Mill Creek comedy classics #72: "Mr. Wise Guy" (1942)

Fun fact: Mr. Wise Guy is #398,346 of the 800,000 movies made by The East Side Kids.

The flick: Mr. Wise Guy (Monogram Pictures, 1942) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.8

Director: William Nigh (Zis Boom Bah, A Bride for Henry; sadly, not Bill Nye the Science Guy)

"Big Boy" Williams

Series regulars: 

• Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall (all in Clancy Street Boys)

• David Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Bobby Stone, Ernest Morrison (all in Smart Alecks)

Other actors of note: 

• Billy Gilbert (Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, The Villain Still Pursued Her)

• Douglas Fowley (Money Means Nothing)

• Joan Barclay (Flying Wild)

• Guinn "Big Boy" Williams (perennial sidekick in Westerns; Errol Flynn's best friend; nicknamed "the Babe Ruth of polo"; appeared in The Alamo, The Comancheros, A Star is Born, etc.)

• Warren Hymer (Capra's Meet John Doe and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)

• Ann Doran (Rebel Without a Cause, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, His Girl Friday; dozens of TV credits ranging from Bewitched to The A-Team )

• Jack Mulhall (first actor to ever play a dual role in a talking picture; also appeared in Around the World in 80 Days, The Man with the Golden Arm, much more)

• Benny Rubin (Zis Boom Bah)

• Joe Kirk (Smart Alecks)

• Dick Ryan (ex-vaudevillian; appeared in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train; guested on The Andy Griffith Show, Ozzie & Harriet, Rawhide, and more)

Bad girl Ann Doran

The gist of it: Dock worker Bill Collins (Fowley) has been drafted into the Army, but he's worried that his younger brother, Danny (Jordan), might get into trouble and wind up in reform school without supervision. But Danny and the rest of the East Side Kids are then framed for a truck hijacking and wind up in the very same hellish reformatory where Bill had once served as a guard. Visiting the old place, Bill is happy to see that some improvements have been made under the new warden (Mulhall), and he begins a romance with one of the institution's kinder employees, Ann (Barclay).

But an abusive guard named Miller (Ryan) still works there and takes an immediate dislike to the boys, especially the nervy, confrontational Muggs (Gorcey), whom he calls "Mr. Wise Guy." Then Bill himself is framed for a murder actually committed by the same group of crooks responsible for the earlier hijacking: ringleader and escaped con Luke Manning (Williams), gun moll Dorothy (Doran), and fumbling sidekick Knobby (Gilbert). As Bill waits in the death house, Muggs and the gang cross paths with tough fellow inmate Chalky (Stone) and the sadistic Miller, who is eventually fired for his violent treatment of the kids. On the day of Bill's execution, Bobby miraculously spots a bit of evidence in a newsreel which exonerates both his brother and the East Side Kids, too. So the boys break out of the institution and confront Knobby and Dorothy, who had  been secretly conspiring against Manning and were planning to sneak off with his lottery winnings.

My take: The justice system in the East Side Kids universe is an absolute disgrace. From the earliest moments of Mr. Wise Guy, the Kids are being hassled by the cops and accused of crimes they didn't commit. Whenever characters in these movies avoid arrest, it's by pure luck. And when they are arrested, their so-called trials by jury are mere formalities. The verdict is always guilty, though I can't imagine what evidence beyond that of the circumstantial variety is available. We never get to see the inside of a courtroom in an ESK movie, just the screaming headlines in the newspapers. Monogram is too cheap and lazy to even spin the papers (which might take an extra 20 seconds); they just zoom in on the articles.

Pretty early on in Mr. Wise Guy, you can see an obvious cost-cutting measure when the same prop newspaper is used to cover two different plot developments. That would be fine, if the second crucial headline didn't give away an upcoming plot point. Because of that phony paper, I knew the Kids were going to be sent up the river for hijacking a truck wayyyyy before that actually happens in the movie.

That second headline hasn't happened in the movie yet.

By the way, I must point out that this is the third "truck hijacking" movie I've reviewed in this series, and they've all been from Monogram Pictures. The others, in case you were interested, are Money Means Nothing (1934) and The Gang's All Here (1941). Must've been a specialty of the house. None of these flicks have been especially interesting or involving, and Money Means Nothing in particular was a chore to sit through.

Mr. Wise Guy is about average for an ESK flick. I can only assume it was made very quickly and very cheaply, rushed into theaters and then quickly forgotten. It moves along at a good clip and never gets too bogged down in any particular plot points to become boring. Yet again, the Kids spend only the first few minutes of the film on their home turf before the script transplants them to another surrounding.

