Boys Town – 1938
Boys Town is the story of how a kindly priest named Father Flanagan, played by Spencer Tracy, had a dream of helping young homeless boys by creating a home for them. He got them off the streets and taught them how to lead upstanding and productive lives, to become respectable members of society.
After hearing a criminal on death row say that he never would have turned to a life of crime if he’d had someone who had cared about him when he was a child, the idea for Boys Town began. At first, I had a problem with the way Flanagan would take boys off the street, and as soon as they were within the walls of the home, the boys instantly became model citizens. But there was a scene when the boys didn’t get something they wanted and their first idea was to go and steal it, showing that reform was not automatic. I liked that. Flanagan, of course, wouldn’t allow it.
When his home became too small for the number of young boys, they moved to a 200 acre stretch of land to start their own town which they, themselves, built from scratch. Suddenly, the young hoodlums became a work force, several hundred boys strong. The film showed them working and building, but let’s get real. Most of the construction had to have been done by professionally skilled laborers.
This gets us about half the way through the movie. It was good, despite the fact that I had a small problem with Flanagan’s character. To get the money needed to build Boys Town, he was actually kind-of a bully. He used the poor boys and their terrible situations and stories to manipulate donors, put pressure on them and lay incredible guilt trips on them to get them to pony up.
But apparently it worked. Sure, Boys Town was constantly in financial trouble, constantly in danger of closing, and constantly under public scrutiny, but somehow Flanagan made it work. His biggest benefactor was Dan Frrow, played by Leslie Fenton. He was a wealthy business owner who allows Flanagan to strong-arm him into donating vast amounts of money to the Boy’s Town project.
The second half of the film introduces Mickey Rooney. It also breaks the cardinal sin of movie-making. Rooney played a young hoodlum named Whitey Marsh. He is the younger brother of federal criminal Joe Marsh, played by Edward Norris. Whitey is taken to Boys Town against his will. He tries to bully the rest of the boys into liking him, which, of course, doesn’t work.
He tries to run away several times but always ends up coming back. Eventually the clean-cut and honest young men of Boys Town win him over and he becomes a respected member of the Boys Town community. The end.
But the film went out of its way to have a sickeningly cute little boy who was only put there to pull at the heart strings of the viewers. His name was Pee Wee, played by Bobs Watson. He was small and very young. His high-pitched voice was annoying and made my skin crawl. His dialogue and his part in the overall plot of the film had that one singular purpose. He oozed cute out of every orifice and I wanted to strangle him. Cute for the sake of cute is never cute. Never.
But after all my eye rolling was done, I found that it was all, at least the important parts of the film, quite true. There was a real Father Flanagan who started a real organization called Boys Town to help boys who needed it. More importantly, that organization is still alive and thriving today, though it is now called Boys and Girls Town. After the film was over, the DVD had a bonus feature that was an infomercial about the organization. It gave a website address and phone number for those in need to get in contact with someone who could offer help to young men and women and their families.
Tracy and Rooney Both did their jobs well. Rooney was still 17 years old when filming took place and his skills as an actor were obvious. Tracey did a fantastic job and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his work on Boys Town.
And just as a parting note, I thought it amazing how the honest young boys of Boys Town formed an angry mob on a moment’s notice. Really, how upstanding were they? Vigilante justice? Indeed!