Review of Take Care of My Little Girl

Released in l95l and not often revived, this well-made blend of comedy and social criticism attacks the American sorority-fraternity system that once prevailed in our colleges and dictated the values of former generations. The heroine, beautifully acted by Jeanne Crain, is the "little Girl" sent to a fashionable college where her mother had once reigned as a sorority queen. Slowly, and abetted by a gently cynical former soldier, Crain sees that the snobbery fostered by trendy sorority "girls" and "boys" can disturb and even destroy pledgees too weak or insecure to fight the system. Fine performances are given by Dale Robertson, as Crain's ally and boyfriend, Jeffrey Hunter in one of his earliest triumphs as a frat-boy narcissist, and the late Jean Peters, who is alluring and a trifle menacing as a sorority girl who measures people by the cut of their clothes. Atmospheric in its delineation of campus life and rituals and graced by first-class production values, "Take Care of My Little Girl" should be available to new audiences on videotape (and theater revivals). It's a film that Martin Scorsese appreciated before making his own films.