Is it funny: I can't remember laughing too much during Mr. Wise Guy. I'm kind of back-and-forth on the humor of the East Side Kids, though. I guess if you're in the mood for them, Leo Gorcey's wisecracks and Huntz Hall's stupidity might really strike you as being hilarious. If you're not, watching them is like being cornered by clowns at a birthday party who caper and frolic for you whether you want them to or not. The weird thing about this movie is that the plot is actually kind of heavy and depressing, what with poor Danny worried sick that his brother's going to the electric chair. This material sits uneasily with the Bazooka Joe-esque shenanigans and puns of the East Side Kids. In culinary terms, this film is a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich.

My grade: C

P.S. - Ernest "Scruno" Morrison is back and brings with him the usual assortment of racial/racist schtick. It starts early, too, with Muggs referring to Scruno as "our blackout warden" in the opening scene (a really weird, extended monologue in which Muggs flirts with a store mannequin). And there are chicken and watermelon jokes, too, plus a scene in which Morrison runs wide-eyed with fear at the very sight of a gun. Still not as bad as Boys of the City, though.

Mill Creek comedy classics #71: "Smart Alecks" (1942)

These ESK movies are going to land me in the hospital.

The flick: Smart Alecks (Banner Productions/Monogram Pictures, 1942) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.5

Director: Wallace Fox (The Corpse Vanishes; The Bowery at Midnight starring Bela Lugosi; episodes of TV's Ramar of the Jungle and The Gene Autry Show)

"Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom

Series regulars: 

• Leo Gorcey (Clancy Street Boys)

• Bobby Jordan (Clancy Street Boys)

• Huntz Hall (Clancy Street Boys)

• Ernest Morrison (Clancy Street Boys)

• Bobby Stone (Pride of the Bowery)

• David Gorcey (Pride of the Bowery)

• Stanley Clements (this is the first of his ESK movies I've covered so far; he eventually replaced Leo Gorcey in the series; his non-Bowery/East Side Kids films include Going My Way and The More the Merrier)

• Gabriel Dell (When the Girls Take Over)

Other actors of note: 

• "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom (Nothing Sacred, The Perils of Pauline)

• Gale Storm (Freckles Comes Home)

• Herbert Rawlinson (Ed Wood's Jail Bait; Flying Wild)

• Joe Kirk (Lou Costello's brother-in-law; appeared in House of Frankenstein, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, etc.)

• Marie Windsor (Kubrick's The Killing; TV's Salem's Lot; SAG director for 25 years)

• Walter Woolf King (baritone singer in operettas; appeared in The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera and Go West; lots of TV work, including The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, The Virginian, The Munsters, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, much more)

• Roger Pryor ("the poor man's Clark Gable"; appeared in Belle of the Nineties, The Man They Could Not Hang, etc.)

The gist of it: While the rest of the East Side Kids (including Morrison, Hall, Clements, et al.) try in vain to raise money for new baseball uniforms, Hank (Dell) is flush with cash and wearing fancy suits. That's because he's working for a crook named Butch Broccoli (Rosenbloom). The Kids' leader, Muggs (Gorcey) doesn't want any of Hank's "dirty" money and tosses him out of the group's basement headquarters. 

Later Hank is arrested by patrolman Joe (Pryor) while acting as a lookout during one of Broccoli's bank robberies. While the thief gets away, Hank is sent up for a three-year bid because he won't fink on his bosses. Nurse Ruth Stevens (Storm), Joe's girlfriend, reluctantly testifies against Hank in court, even though her own brother Danny (Jordan) is a member of the East Side Kids with Hank. Later, Danny manages to apprehend Broccoli and is awarded $200 by Police Captain Bronson (Rawlinson). The other Kids think they're entitled to equal shares of the dough, but Danny's secretly planning to spend it on those baseball uniforms.

Unaware of this, Muggs and the Kids enter Danny's place through an open window, take the money, and buy a jalopy with it. Ruth calls the cops on them, but Danny doesn't press charges. Muggs, still resentful, kicks Danny out of the gang. Then Hank breaks out of jail and informs Muggs that Broccoli has also broken loose and is after Danny. Danny is badly beaten to the point that only famed surgeon Dr. Ormsby (King) can save him. The Kids rally to Danny's bedside, and Joe tells them what Danny was really going to do with the $200. In the prerequisite big action climax, Broccoli takes Ruth hostage, and Hank, Joe, Muggs, and the others come to her rescue.

Good times: Muggs and the Kids visit Hank in the slammer.

My take: It's a weird world the East Side Kids inhabit. They're surrounded on all sides by poverty, crime, and violence, and yet their movies manage to include: slapstick (Muggs is always clobbering Huntz Hall's Glimpy), corny puns (Muggs lectures the gang about "optimists and pacifists"), and absurd cartoon-type gags (Muggs puts alum in Butch Broccoli's tea so that the crook's mouth will pucker uncontrollably). 

