The Ides of Dick Powell: Susan Slept Here

Note: This 1954 comedy has a plot that would not fly today. A middle-aged man and a minor six months short of legal fall for each other and get married. Back then lots of people probably said “peeyew” at May/December romances but at the same time just as many folks just shrugged at teenaged girls getting married. The early Fifties saw the peak of teen marriage in the US.  In 1954, approximately 6.1% of women who were 16 years old got married. This translates to about 6,361,000 women who got married at the age of 16.

Susan Slept Here
1954 / 1:38
Tagline: “WHAT GOES ON? When a girl almost 18 latches on to a man-about-town?”

In the early 1950s, millions of American girls under 18 were marrying, yet this comedy cheerfully ignores that reality and plunges into pure fantasy. Dick Powell plays a weary Hollywood screenwriter desperate to escape the fluff factory. Like Sullivan in Sullivan’s Travels, he yearns for grit and truth, so he asks his police pals to find him a genuine juvenile delinquent for research.

On Christmas Eve, two vice cops deliver Debbie Reynolds to his apartment. She’s been arrested for brawling - specifically, breaking a bottle over a drunken sailor’s head because he was acting like, well, a drunken sailor. Rather than jail her for the holidays, they beg Powell to babysit until she’s shipped to detention.

Convincing audiences that Reynolds – the impossibly adorable singer of Tammy - could be a JD takes effort. At first, she’s a wildcat, rattling Powell’s underemployed household of secretary and houseman. Then she discovers she’s read one of his novels and softens. The Christmas morning phone call from Powell’s fiancée Izabella (Anne Francis) is a comic gem: Reynolds innocently makes Powell sound depraved, chirping that they stayed up all night “playing games… card games.”

Soon Powell learns Reynolds faces six months in reform school unless she shows “visible means of support.” His solution? Marry her. Cue a neon-lit Vegas spree, dancing till dawn, then snoozing in a cab back to L.A. - a $1,500 fare in today’s money.

Powell flees Hollywood to write his magnum opus, aided by Glenda Farrell’s world-weary secretary (still funny, though the old-school man-hungry shtick hasn’t aged well). Les Tremayne supplies comic surprises as Powell’s frazzled lawyer, and Alvy Moore shines as the street-smart houseman. Red Skelton pops in for a cameo - mercifully silent, though his trademark mugging sneaks through.

Meanwhile, Reynolds tries to “grow up” with mixology, horseback riding, and golf - Izabella’s turf. Her mimicry of Francis in home movies is priceless, as is her ambush of Powell lip-syncing to one of his own dreadful scripts on the late show.

Technicolor is the film’s secret weapon. Anne Francis, with eyes like animated sapphires, looks alternately divine and deranged thanks to genius costuming. And Reynolds’ dream sequence? A riot of color and surreal comedy that actually advances the plot.

This is a looney holiday fantasy - half screwball, half satire - wrapped in eye-popping hues. It’s not reality by longshot - Powell’s Oscar statue sometimes narrates from its own point of view - but it’s a fascinating artifact of mid-century Hollywood.