How ‘James at 15’ Helped Teen TV Dramas Come of Age

“I must register my disgust,” wrote Cecelia Mazzarini of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The mother of four addressed her screed to a local newspaper’s television column to protest James at 15, an NBC drama about the tribulations of a teenage boy named James Hunter. She had been enjoying the show, she explained, until news broke about James possibly losing his virginity in an upcoming episode set to air in February 1978.

“There really are so few programs [my] children are permitted to watch because of sex and/or violence, and now there is one less,” she wrote.

Television critics and network affiliates received similar letters in other parts of the country. In the era of relatively prudish series like Happy Days, Little House on the Prairie, and Eight is Enough, the subjectively taboo topics of James at 15 stirred controversy not only with viewers, but with NBC itself. While the series would go on to inspire a new generation of mature teen shows, it was perhaps ahead of its time. In losing his virginity, James would also lose the support of his own network.

Teens on TV

Dan Wakefield had never written for television before. A Columbia graduate, Wakefield was primarily a journalist—he worked as a contributing editor to The Atlantic—and novelist. His 1970 book Going All the Way was well-received; the coming-of-age tale focused on two young Korean War veterans trying to re-acclimate to domestic life in 1950s Indianapolis. (It was belatedly turned into a movie in 1997, co-starring Ben Affleck.)

It was Going All the Way that motivated David Sontag to pick up the phone. Sontag, 20th Century Fox’s vice president of television programming, was hoping to find a writer who could craft a more literate teenage series than what was currently on the air. Sontag may not have known it, but he aimed to usher in a prestige drama in an era before prestige television became a buzz phrase. He encouraged Wakefield, a television neophyte, to focus more on the story than writing a pat TV script.

Wakefield liked the idea, though he wasn’t interested in anything autobiographical, nor did he have any children of his own to draw from. Instead, he researched the project by sitting in during high school classes in Boston, with his ear tuned for the kinds of social struggles the teens of late 1970s America were experiencing. There were the typical—cliques, academic expectations, sports—as well as issues that were normally the purview of Afterschool Specials: drugs, booze, and sex.

None of it was particularly shocking to him. “I think people my age have been conned into believing kids today are a new breed, very hip,” he said. “I think the basic experiences are quite similar, although some now happen [to kids] sooner.”

Wakefield soon settled upon a central protagonist: 15-year-old James Hunter, whose father is a college professor, his mother a homemaker, and his sisters alternately supportive and annoying. Life in Oregon is idyllic for James, who competes on the school swim team but whose true passion is photography. Both were calculated choices.

“I wanted a story more common to everyone’s experiences,” Wakefield said. “I got the idea of making him a swimmer from a neighbor’s son. That shows he’s active and healthy but doesn’t make him a hero. [And] I’ve always felt that for a person to be a photographer he has to have perception, yet it doesn’t make him an intellectual.”

Though Wakefield was a rookie in television, NBC made sure he had a lot of experienced producers around him. The network hired Joseph Hardy, Ronald Rubin, and Martin Manulis to help oversee the series; Manulis was a veteran of the classic anthology series Playhouse 90. To play James, the network cast 16-year-old Lance Kerwin, who had been working steadily in television and was remarkable for being an actual teenager: Ron Howard and others in Happy Days, for example, were in their twenties; Henry Winkler (Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli) was in his thirties.

The James at 15 pilot that aired on September 5, 1977, set the table for the series to follow. When his father takes a new job in Boston, James’s life is turned upside-down. There’s the culture shock, as well as the angst of being transported 3000 miles from girlfriend Lacey (Melissa Sue Anderson). His parents (Linden Chiles and Lynn Carlin) are loving but argumentative. James is no jock but not quite a nerd, either: He’s a capable swimmer who finds enough nerve to approach his crush shortly after history class.

“So what’s your favorite World War?” he asks her. “One, or two?”

When she’s spirited away by a football player, James imagines his preferred outcome: The two getting into a minor crash, with James coming to the rescue. (This fantasy device would become a recurring element of the series, a mix of Walter Mitty and Calvin and Hobbes.)

After failing to find his footing after relocating to Boston, James decides to take a bus back to Oregon to reunite with Lacey. Unfortunately, she’s back in the arms of the football hero. Dejected, James decides to hitchhike to Canada with a stranger (Kate Jackson of Charlie’s Angels). By the end, he’s returned to Boston, figuring a broken heart is probably better than becoming a Mountie.

