Dead End – 1937
This was a very odd movie, but I ended up liking it. It was a plain old drama, so right off the bat it was a refreshing difference from all the screwball comedies that I have been watching lately. Also, it was not a historical drama, which even further set it apart from its peers. Apparently the film was based on a successful stage play of the same name which was written by Sidney Kingsley.
In fact, right from the very beginning, I could tell that it was really a filmed version of a stage play. The set looked very stagey, which was not a bad thing. The entire plot took place in one dead-end street in the slums of New York next to the dirty water of the East River. It was easy to see how a stage set would have been constructed, where the entrances and exits would be place. It gave the entire film a very intimate feel, as if you were there in a theatre.
Another stagey effect was the fact that not all the action took place on-screen. For example, when some street hoodlums took a rich kid into a warehouse to beat him up and steal his watch, they exited through the warehouse door and we never actually see the fight. But after some other characters have their little scene, we see the rich kid run back onto the stage in tattered clothes – just like we’d see it in a live theatre.
The film starred Humphrey Bogart as Baby Face Martin, a dangerous gangster who is on the lamb but returning to the neighborhood in which he grew up to visit his mother and an old girlfriend. The point is made that he has murdered eight men. But though he is the big name and star of the film, his character is really only a part of the tapestry that mad up the film as a whole. The film gives Baby Face no more screen time than any other character, though I will concede that most of the emotional content of the movie was centered on him.
The poor slum is the home of a number of other characters, each of whom has their own story, their own part to play in the tapestry. One side of the dead end street is the back of an apartment building that houses wealthy families. Because of renovations being done to the front of that apartment building, the affluent tenants must walk through the dirty slums to go out.
The poor hoodlums I mentioned earlier were played by a bunch of kids who all did a fantastic job. In fact, they all had done their roles on the Broadway show before the film. They did such a good job, they were officially named the Dead End Kids and they all went on to be in other films together but under different names like the Little Tough Guys and The East End Kids. The gang was made up of Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop), Dippy (Huntz Hall), Angel (Bobby Jordan), Spit (Leo Gorcey), T.B. (Gabriel Dell), and Milty (Bernard Punsly).
Each of the various stories going on were interesting in their own right, but my favorite was that of Baby Face Martin. He was tired of being a gangster on the run and was looking to find a girl to settle down with. But the old adage proved to be true. You can never go back. His mother, played by Marjorie Main, knew of his crimes and rejected him in a very touching scene saying, “I have no son.” Next he meets with his old flame Francie, played by Claire Trevor, and tells her that he wants her back. But even she rejects him, telling him that she is now a prostitute in the late term stages of syphilis. The depression that he experiences is understandable.
There was also a nice romance between Tommy’s older sister Drina, played by Sylvia Sidney and the local nice guy, Dave Connell, played by Joel McCrea. He is a struggling man who is hard working and educated. Drina loves him but he only sees her as a good friend. Dave has been seen spending time with a woman from the wealthy apartment building named Kay Burton, played by Wendy Barrie. The little love triangle is intriguing and was very well played.
All in all this was a very good movie. It stays with you and makes you think about it when it is over. And the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I enjoyed watching it. The tapestry that was created when all the different stories were put together was intricate and beautifully constructed. The acting was very good and the various stories were well told.