The 1961 Movie "A Taste of Honey"

The 1961 British movie A Taste of Honey was based on a stage play that was performed in London during 1958-1959 and on Broadway in New York City during 1960. The play was written by a 19-year-old woman, Shelagh Delaney, and depicts the experiences of an impoverished 17-year-old, Jo Bryan, suffering through an unplanned pregnancy. She does not want to become a mother, she thinks she would be a bad mother, and she is contemptuous of her own mother.

It's unlikely that any of the Dirty Dancing characters saw the British movie, but they might have seen the Broadway play in 1960. In any case, the play and the movie reflect a developing concern at the beginning of the 1960s about unwanted pregnancies.

A friend suggests to Jo that she abort her pregnancy, but she curtly dismisses the suggestion as even more "terrible" than her unwanted pregnancy. Nevertheless, the Jo's sad situation surely suggested to much of the audience that an abortion might have been her best solution.

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The stage play has been reprised several times since 1960, most recently in London's National Theatre in 2014. Below are a couple of videos about that 2014 stage play.

I have not seen the play, but I recently watched the 1961 movie on the TCM television channel. My discussion of the story will be based on the movie, which is based closely on the play.

I liked the movie very much. The movie earned much praise. The Wikipedia article about the movie lists the following awards.

* Best British Screenplay

* Best British Film

* Best Actress

* Most Promising Newcomer.

* Best Actor

* Ranked at 56th place in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British films.

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The Wikipedia article about the movie summarizes its plot as follows:

Jo is a 17-year-old Salford schoolgirl, with a difficult, forty-year-old alcoholic mother, Helen. After sustaining a fall while walking past the dockyards after school, Jo meets a black sailor called Jimmy who invites her onto his ship to attend to her grazed knee. They soon start a brief romantic relationship, after which Jimmy returns to his ship and departs. Relations between Jo and her mother become strained when her mother meets and marries a new man, Peter Smith.

Feeling rejected by her mother, Jo starts a job in a shoe shop and rents a flat on her own. She meets a gay textile design student, Geoffrey Ingham, and invites him to move in with her. When Jo discovers she is pregnant by Jimmy, Geoff is supportive of her, even offering to marry her, saying at one point, "You need somebody to love you while you're looking for somebody to love."

Helen re-appears on the scene after the failure of her relationship with Peter, who turns out to have been a selfish lout. She moves in with Jo, which causes tensions between Helen and Geoff. Geoff decides he can no longer stay at the flat and moves out, leaving Helen to care for Jo and her soon-to-be-born baby.

The following video clip shows Jo telling Geoff that she is pregnant. At 0:40 he suggests an abortion, but she rejects that possibility, because abortion is "terrible".

Later, in the following scene, she tells him that she would be a bad mother and does not want to have a baby.

Later, in the following scene, when Jo is quite pregnant, she is visited by her mother.

At the end of the movie, Geoff is chased away by Jo's mother, and so Jo is living with her mother and waiting to give birth. I assumed that Jo would give the baby up for adoption.

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The now famous song "A Taste of Honey" was composed for and performed in the 1960 Broadway play. I will write about that song in my next post.