Baby Love (1969 film)

Baby Love is a 1969 British drama film directed by Alastair Reid and starring Diana Dors, Linda Hayden, Keith Barron and Ann Lynn.

The film tells the story of a 15 year-old schoolgirl who seduces her adoptive family after her mother committed suicide.

Plot
Luci Thompson is a 15 year old school girl whose mother Liz, suffering from cancer, commits suicide. She goes to live with Robert Quayle, a childhood friend of Liz's, who is married to Amy and has a son, Nick. Luci’s arrival causes sexual and psychological tensions to surface, bringing the family close to destruction.

Cast

 * Ann Lynn as Amy (as Anne Lynn)
 * Keith Barron as Robert
 * Linda Hayden as Luci
 * Diana Dors as Liz Luci's mother
 * Troy Dante as the lover
 * Sheila Steafel as Tessa Pearson
 * Dick Emery as Harry Pearson
 * Lewis Wilson as priest
 * Derek Lamden as Nick
 * Patience Collier as Mrs. Carmichael
 * Terence Brady as Man in shop
 * Marianne Stone as manageress
 * Christine Proyor as shop girl
 * Yvonne Hormer as shop girl
 * Vernon Dobtcheff as man in cinema
 * Linbert Spencer as West Indian
 * Sally Stephens as Margo Pearson
 * Timothy Carlton as admiral
 * Christopher Witty as boat crew
 * Julian Barnes as boat crew
 * Michael Lewis as boat crew
 * Bruce Robinson as man in nightclub (uncredited)
 * Katch 22 (Band) as themselves.

Production
The film was based on the debut novel by Tina Chad Christian. Film rights were bought by producer Michael Klinger, who had just left Compton, a production company he had run with Tony Tenser. Baby Love would be his first movie as an independent producer.

The first director attached was Henri Safran. Linda Hayden was cast after an extensive talent search. She was only fifteen years old and had to do her screen test topless.

Safran was fired by Klinger and replaced by Alistair Reid. Linda Hayden said "Michael got rid of him because I don’t think he didn’t like what he saw, or something, but ...er... it was just that little bits of it were a bit tacky."

Most of the finance came from Star Cinemas in the UK. Klinger sold the film to Joseph Levine of Anglo-Embassy for over $1 million.

Hayden later said the film was "one of those projects that could so easily have gone wrong. It could have been a bit sleazy. Alastair made the film more grounded, so it wasn’t just done for sensationalism."

Hayden recalled Diana Dors "hadn’t had a resurgence then; she was still yesterday’s news. And then suddenly, as the film came out, she had a resurgence. She was terrific. They did use her name quite a lot to hang the film on and it certainly paid off. She was quite a coup, and a smashing lady. I loved her. Her character casts a long shadow over the film. It needed somebody like that to do it." The film helped revive her career.

Box Office
The film was the 11th most watched movie of the year in the UK in 1969.

The film took over half a million dollars in both the North America and the UK, and over $300,000 in other territories.

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

Alastair Reid's film makes no attempt to modify the crude contrasts and lurid events that formed the basis of Tina Chad Christian's first novel: the poverty of the northern slum and the ultra-chic of the doctor's environment remain equally overstated, shown essentially as they appear to the self-dramatising nymphet heroine. But partly because we are spared the precocious auto-analysis of Luci's commentary and her behaviour thus goes largely unexplained by any facile clinical labels, the film somehow transcends its inherent sensationalism and the gloss of its surfaces. And the performances of both Ann Lynn as the neglected wife and Linda Hayden as the enigmatic "outsider who is neither a child nor a woman convey, in very different registers, the difficulty of assuming responsibility either for emotions experienced or passions provoked.

Howard Thompson of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, praising the technical brilliance and writing: "Ugly as it is in flavor and content, the picture is a genuine pint-sized spellbinder in construction, mood and mounting tension."