The Goldwyn-Wyler production of Sidney Kingsley's hit Broadway play, Dead End, is a very mixed bag. First of all, though it deals with crime, gangsters, urban poverty and tough punks, it is not remotely a gangster picture. Goldwyn was Hollywood's top independent producer, Wyler his favorite director. This project was handled with the same reverence that Hollywood accorded Dickens and Jane Austen, or for that matter James Hilton and Edna Ferber. Dead End is a prestige picture from start to finish. Although Humphrey Bogart has a key role in the film, it's certainly not a Bogart vehicle. Nor does the presence of the original Dead End Kids make it a Dead End Kids picture. Dead End is a quite serious study of the urban poor, badly dated in some respects, tendentious in others, the years have not been kind to this one, either as a tract or a play.
As a movie, however, it sometimes works. Much credit should be given to Richard Day for his magnificent single set, with its tenements to one side, luxury apartment buildings to the other, extending forward to the ancient wharf and the greasy river. The scuttling about of the various impoverished teens provides much of the film's action, drama and humor, and the young actors are excellent even when the dialog stinks, which is most of the time. Sylvia Sidney's working girl and Joel McCrea's dreamy architect add nothing to the story and could have been edited out of the movie altogether, no fault of the actors. These are boring, poorly written characters. Things perk up a bit, as they usually do, when Bogart is around. He plays a neighborhood kid grown up to become a famous criminal, whom the boys idolize. I like especially the way his character cuts against one's expectations. Instead of warning the boys against the perils of a life of crime, he encourages them, and even helps them brush up on their knife-throwing. Yet his character has a sentimental streak, as when he visits his poor old mother, who, rather than welcoming him with open arms, calls him a no-good dirty yellow dog, and wishes him the worst.
Adapted by no less than Lillian Hellman, the movie is hideously plotted. Never having seen or read the play I cannot say who is more at fault, Kingsley or Hellman. The ending is both melodramatic and predictable. Only Bogart and the famous Dead End Kids give the movie what class it has. A big hit in its day, the picture did nothing for the careers of stars McCrea and Sidney, but worked wonders for Bogart, already on a roll from the previous year's Petrified Forest. It also made stars out of the actors who played the "Kids", who went on to Warners, where they were teamed with various of the studio's tough guys (Bogart included) before moving to various other studios, where they eventually were metamorphosed into the Bowery Boys, and it is by this name that they are best-remembered. In her first major movie role, actress Marjorie Main excels as Bogart's weary, careworn and decidedly not-so-loving mother. After several years of character actress success she hit pay-dirt when cast as the jovial, boisterous (and very loving) Ma Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series of rural comedies that ran well into the fifties. A strange place, Hollywood. One wonders if Goldwyn and Wyler knew what they had hatched back in 1937.
As a movie, however, it sometimes works. Much credit should be given to Richard Day for his magnificent single set, with its tenements to one side, luxury apartment buildings to the other, extending forward to the ancient wharf and the greasy river. The scuttling about of the various impoverished teens provides much of the film's action, drama and humor, and the young actors are excellent even when the dialog stinks, which is most of the time. Sylvia Sidney's working girl and Joel McCrea's dreamy architect add nothing to the story and could have been edited out of the movie altogether, no fault of the actors. These are boring, poorly written characters. Things perk up a bit, as they usually do, when Bogart is around. He plays a neighborhood kid grown up to become a famous criminal, whom the boys idolize. I like especially the way his character cuts against one's expectations. Instead of warning the boys against the perils of a life of crime, he encourages them, and even helps them brush up on their knife-throwing. Yet his character has a sentimental streak, as when he visits his poor old mother, who, rather than welcoming him with open arms, calls him a no-good dirty yellow dog, and wishes him the worst.
Adapted by no less than Lillian Hellman, the movie is hideously plotted. Never having seen or read the play I cannot say who is more at fault, Kingsley or Hellman. The ending is both melodramatic and predictable. Only Bogart and the famous Dead End Kids give the movie what class it has. A big hit in its day, the picture did nothing for the careers of stars McCrea and Sidney, but worked wonders for Bogart, already on a roll from the previous year's Petrified Forest. It also made stars out of the actors who played the "Kids", who went on to Warners, where they were teamed with various of the studio's tough guys (Bogart included) before moving to various other studios, where they eventually were metamorphosed into the Bowery Boys, and it is by this name that they are best-remembered. In her first major movie role, actress Marjorie Main excels as Bogart's weary, careworn and decidedly not-so-loving mother. After several years of character actress success she hit pay-dirt when cast as the jovial, boisterous (and very loving) Ma Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series of rural comedies that ran well into the fifties. A strange place, Hollywood. One wonders if Goldwyn and Wyler knew what they had hatched back in 1937.