By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: screenwriter Dalene Young, who penned Little Darlings and Cross Creek.
As most in the film industry would likely agree, the screenwriter is perhaps the most under-celebrated figure in all of filmmaking. A film’s idea frequently begins with them, they build the narrative framework, the characters are usually their creation, and the words those characters speak come from their mind. When it comes time for praise, however, the director usually gets most of it, while the actors bathe in the limelight too, often while casually talking about how they “improvised” while on set, and made the character “their own.” But when a film fails, the blame is often placed at the foot of a “bad script”, even if the writer is not actually named in the excoriation process. So, as we’ve said before, pretty much every writer with a screen credit could qualify as an Unsung Auteur.
Some, however, are slightly more unsung than others, and considering her output, Dalene Young is definitely amongst them. Young is also a female working successfully in a largely male-dominated industry, and that is further cause for casting the spotlight in her very unassuming direction. Dalene Young has also quietly positioned herself as a highly astute and deeply humanist chronicler of the female condition, with a particular skill for tapping into the thoughts and feelings of young women, and also for scratching at the surface of celebrity and getting to the darkness underneath, which she has showcased in a collection of impressive telemovie biopics.
Dalene Young made an auspicious debut with her screenplay for the notorious 1976 telemovie, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway. Directed by Randal Kleiser before he went on to make Grease and The Blue Lagoon, this salacious small screen wonder was infamous for casting Eve Plumb – best known as Jan, the put-upon middle sister on the family sitcom The Brady Bunch – in the titular role of a smalltown innocent who runs away from home and ends up selling herself on the mean streets of Hollywood, where she falls under the sway of a nasty pimp, played with typical relish by the great Bo Hopkins. Though noted for its tawdry details, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway is also a deeply sensitive work that boasts heartfelt sympathy for its lead character and the other lost souls she meets on her sad downward spiral. This all grows out of Young’s deeply knowing and tuned-in script, which gives the film a real sense of authenticity. Young returned to the streets the following year for the film’s equally impressive sequel, Alexander: The Other Side Of Dawn, which followed the travails of Dawn’s male hustler friend, Alexander, played by Leigh McCloskey.
After a few more telemovies (1977’s socially minded Panic In Echo Park and Christmas Miracle In Caulfield USA), Young took her first detour into the world of the small screen celebrity biopic, first with 1978’s Deadman’s Curve (a rock-solid take on the lives and tragic career of surf-pop singing stars Jan and Dean, played by Richard Hatch and Bruce Davison) and then with 1979’s Can You Hear The Laughter? The Story Of Freddie Prinze, a strong look at the meteoric rise of the eponymous comedian, who enjoyed enormous fame on the popular and groundbreaking TV sitcom Chico And The Man before tragically committing suicide at the age of just 22 in 1977. Though these biopics were co-writes, both have the mix of flash and sensitivity that Young brought to her first two telemovies.
Dalene Young co-scripted the 1980 Silkwood precursor The Plutonium Incident before finally making her big screen debut with 1980’s Little Darlings, a superb teen flick directed by Unsung Auteur Ron Maxwell. Co-scripted with Kimi Peck (her sole screen credit), the film stars Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNicol as wildly different fifteen-year-old summer campers who engage in a bet over who can lose their virginity first. Despite the very raunchy premise, Little Darlings is no salacious 1980s T&A fest. Rather, Little Darlings is on the top tier of teen flicks. It’s fresh, funny, honest and authentic, with tart, knowing dialogue smartly written by Young and Peck. Most importantly, this film not only has two finely drawn female leads, but it also knows them intimately well, and the praise for this should most likely be attributed to Dalene Young.
Young followed up Little Darlings with two more small screen biopics, combining her interest in celebrity and her ability to effectively write female characters, this time in the beautiful form of two of Hollywood’s most gorgeous but tragic figures. Young incisively adapted Norman Mailer’s book for the 1980 TV mini-series Marilyn: The Untold Story (with Catherine Hicks as Marilyn Monroe), and Frances Farmer’s autobiography for 1983’s Will There Really Be A Morning?, which stars Susan Blakely and details Hollywood actress Frances Farmer’s struggle with mental illness; the autobiography was also the basis for the 1982 Jessica Lange film Frances, directed by Unsung Auteur Graeme Clifford. Marilyn: The Untold Story and Will There Really Be A Morning? were both above-average small screen works, and Young remained in similar territory for Martin Ritt’s lovely and sadly all-but-forgotten 1983 big screen drama Cross Creek. Young’s innate sensitivity found the perfect behind-the-camera partner in the wonderfully humanistic Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae, Nuts), who lent great warmth and lyricism to this affecting biopic on American author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (beautifully played by Mary Steenburgen), who famously wrote the novel The Yearling.
In the years since Cross Creek, Dalene Young has worked consistently in the telemovie field, penning or co-penning strong, female-focused, emotionally driven projects like 1984’s Why Me?, 1989’s I Love You Perfect, 1992’s Jonathan: The Boy Nobody Wanted, 1992’s A Message From Holly, 1997’s Journey Of The Heart, and many, many more. Young has also worked as an actress (on TV’s Grimm and the Nicolas Cage starrer Pig, amongst others), and penned two more big feature films. Her simpatico relationship with the mindset of American female teenagers was perfect for Melanie Mayron’s 1995 adaptation of Anne M. Martin’s hugely popular book series The Baby-Sitter’s Club, while 2000’s Baby Luv saw Young work officially for the first time as a writer with her director husband, Robert Martin Carroll. The very tough tale of a free-spirited young woman who considers selling her child to pay the rent, Baby Luv is a typically wild and largely unseen effort from the gifted Robert Martin Carroll, whose wonderful 1989 crime drama Sonny Boy is one of the most singularly unusual and original films of that decade.
With her last screen credit being 2002’s telemovie Miss Lettie And Me (which teams American cultural icons Mary Tyler Moore and Burt Reynolds, no less), Dalene Young appears to be retired from the film industry, leaving behind a resume that most female (and male too) screenwriters would likely be very jealous of…even though she has received nowhere near the credit that she so richly deserves for it.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
