Lucille Lang Day’s "Married at Fourteen," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Married at Fourteen by Lucille Lang Day.

The entry begins:

I was a juvenile delinquent, adolescent bride, and teen mother in the 1960s. Married at Fourteen tells about running away at 13, marrying at 14, having my first child at 15, divorcing my husband at 16, marrying him again at 17, and leaving him again at 18 because he didn’t want me to go back to school. After we separated the second time, I finished high school in three semesters and two summer sessions and was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, when I was 19.

My thoughts about the movie:

Director: My choice would be  Stephen Frears, who did a wonderful job with Philomena, another movie about a woman who gave birth as a teenager. Philomena deals compassionately with Philomena in both her youth and her old age. Frears understood that a teenager can love her child as deeply as any other mother does. Moreover, he saw humor as well as tragedy in telling Philomena’s story. In my own story, there was humor in my awful relationship with my mother and in my disappointments with my husband, Mark. My mother was so overprotective that she never let me take swimming lessons for fear I would drown, yet she let me get married at 14. This is both horrible and funny. On my 16th birthday, I got all dressed up expecting a surprise party, but my surprise was that I spent the evening watching my husband work on his car. One can laugh and cry about things like this, and I would not want a director who missed the laughter.

Cast:

Lucy: Abigail...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lucille Lang Day's website and follow her on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Married at Fourteen.

My Book, The Movie: Married at Fourteen.

--Marshal Zeringue