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Gorcey, Dell, Jordan, Punsley, Halop, Hall
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After their success in the Broadway play of the same name, The Dead End Kids sprang upon an unsuspecting movie-going public in Samuel Goldwyn's 1937 film Dead End, a crime drama featuring Humphrey Bogart.
The success of this film led Warner Brothers to sign the Kids and feature them in six films which starred such screen luminaries as Ronald Reagan, Pat O'Brien, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield and Claude Raines. The films were the typical Warner fare of serious social/crime dramas with the Kids heavily involved in the plot and also lending some comedy relief. The quality of the films declined until Warner's threw in the towel and the Kids were reborn as the East Side Kids at the king of the poverty row studios, Monogram. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop and Bernard Punsley played the Kids. Despite the fact that they played the same basic roles in every picture, their characters were given different names in many of the films, although Billy Halop was always the leader and featured "Kid" in these movies. Generally, these films are the best made of any of the four series. Dead End and Angels With Dirty Faces are considered classics of the genre. They Made Me A Criminal is notable for it's strong performance by future superstar, John Garfield. (Garfield would team up with Halop & Jordan in Warner's 1939 Dust Be My Destiny.) The last two Warner's films are pretty bad though.
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At the same time that Warner's was cranking out the Dead End Kids series and Monogram doing the same with the East Side Kids, Universal Studios signed four of the Kids (Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell and Bernard Punsley) and released a series of mostly bad (OK OK just plain awful!) "B" movies and three 12-part serials. Leo Gorcey's brother, David, was featured in several of these unmemorable films.
Generally, the boys retained the same names throughout the series (except the serials). Billy Halop was first Johnny, then Jimmy before becoming Tommy for the duration. Huntz Hall played Pig, Bernard Punsley played Ape, Gabriel Dell played String. Not all the characters appeared in all the pictures. Dead End Kid Bobby Jordan played Rap in 2 of the films and became Tommy(!) in the last entry in the series. The first film, Little Tough Guy, bad as it may be, is the best of the lot. It's a social/crime drama in the Warner Brothers style. After this the quality of the films falls right off the chart. I can recommend this series only to die-hard fans of the Boys. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hall, Robert Armstrong, David & Leo Gorcey, Jordan, Stone, Morrison
This series of films by Monogram featured the boys first in crime melodramas with comedic overtones then in comedies with some serious (usually criminal) overtones.
| The plots almost always cast the Boys as lower class street urchins in conflict with the criminal element that surrounded them. Occasionally the criminal element was replaced by Nazi or Japanese fifth columnists. Billy Halop was gone by this time and Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan took over as leaders and featured "Kids". As the series progressed, the comedy duo of Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall became the focus of the films.
Dave O'Brien (AKA Mish Mash the Muttonhead from the Pete Smith comedy shorts and star of Reefer Madness) appears in several films. Other actors cast as East Side Kids include Bennie Bartlett, Harris Berger, Frankie Burke, Hally Chester, Stanley Clements, Johnny Duncan, Dave Durand, Eugen Francis, Buddy Gorman, Mende Koenig and Jimmy Strand The production values of many of these films are low, even by Monogram standards, although they seemed to get better as the series progressed. A couple of the early films are so bad as to be virtually unwatchable, even by die-hard fans. There is a 1940 film entitled "East Side Kids" that some feel should be included in the series. Since it doesn't have any of the "Dead End Kids" in it, I feel it should be omitted.
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Making steady appearances as East Side Kids were:
Huntz Hall, Billy Benedict, Leo Gorcey, David Gorcey, Bobby Jordan
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This series of comedies found the Boys in a variety of situations, always with the underrated (and critically unappreciated) comedy duo of Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall as the focus. The earlier films (1946-1950) had an overtone of gangster melodrama, while the later films were pure slapstick.
Leo Gorcey began to drink heavily after the death of his father, Bernard Gorcey, in late 1955. In fact, he appears to be intoxicated in his final film, Crashing Las Vegas. The producers of the series replaced Gorcey with former East Side Kid, Stanley Clements, for the last seven films. The chemistry that worked so well between Gorcey and Hall never materialized with Clements and this, along with the fact that the "Boys" were now well into their 30's and the lack of demand for programmer type films such as these due to TV, proved to be the death knell of the series. Making steady appearances in this series were:
The production values of these films are far higher than any of the Little Tough Guys and East Side Kids. Most fans agree that the Bowery Boys series is the best of these three.
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Huntz Hall appeared in the most series films.
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