The Young Philadelphians is a 1959 American legal drama film directed by Vincent Sherman and starring Paul Newman, Barbara Rush, Robert Vaughn and Alexis Smith.

After William leaves her that night, she seeks comfort from longtime working-class friend and former beau Mike Flanagan.

Years later, Tony is a smart, ambitious Princeton University student working his way through college for Flanagan as a construction worker, aiming to become a lawyer.

However, Joan's father Gilbert Dickinson persuades Tony to postpone the wedding by offering him invaluable career help and a job at the highly esteemed law firm of which he is a full partner.

Fellow student Louis Donetti tells Tony about a wonderful opportunity he has to assist John Marshall Wharton in writing a law book.

She comes to his bedroom one night, but he cunningly defuses the dangerous situation by asking her to divorce her husband and marry him, knowing that she will be unwilling to do that.

Chet Gwynn loses an arm in combat, and Carter Henry is killed, leaving Joan a widow.

Chet insists on Tony defending him, fearing that his relatives, particularly family patriarch Dr. Shippen Stearnes are more interested in avoiding a scandal than proving his innocence.

Newman was not happy with the work he had been doing on film, despite his Academy Award nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and had wanted to return to the stage, but he was forced to perform in Young Philadelphians by the contract he signed with Warner Brothers when he began making movies in 1955.

[6] For Vincent Sherman, the film marked a return to Warner Brothers after an eight-year absence during which he had gone to Europe to make movies.

[7] Young Philadelphians, Quirk points out, was "franker on the subject of homosexuality in some ways" than Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Newman also starred, because it is strongly suggested that the William Lawrence character was gay.

[11] New York Times critic A.H. Weiler described the film as "sudsy" and said that "Although 'The Young Philadelphians' appears to be striving mightily to say something trenchant it only makes a surface social commentary."

He called the film "an all-too-frequently pallid drama" and said it proves "that the trials and tribulations of the rich, like those of the poor, can be undramatic.

[13] New York Daily News critic Dorothy Masters wrote that the essence of the Powell novel "seems to have vaporized" in coming to the screen.