Youth Takes a Fling is a 1938 American comedy film directed by Archie Mayo and starring Joel McCrea. McCrea plays Joe Meadows, whose only ambition as a Kansas farm boy was a life at sea. He moves to New York to try to get a job as a sailor, finds it more difficult than he thought, and meets Helen Brown, who falls for him and uses her feminine wiles to try to prevent him leaving. One of Leeds relatively few films, both she and McCrea were loaned to Universal from Samuel Goldwyn.