With William Wyler at the director's helm, Lillian Hellman writing the screenplay, and Richard Day's stage-bound but artful sets, DEAD END has plenty of fine ingredients going for it. And the cast is great--JOEL McCREA, SYLVIA SYDNEY, WENDY BARRIE, HUMPHREY BOGART, CLAIRE TREVOR, MARJORIE MAIN, ALLEN JENKINS and WARD BOND, as well as "The Dead End Kids" themselves. Interestingly, the usually comic Main and Jenkins have straight dramatic roles here.
The image of a luxury apartment building adjoining a slum area in the Lower East Side is strikingly presented and makes for the conflict in a story where poverty breeds crime and the rich have to suffer for it.
Joel McCrea is the idealistic architect who'd like to eliminate the slums, Sylvia Sydney is a poor shop girl limited by her meager surroundings, and Wendy Barrie is a wealthy society girl. The story is more a series of vignettes than a well-constructed story, but interest is held with forceful scenes directed well by William Wyler, who was always able to get the best from his cast and crew. Claire Trevor makes the most of a brief role as a prostitute, a warm-up for a similar role in STAGECOACH--and deserved her Oscar nomination.
Dated in some respects, it's a well-written play that Kingsley wrote and it still has the power to command interest even though much of it borders too much on melodrama.
The image of a luxury apartment building adjoining a slum area in the Lower East Side is strikingly presented and makes for the conflict in a story where poverty breeds crime and the rich have to suffer for it.
Joel McCrea is the idealistic architect who'd like to eliminate the slums, Sylvia Sydney is a poor shop girl limited by her meager surroundings, and Wendy Barrie is a wealthy society girl. The story is more a series of vignettes than a well-constructed story, but interest is held with forceful scenes directed well by William Wyler, who was always able to get the best from his cast and crew. Claire Trevor makes the most of a brief role as a prostitute, a warm-up for a similar role in STAGECOACH--and deserved her Oscar nomination.
Dated in some respects, it's a well-written play that Kingsley wrote and it still has the power to command interest even though much of it borders too much on melodrama.