Early in The Age of Consent, we're introduced to a group of young university students who seem intent on taking advantage of all the freedom that "being away at college" offers. Some of the boys are rather obvious about their intentions: The flashy Duke Galloway (played by Swedish-American actor Eric Linden) is always trying to lure comely young co-eds into his shiny roadster. Others, like Richard Cromwell's Michael Harvey, are more serious about their studies, but that doesn't mean they're uninterested in girls. Mike has his eye on Betty Cameron (Wilson), among the prettiest and most vivacious of the students on campus. Betty likes Mike, but she finds him a little dull. She informs him, just as she's about to go off for a ride in Duke's fancy car, that she's a modern woman and wants to have fun. Mike finds a way to humiliate her, publicly advertising what he believes are her loose morals. Betty is upset, although the two eventually make it up: In a rather extraordinary sequence, she follows him into the men's room of a local diner, where the two engage in some hot-and-heavy kissing that's steamy even by pre-code standards.
The road to true love isn't easy for these two, and after further misunderstandings, temptation arises in the form of saucy diner waitress Dora (played by the flirtatiously appealing Arline Judge). The movie's ending does take the safe route. (The screenplay was adapted from a play by San Francisco playwright Martin Flavin, Cross Roads; Flavin also wrote the play on which the 1931 film The Criminal Code, directed by Howard Hawks, was based.) But for long stretches of its fairly brief runtime, The Age of Consent stresses the reality that young people with a healthy sex drive are very likely to give into temptation, and an act of premarital sex actually does occur in the film. La Cava doesn't show it, of course, but it's very obviously, if tactfully, suggested. In general, there's something bracingly direct about the way the film deals with sexual desire outside the bounds of marriage, particularly in terms of its women characters: It's not always the men who make the first move.
The Age of Consent, released the same year as La Cava's first real box-office hit The Half Naked Truth (with Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez), received decent reviews. "It is unlikely that modern students will recognize themselves in the sub-sophomoric specimens of college men and women in 'The Age of Consent,'" wrote the critic for The New York Times, though he then went on to temper his criticism: "But the problems are real and the film presents them with some understanding." Wilson navigates all of this deftly, especially for a first-time actress, walking a fine line between playing her character as a virtuous figure and a young woman who's excited to be living in the modern age. The performance attracted some attention: "Wilson turns out to be a highly interesting young type, suggesting in appearance a flapper Norma Shearer," wrote the critic at Variety. "The part of a college co-ed does not call for any histrionic fireworks, but the newcomer reveals a remarkable aptitude for natural acting." Consequently, Wilson was named a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1932: The annual promotional campaign, dreamed up by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, honored groups of up-and-coming starlets believed to have a shot at becoming Hollywood's next big stars. (Other honorees that year were Ginger Rogers and Gloria Stuart.)
Wilson did continue to appear in films through the 1930s, though she never became a big star, a prize she perhaps never really wanted, anyway. While she was making Eight Girls in a Boat (1934), she met screenwriter Lewis R. Foster, whom she married in 1936. A few years later, she gave up movies for good, settling down to raise a family, though her husband, of course, continued to build his career as both a writer and a director: He won a screenwriting Oscar for his work on Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Wilson's final role was a small, uncredited part in the 1943 Red Skelton vehicle Whistling in Brooklyn -- she never returned to acting. She died in 1998 at age 88, and is reported to have said that she wasn't really cut out to be an actress and never intended to do it for very long. At the very least, she had a Hollywood adventure - one that was probably a lot more fun, and more lucrative, than slogging it out in the steno pool.
SOURCES:
IMDb
The New York Times
Variety
Producer: David O. Selznick
Director: Gregory La Cava
Screenplay: Martin Flavin (play); Sarah Y. Mason, Francis M. Cockrell (screenplay); H. N. Swanson (treatment; uncredited)
Cinematography: J. Roy Hunt
Music: Oscar Levant, Max Steiner (both uncredited)
Film Editing: Jack Kitchin
Cast: Dorothy Wilson (Betty Cameron), Richard Cromwell (Michael Harvey), Eric Linden (Duke Galloway), Arline Judge (Dora), David Matthews (John Halliday)
[black and white, 72 minutes]
By Stephanie Zacharek
