Melinda Cordell

Melinda Cordell

Greenwich Village Story, a 1963 feature film written and directed by Jack O'Connell, centres on the bohemian milieu of Greenwich Village. The female protagonist, Genie (played by actress Melinda Cordell, credited here as Melinda Plank), a talented ballet dancer, is made pregnant out of wedlock by her underachieving boyfriend, Brian (played by Robert Hogan (actor)), a would-be novelist. Rather than leave him in order to take up a professional dancing role she has been offered which involves touring, Genie stays in the flat they share, but Brian, after the damning rejection of his novel by a publisher upon whose patronage he was depending, absents himself for several days with an ex-girlfriend, Anne (played by Sunja Svensen), a society woman several years older who inhabits the periphery of bohemia, sometimes in the company of a genial young advertising copywriter, George (played by James Cresson). Not aware that Genie is pregnant, Brian has made their marriage conditional upon his success as a writer. Genie fears that Brian, who is emotionally immature (something noted by the publishers in their dismissal of his submitted novel), will reject her out of hand on learning about her pregnancy. One possible solution is for Genie to visit an illegal abortionist, having sold her late mother's brooch to raise the cash. Meanwhile, Brian is informally mentored in the ways of the world by a more cynical and experienced bohemian, Norman (played by James Frawley), and tempted into the world of Madison Avenue by George, with whom he has struck up a friendship.

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