, Sarah Selby, and the sexy college teacher, Dorothy Green, whom he is seeing. Vaughn tells Smith and Pittman he has a plan to net them 35-40 grand. They will hit the big supermarket where Smith works. They will rob the place on a Friday night and help themselves to the week's cash take. The other two want no part of the set-up. Things quickly change however for Smith and Pittman. Smith causes an accident that puts Anders in the hospital and Pittman's wife leaves him after discovering he is really broke.

The three decide to pull the job and acquire a pistol for, "just in case".. They call the police and send them on a wild goose chase with a false hold-up report. The three mask up and hit the supermarket with weapon drawn. They grab the cash and head for the exit. However, one of the clerks grabs Smith's mask and is shot dead by Vaughn. The three pile into the car and head to Dorothy Green's place to hide out. Green wants no part with the mess and sneaks off to call John Law.

The boys now have a falling out over the killing. Smith is left in a heap by a right cross by Vaughn and left for the Police. Vaughn and Pittman manage to escape as the police sirens close in. The two stop for food and cigarettes and a passing Patrol car puts the grab on Pittman. Vaughn is now on foot with the cash stuffed in his jacket. He hits a handy dance joint to hide for a while. The cops are soon looking the place over. Vaughn grabs a girl and hits the dance floor in-order to blend in.

Vaughn's night continues its downward spiral when his jacket pops a button. All the cash hits the floor and the crowd goes for it. Vaughn again beats the feet and escapes the police. On the edge of town he hitches a ride from a truck driver. Vaughn curls up and is soon asleep. The driver notices Vaughn's pistol stuck in his belt and pulls over at the first Highway Patrol station. While the driver is in grabbing the boys in blue, Vaughn awakens.

He quickly slips behind the wheel and speeds off with the Police in hot pursuit. The chase does not go far as Vaughn fails to make a turn on a steep hill and hurtles through the guard-rail. The film is sort of a juvenile delinquent "crime does not pay" expose.

If it had been made 8-10 years earlier I think it would have made a real killer of a noir.

This was one of the few films vet television director David Lowell Rich made away from the small screen.

The screenplay and story were by John McPartland.

The D of P was Henry Freulich. His work included, THE DEVIL'S MASK, SHADOWED, BUNCO SQUAD, CHINATOWN AT MIDNIGHT, THE CROOKED WEB and OVER-EXPOSED.

A barnacle resistant bottom can't help you mow

[mls4182 · 5/10 · 12 December 2021]

This low budget film was much better than I anticipated. The story is slow starting but it becomes interesting and compelling and the direction and acting are on par with an A production.

no time to be young

[mossgrymk · 7/10 · 17 June 2021]

At first you think this is just another schlocky, 50s teen pic such as TCM has been burdening us with in their misbegotten Spotlight for this month...why not just make it "Bad B Pictures" and then you're not limited by age?...but then Robert Vaughn's performance, his first, as a spoiled, self pitying mama's boy (both literally and figuratively), starts to intrude on the otherwise banal proceedings and soon it starts to get under your skin and by the 20 minute mark damn if you don't find yourself, if not exactly caring about this loser, at least interested in what will befall him. Most of this reaction is attributable to Vaughn's skills , especially for portraying oleaginous scumbags, but some of it is due to a nice, low key screenplay, (at least by socially conscious, 50s teen pic standards, that is), by John McPartland and Raphael Hayes and fast paced, if a bit too TV-ish, direction from David Lowell Rich. When Vaughn's not on the screen and we're left with the more pedestrian characters played by Roger Smith and Tom Pittman, especially Smith's bland super market clerk, the movie is less compelling, but Vaughn's on screen enough so that it doesn't unduly harm the proceedings. Give it a B minus.

Too much soap

[lor_ · 28 March 2024]

It's fun to see Robert Vaughn, his smug, hissable screen persona so fully formed early in his career, starring in the mixed-up soap opera/generation gap/crime drama suffering from a horrible screenplay. But getting to the end of the show is quite a chore given the phony-baloney situations and characters of writer John McPartland's screenplay.

Best performance is not by the leads but by perhaps the least famous of the prinicpal players: Doris Dexter who is Vaughn's sympathetic college porfessor and an early example of what is now termed a MILF. The mother fixation of Vaughn is one of the worst elements of the half-baked story, that devolves into stupid melodrama.

One personal sidelight: McPartland, who like the co-lead Tom Pittman died young the next year (making the title of this movie pay off) wrote the Adult soap opera "No Down Payment", also shot in 1957. I saw the movie in a unique fashion: at my Junior High School they would screen fairly recent feature films at lunch time, one reel a day for 4 cents admission. Most were from 20th Century-Fox and science fiction ("The Fly", "Kronos" and "Spacemaster X-7" for example), but this one proved to be too steamy for us kids (no time to be young, I guess). It was my first encounter with censorship: the final reels were cancelled by the school, as the film was deemed not suitable for us to watch!

Robert Vaughn's First Starring Role

[aldo-49527 · 6/10 · 12 June 2021]

Buddy Root exits the office of Local Board No. 20 Selective Service. At the bottom of the stairs he lights a cigarette and the music swells. And as he steps to the camera the title "No Time To Be Young" flashes across him. The next title reads: "Introducing Robert Vaughn."