The movie-length pilot was a major success in the ratings, with 42 percent of the viewing audience tuned in to make it the most-watched television program of the week. On the surface, it looked like NBC and Wakefield had a hit; the network ordered 20 episodes and slotted the show to air on Thursdays at 9 p.m. beginning in October. But Wakefield’s plans to have James lose his virginity on his 16th birthday would draw a far different reception.

Sex and Censorship

James at 15 touched on a variety of issues, from death to James’s adult sister having an affair with an older college professor. The topicality and how it was dealt with was a refreshing change of pace from most television programs on the air. While not a huge success in terms of ratings, the series was finding a warm reception from critics thanks to that authenticity.

“Contrast James at 15 with some of the other goings-on on TV in the same week,” wrote television critic Robert Spurrier. “The Hardy Boys were flying a jetliner into the Bermuda Triangle. The Six Million Dollar Man was altering the course of the moon, the characters in Logan’s Run were facing a 24th century crisis, and the police in CHiPs were tracking down a ‘green thumb burglar’ who was stealing plants from along highways.” James, Spurrier concluded, was far more relatable than bionic men and motorcycle cops.

Like most kids his age, James also dwelled on sex. In the pilot, James comes close to sleeping with Lacey. The two go out to a camping spot and get undressed in a shared sleeping bag. But it’s too cold, and the plan is abandoned. No one ever actually says the word sex, and birth control is only alluded to in terms of James insisting “this man protects the woman he loves.”

For “The Gift,” the show’s 12th episode, NBC’s Klein wanted to have James go all the way. He meets a Swedish exchange student who becomes a new love interest. The two consummate their involvement on James’s 16th birthday. Wakefield, who was now a story consultant for the series, agreed to the idea, providing the show mentioned birth control as well as the potential for sexually transmitted infections. Wakefield even intended to change the show’s title to James at 16.

But the script for “The Gift” was met with heavy resistance at NBC. The network’s censor, Ralph Daniels, told Wakefield that viewers wouldn’t tolerate any mention of birth control. What’s more, Daniels wanted to have James pay a price for his libido (in the form of fear of an unwanted pregnancy) so viewers would see there were consequences for premarital sex.

“Our concern was that the series didn’t appear to be condoning a sex experience without consequences,” Daniels said. “The day after the young people go to bed, they begin to worry about pregnancy, and they find that there is an emotional distance between them. The early euphoria is gone, and they experience worry and remorse. That becomes their punishment.”

Wakefield was dismayed. James at 15 was intended to have verisimilitude, touching on topics that affected teens in the real world. It wasn't intended to preach.

“At first, Standards and Practices wouldn’t accept the script on teenage love‐making at all,” Wakefield told The New York Times. “Then they determined that it would be all right, if the boy suffers for it and is somehow punished.”

Unable to win a fight with the network, Wakefield resigned from the series; NBC had the script rewritten. Though James still loses his virginity, he frets over a possible pregnancy in the episode.

This “punishment” did little to alleviate viewers who thought the entire episode was in poor taste. Several newspapers fielded letters of complaint; at least one station, WDAF in Kansas City, refused to air it at all, an overt condemnation of the show that some viewers heralded.

“I would like to publicly thank ... WDAF-TV for choosing not to air the totally tasteless and potentially morally damaging segment of James at 16 dealing with teen-age sex,” one wrote.

Others were less convinced. “I am aware of the arguments concerning TV and children, but that is the parents’ responsibility, and not a television station manager’s,” another viewer argued.

James Loses His Time Slot

Had James at 15 held on to its strong ratings from its premiere, it’s possible NBC might have been more emboldened. As it was, the show was performing poorly, and James wouldn’t make it to age 17. The series was canceled in May 1978 after 21 episodes.

Though it’s slightly obscure today, James at 15 pioneered relatable teen dramas, the likes of which began to proliferate with My So-Called Life in 1994 and continue with shows like Dawson’s Creek. The latter’s creator, Kevin Williamson, credited James at 15 for motivating him to explore the complex emotions of young people.

“My favorite show was James at 15,” Williamson said in 1998. “And that was sort of the inspiration for this show … I just remember that James talked the way I wished I had talked. He also said the things I wished I could think of, the things I thought when I was lying in bed at midnight, as opposed to when I was really in the situation.”

Wakefield, who died at age 91 in March 2024, deserves credit not only for championing a grown-up story about a teen but for having the integrity to walk away when it became clear he couldn’t be honest about that experience. James Hunter may have been coming of age, but it was television that still had a lot of growing up to do.

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