In the 1956 film "The Violent Years," a quartet of bored teenage girls go on a crime spree, knocking over gas stations, robbing strangers and vandalizing a high school, their exploits concluding in a grisly shootout with police. This and other contemporary movies — including "Rebel Without A Cause," which depicted switchblade-wielding teens sporting leather jackets and slicked-back hair — captured the zeitgeist of the era, one marked by fear of youthful, ungovernable delinquents.
Even J. Edgar Hoover, the corrupt and long-serving director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, issued a warning in 1953 that "the nation can expect an appalling increase in the number of crimes that will be committed by teenagers in the years ahead."
