This is just another “it was a different time so it was ok” excuse…was it ok? It’s not “moral panic” to look at a behavior now or in the past and say that it is problematic. We can contextualize it and we can talk about it–doesn’t mean its a panic.
I was listening to a couple episodes of the podcast Behind the Bastards that surveyed men’s adventure magazines from the 1950-1960s. In those stories, any female over 16 was fair game. Granted, those stories are borderline porn, but my impression is that 50 years ago and earlier, a 16 year old girl was considered an appropriate (if not technically legal) conquest for any playboy. And I have no doubt that at the same time, minor boys who were bedded by older women were not considered victims as much as just lucky. It doesn’t mean it was okay, but attitudes were different.
If you were also youngish or were gonna marry her. A 20yo dating a 16 would not have been considered creepy- well maybe by her dad.
The actress playing the woman was 23 and the actor playing the boy was 16.
‘Making love’ didn’t always used to mean actual sex. See e.g. It’s a Wonderful Life - ’ He’s making violent love to me, Mother!’
“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.”
— Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest
At least she wasn’t old, like 28!
Never trust anyone over 30.
If Mary and George were naked under the covers when she said that, you’d have a case. 
“undress” didn’t used to just mean “get naked”, either.
I thought his defense was that Joan Barry was twenty-one.
Yes, and it’s a frequently used phrase in movies of that era. Sometimes a bit disconcerting when you have the contemporary meaning in your head.
“You said ‘sex’ when ‘love’ is the polite term? That’s obscene!” he ejaculated.
The Piano Teacher
Forgive me, I’m trying for the Pedant of the Year Award.
When someone got drafted they received a letter in the mail that started with “Greetings.”
Death notifications were by Western Union telegram which started with “The Secretary of War regrets.” There was some variation depending on the branch of service but the telegram never said “Greetings.” Death notification by telegram didn’t stop until Julia Moore pushed the issue during the Vietnam War.
facepalm Yeah brainfart, that’s what I meant.
IIRC, 16 was the age you could quit school in many states. (Maybe all, but it’s always dangerous to say anything about the U.S.) In 1950, only about half of Americans finished high school. The rest quit as soon as they could and got jobs or got married. Therefore people were considered adults at 16. Hence the number of songs during the 50s that exclaimed “You’re Sixteen.” (“Out of my dreams and into my car.”) People then would be astounded at today’s judgement that people under 18 are not capable of making adult decisions and are just prey for older adults.
However, high schoolers have always been thought of as younger than their cohort no longer in school. All the guys want to dance with “Sweet Little Sixteen’s” heroine, oh but:
tomorrow morning
She’ll have to change her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again
An obvious case can be made for drawing legal lines at certain ages and applying the cutoff to everyone regardless of emotional and societal age. What’s happened as high school became more ubiquitous (graduation rates soared in the 50s and after and have now reached 87%) at the same as a backlash against the very real social power than males exhibit is that the pendulum swung far back the other way. Society took the legal line and applied it as a moral line. Does that makes sense in individual cases? It doesn’t matter and won’t until the pendulum moves again.
I like this line from History professor Andrew Roberts:
Although it is completely illogical, ahistorical and unfair to natural justice to judge the people of the past by today’s morals, it is also very hard not to.
Thank you for thoroughly explaining and grounding the conclusion I dropped upthread.
Our moral pendulum, or at least the offenderati wing thereof, has swung a long way away from where it was in e.g. 1940 when these movies were made or set.
And it swung really suddenly - I belong to a couple of Facebook groups where people reminisce about the 70s and 80s. There are loads of people talking about getting married in 1972 when they were 16 or 1977 at 18. Some of them were 16 year old brides marrying 20+ year old grooms - and not all were “oopsies”. I’m just a little bit younger than those people and it’s almost incomprehensible to me - nobody I knew got married at 16 unless there was a pregnancy involved. It’s not a social class thing - most of the people I knew growing up were blue collar and only a few of us went to college and still, people weren’t really living as adults until sometime in their 20s , even if they had dropped out at 16 or 17.
I think being more aware and open to discussing power dynamics in personal relationships is more common in the last few decades.
As long as the actors themselves are legal adults, I find no problem with it because the movie in question is trying to realistically portray a time in history when those things were happening.