Teen Runaways Fall Prey to a Pimp in Little Ladies of the Night

Paul Schrader, the Taxi Driver scribe who later wrote and directed Hardcore, wasn’t the only 1970s auteur preoccupied with sexually exploited minors. “Jiggle TV” mega-producer Aaron Spelling threw his feathered fedora into the ring with Little Ladies of the Night in 1977, scoring a ratings blockbuster for ABC with a tonally confused production that regards teenage prostitution—and all the physical and sexual violence it entails—as a gig worse than the average fast food shift but better than Yves Montand’s trucking assignment in The Wages of Fear.

Its opening narration is our first clue that Little Ladies, scripted by Hal Sitowitz and directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (The Deliberate Stranger), is an unserious film about a serious topic. Calling the teen runaway crisis “a major social issue,” it warns parents of the dangers that await children on the street. “You don’t want to find your kids here,” we’re told, and of course that’s true. But we also knew by 1977 that life with one’s parents wasn’t necessarily safer than harsh alternatives. That idea is paid some lip service here, until Sitowitz and Chomsky pull a potent punch that arguably undermines the rest of the story.

Fourteen-year-old protagonist Hailey Atkins (Linda Purl) runs away from home several times before falling prey to the machinations of smooth-talking pimp Comfort (Clifton Davis of Amen). His stable includes friendly young Karen (Kathleen Quinlan) and the more seasoned, sadistic Maureen (Lana Wood). There’s something suspicious about Hailey’s father, Frank (Paul Burke), which mother Marilyn (Morticia Addams herself, Carolyn Jones, thoroughly stripped of vanity) appears to confirm later, when she orders her husband to “Kiss me again, and this time think about me, not Hailey. Just me.”

That would’ve been a more realistic portrayal of the typical precursors to sex work or fleeing home, but someone along the way—possibly producers or network censors—may have lost their nerve. Instead, Marilyn is revealed as the family’s sole abuser, a woman too hysterical to share her husband’s attention with their child. “Everything’s been so wonderful between us since you’ve been gone,” she says when Hailey calls sobbing from a phone booth, begging to return home after a traumatic initiation into her new line of work. That harrowing scene brings out the best in Purl, who doesn’t always manage to convey the full range of her character’s emotions.

Another missed opportunity arises when Detective Garfield (Louis Gossett Jr.) and Lyle York (David Soul of Prime Target and Through Naked Eyes), a newly-reformed pimp now toiling at the police station, testify in a Senate hearing about teen runaways and prostitution. York engages in some passionate political grandstanding about juvenile justice without offering any reasonable solutions, while a panel of senators ask enough foolish (and often racist) questions that I fully expected one to clear his throat and drawl “Mr. York, sir, if you would indulge the Senate’s curiosity—how did you, ahem, keep your pimp hand strong?”

Despite these indignities, Gossett gives a standout performance; he and Kathleen Quinlan possess the depth that Purl and Soul lack. Vic Tayback, Katherine Helmond and Dorothy Malone spice things up in small roles, and Davis brings an appropriately frightening panache to Comfort, but the grotesqueness of Hailey’s mother casts a pall over most of the supporting action. Though it ends on a somewhat self-congratulatory note, Little Ladies of the Night imparts no lasting lessons. Your time might be better spent watching another Spelling production: “Angels on the Street,” a fan-favorite Charlie’s Angels episode that finds the gals undercover as hookers, with Jaclyn Smith sporting particularly memorable pants.

… But wait, there’s more!

Almost 50 years after this movie was made, the runaway problem has been replaced by kids not leaving their parents’ homes. And in some overly online quarters, the humble bus depot pimp has been replaced by rah-rah sex work Internet cheerleaders who recruit as ardently and cynically as any LuLaRoe #girlboss trying to pad her downline.

Meanwhile, the trafficking of children and teenagers continues, albeit not in the kooky conspiratorial ways that QAnon cultists maintain. (The facilitators are more often drug-addled parents than shadowy international cabals.) It’s something that is largely hidden from polite society’s view, but if you work in particular legal, medical and mental healthcare fields, as some of my friends and relatives do, you know how prevalent it remains. I say this only because I don’t want readers to mistake this film as a kitschy relic of a bygone era. The wardrobe is outdated but the subject matter isn’t.

Streaming and DVD availability

Little Ladies of the Night is out-of-print on DVD; it was released by Platinum Discs so long ago that it was housed in a jewel case, an impractical design that was swiftly replaced by snap cases and keep cases. You can find grainy transfers on YouTube as of this writing. Dead links can be reported in the comments below.

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Cranky Lesbian

Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.

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