The Beautiful Cheat (1945) DVD-R

Starring Bonita Granville, Noah Beery Jr., Margaret Irving, Sarah Selby, Irene Ryan
Directed by Charles Barton

Print: black/white
Runtime: 59 min.
Genre: drama

Dr. Alexander Haven, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of sociology, is asked by his publisher to write a book about juvenile delinquency. Having been the model child, Alex argues that he has no expertise in the subject, so the publisher suggests that he have an underprivileged child live in his household as a test subject. Intrigued, Alex agrees, much to the consternation of his friend and colleague, Dr. Horace Pennypacker, a psychologist with whom he had agreed to go on a fishing trip. As a favor, Horace then goes to the Harcourt Detention Center and asks Grace Woodside, the superintendent, to release her worse delinquent to the study. Horace is informed that he must wait thirty days for processing, but not wanting to hold up his fishing trip because of red tape, he convinces Alice, Woodside's twenty-two-year-old secretary, to pose as a delinquent teenager using the center's records as background...