That's how this 1957 Columbia Pictures film begins. And, this is unmistakably Vaughn's picture.

Root (Vaughn) is upset that he's been drafted into the military. He's ruined his chances at a deferral by dropping out of college. He's from a fatherless home and his mother appears to be too busy to offer the type of parental guidance he needs.

Root has been having a relationship with his former college professor. She can't reach this troubled young man either as he wants to leave the country and desert his military obligation.

Root enlists the help of two friends to rob a grocery story and fund their escape. Each of these men face dark futures, too. One, has fallen for a reckless woman and now needs money to help her and the other guy has secretly married the daughter of a wealthy man and faces pressures to achieve financial success. Each of these men has been irresponsible and impulsive.

The filmmakers seem to have trouble with women.

No Time To Be Young tries explore the problems of criminal behavior from young men but it never offers more than superficial reasons.

What Vaughn provides is a vivid screen debut of a sociopath with self-destructive behavior.

And, for that reason, this film is worth a look.

crime duo would be better

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 13 June 2021]

Buddy Root (Robert Vaughn) is a slick bad boy up to no-good. He was kicked out of college and is desperate to avoid the draft. Stu Bradley claims to be a successful writer but it's a lie. He needs $500 as a fake advance selling his book to fool his new wife and her father. Store clerk Bob Miller is obsessed with his girlfriend Gloria who refuses to marry him. She has a backbreaking accident and needs money for medical. They come up with a plan to rob the supermarket.

With hindsight, it's obvious to make Robert Vaughn the undeniable lead of the movie. The other characters are only supporting cast. I actually like Stu's predicament and it's a great opportunity to go on a crime spree. He's the lying type and a good second fiddle in a crime duo. Bob's predicament is less compelling. The fall looks silly and Bob whines too much. It's sillier than the other two and I would just cut him out. I would make Buddy even harder. I really like Buddy and Stu as a duo. This may as well be a part of Crime doesn't pay.

Typical Late 1950s "Troubled Youth" Melodrama, Notable for Vaughn's Presence

[mrb1980 · 4/10 · 30 October 2005]

Robert Vaughn is almost the whole show in this predictable, yet mildly interesting little film. First Vaughn is drafted into the military, then loses his student deferment for arguing with the dean at the local college, sleeps late, fights with his girlfriend and parents, then is talked into robbing the local supermarket by a couple of misguided friends. The robbery (naturally) goes awry, and Vaughn escapes with the loot stuffed into his shirt and heads for a local dance hall. Well...you know what happens next, the money falls out onto the dance floor, causing a free-for-all. Vaughn escapes in a truck and plunges off a cliff while being chased by the law. Pretty strong moral there, although Vaughn's character apparently does live through the accident.

"No Time to Be Young" would be pretty much forgotten if not for Vaughn, in one of his first film roles. The remaining cast is not really notable, so Vaughn carries the film almost by himself, in a very good performance in an otherwise forgettable movie.

A neglected film

[jromanbaker · 8/10 · 20 December 2019]

The mid-Fifties were a strange time, with most of the elder population being terrified of ' delinquents '. This was a broad word which covered the truly criminal, the outsider and those who society chose to be afraid of. Among these paranoid and fear mongering films were ' Rebel Without A Cause ', ' The Wild One ', ' Blackboard Jungle ', ' The Young Stranger ' and this very good film ' No Time To Be Young'. Of all of the listed above it is the least known, and yet in one actor in it there was another potential James Dean, Tom Pittman. He was as quirkily beautiful as Dean, and his sensitive acting superb and he met the same fate as Dean in a car crash while still very young. There are basically three stories in this scenario, all relating to the lives of three men barely out of their teens. All three have psychological needs and no one really cares about them, and for a rare change it is the men in this who suffer emotionally most and not the women. From a non politically correct point of view the women seemed either sexually predatory or success oriented wanting these young men to be stronger than their fragile selves could cope with. The inner claustrophobia of their lives build to a terrible climax, and an unhappily believable one. All of the relatively unknown cast were good, and it saddens me that in the UK it was double billed with a second rate horror film called ' The Strange World ' and was given the banal and untrue title of ' Teenage Delinquents '. By what I see on the BBFC site it was cut to shreds and for no good reason that I can understand. Crippled by this it was still given an X certificate. And so a film comparable to those I have listed has been more or less lost. In its structure it made me think of ' No Down Payment ' in its implicit criticism of society and I wish more people would track it down. A minor masterpiece of excellent film making and acute perception. If it had had a little less melodrama at times I would have given it a 10.

Robert Vaughn flick about troubled youths

[lowindexes · 14 April 2020]

Like others have mentioned, it's a "the kids are out of control" film feat. those needlessly violent, mixed up, & entitled 50s youths that seemed to have nothing better to do than terrorize the dependable, hardworking older folks. Crime, mayhem, and accidental murder ensue. Top it all off by giving each fella a dame that is no good for them. Sounding familiar? That's because if you've watched one, you've watched a dozen. I found the male leads and their various circumstances sympathetic to a degree, but ultimately they were the architects of their own misery. I wish there had been more depth to each boy's circumstances or rather, if they had focused more on Vaughn's character.

Overall, not sure I like it, but I don't hate it either. It's a predictable movie that's good for a lazy afternoon. May be of interest to those who wish to see a young Robert Vaughn in one of his first film roles.