Hayley Mills tells how she feels

From Inside Movie (January 1963) comes an article in all likelihood generated by whatever PR machine was gearing up to push the new film Summer Magic, which was about to be released into theaters. This article features Hayley Mills candidly relating how she is handling growing up and becoming an adult. At this point in her life Hayley was facing one of the greatest obstacles of any actors' career, that of growing up.

The article tip-toes around the subject of puberty pretty deftly as Hayley describes her casual meeting with a wolf (from the description, probably a drunken Mickey Rooney) while she is out shopping. While the text attempts to appear as an innocent, embarrassing though thrilling encounter about a young girl approaching womanhood, the magazine really comes off as kind of sleazy. The vivid descriptions of Hayley in a pair of high heels and being fitted for a brassiere made me woozy. Hayley Mills is not Lolita even though the article really tried to sell her as an object of desire without coming right out and saying it. There was a lot invested in keeping her sweet, but various markets had to addressed and courted. Still, once past the Hollywood PR hack attempts to make Hayley sexy without being overtly sexual the piece tries to be positive and is superior in tone to those finger-wagging articles that would be published ad nauseum in just a few years to come.

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