(2 of 2)
The Young Philadelphias (Warner), the film version of a popular novel by Richard Powell, is a sort of updated Kitty Foyle that has lost its wit and is fumbling for a moral: social status isn't everything. As in Christopher Morley's 1939 bestseller, the story tells what happens when a Philadelphia girl (Diane Brewster) tries to go beyond her station on the well-known Main Line. She marries into one of the very best families, but on her wedding night discovers that the blue blood has run pathetically thin. Frightened and confused, she flies back to the arms of her redbrick-Irish boyfriend (Brian Keith) and soon finds herself with child. She also finds herself without a husband: he smashes up his car and is killed. Coldly refusing to marry the man she really loves, she informs him that she is going to raise his son (Paul Newman) as though he were her husband's. "I want him to have the right chances."
He does. He goes to Princeton, falls in love with a rich girl (Barbara Rush), joins the town's top law firm, and rises rapidly up the shingle toward a partnership. The hitch comes when he realizes that in advancing his worldly status, he has neglected his spiritual state. For a moment there, it looks as if the picture is going to make an honest if not very original point. But before anybody can say Fish House Punch, the script gives the hero a splendid opportunity to save his soul without losing any money.