The Young Stranger | 1957

After several years working in television, John Frankenheimer, who went on to direct Birdman Of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate and Ronin, launched his cinematic career with this small-scale family drama of middle-class teen angst, released in the wake of Rebel Without A Cause.

James MacArthur is Hal Ditmar, son of a wealthy movie producer Tom (James Daly), whose run-in with a heavy-handed cinema manager Grubbs (Whit Bissell) escalates when he’s charged with assault and battery.

The house of Hal's pal Jerry Doyle is 1976 North Catalina Street, at Finley Avenue, in Los Feliz, east of Hollywood.

The cinema, where a bit of attitude on Hal's part leads to confrontation, is the Regency Bruin Theatre, 948 Broxton Avenue in Westwood, a lovely 1937 art deco gem. You can still see its twinkling neon frontage, directly opposite the tower of the Regency Village Theatre, itself featured in Hollywood satire Bowfinger. The Bruin is also the cinema at which Sharon tate (Margot Robbie) watches herself in The Wrecking Crew in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

‘Ulysses S Grant High School’ is John Marshall High School, 3939 Tracy Street, in Los Feliz, which had recently provided interiors for 'Dawson High' in Rebel Without A Cause and went on to be seen in the big-screen original version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Like Father, Like Son, Pretty In Pink, Grosse Pointe Blank and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Its playing fields were seen in Grease.

Hal supposedly lives in a Coldwater Canyon mansion in Beverly Hills, but his school pal Jerry, who’s forbidden to hang out with such a bad influence, lives about a mile west of John Marshall High in Los Feliz, at 1976 North Catalina Street on the junction with Finley Avenue.

---