The characters, too, are often portrayed as wildly exaggerated stereotypes with silly voices and mannerisms, but they're occasionally supposed to be sympathetic and relatable human beings as well. In one scene, Huntz Hall accidentally swallows a harmonica and then emits musical tones every time he exhales. In another, a tearful Muggs prays -- maybe for the first time in his life -- so that God will spare poor Danny. You see what I mean? Reality is on a sliding scale here. These films are part comedy, part tragedy, and part crime flick. It's a delicate balance, and the makers of these movies don't always get it right.

Smart Alecks is by no means terrible. It's watchable and goes by pretty easily. But by the same token, there's nothing especially strong about this one to set it apart. I can't think of any scenes which are real clunkers, but nothing here feels terribly inspired either. 

The most entertaining sequence is the one in which Butch Broccoli, who is pretty good-natured and oafish for such a ruthless criminal, invites himself into Ruth's apartment and immediately takes a huge piece of the cake Ruth has specially prepared for the Kids in order to smooth things over after Hank's trial. But this scene puzzled me, too, since it comes not long after the fateful bank robbery. Broccoli should really get out of town or at least lay low for a while, but instead he struts around the neighborhood like a king, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he could be in any kind of trouble. 

Just about every East Side Kids movie has a sharp-dressed Fagin-type gangster, but none are as childishly naïve as Butch Broccoli (who doesn't even flinch when Muggs serves him a cake frosted with soap). It's therefore believable that he's caught so easily, but it's highly unlikely that he could have busted out of jail after only a short while.

And I wasn't cool with Muggs and the gang taking Danny's money as if they were entitled to it. For all his faults, Muggs seems to be a guy with some high ideals when it comes to stealing, so that plot point didn't seem at all believable for his character. At one point in the middle of the movie, understanding Nurse Ruth tells Joe the Cop that the Kids aren't nearly so bad as he thinks they are; they've just had to fight all their lives for everything they have. Okay, fair enough, but none of that excuses strong-arming poor Danny out of his rightfully-earned reward. Being tough is one thing; being a selfish bully is another.

Minor historical notes: this was made during WWII, so listen for fleeting references to Hitler and to the scarcity of nails. Also, the credits make a big point of introducing Stanley Clements to the ESK fold. He seems like a miniaturized Leo Gorcey wannabe -- the Scrappy-Doo to Leo's Scooby-Doo. And Clements' hatred and fear of women is creepy rather than endearing. (In an utterly bizarre moment, he tells Hank that the one advantage to being in prison is that at least there are no lousy dames around. Yikes.)

Is it funny: Oh, some of the jokes connect every once in a while, but I wouldn't call this a laugh riot. The darkest, funniest scene in the movie has kind of a sick twist to it. Butch Broccoli doesn't beat Danny up personally but has a thug do it for him. The beating occurs off-camera, and we hear Danny's moans and groans. Broccoli is mildly bothered by this and sticks tissue paper in his ears to muffle the sound. After that, he's back to being his old cheerful self. As I mentioned previously, I liked the whole sequence in which Broccoli shows up at Ruth's doorstep and basically invades her apartment while she stands by, too dumbfounded to even protest. But not all the humor worked for me this time. Huntz Hall, a delight in Clancy Street Boys, just got on my nerves here with his cowardice, greed, and stupidity. Muggs was right to smack him around.

My grade: B- (barely)

P.S. Yes, Scruno is back, so there's some built-in racism to deal with here. The racial humor is kept to a merciful minimum, though. One of the Kids brags that he'll get a tan as dark as Scruno's. And Scruno himself informs us that his mother has just given birth to her twelfth child. (Maybe it was thirteen, counting Scruno, but I'm not going to go back and check.)  Also, one of the Kids' money-making schemes involves Scruno tap dancing in the street in order to solicit handouts from the nice white folks who walk by. Ernest Morrison is a hell of a good dancer, but it's difficult not to see this as a group of white kids (led by Leo Gorcey) exploiting their one black friend.

Mill Creek comedy classics #69: "Clancy Street Boys" (1943)

Obviously, what the East Side Kids series needed was transvestism. Thanks, Clancy Street Boys.

The flick: Clancy Street Boys (Monogram Pictures, 1943) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 7.0

William "One Shot" Beaudine

Director: William Beaudine (super-prolific quickie filmmaker nicknamed "One-Shot"; helmed Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter; Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla; many episodes of TV's Lassie and Walt Disney; worked for decades in every conceivable genre)

Series regulars:

• Leo Gorcey (Flying Wild)

• Bobby Jordan (Boys of the City)

• Huntz Hall (Zis Boom Bah; this is actually the first of his many ESK movies I've reviewed)

• Benny Bartlett (My Love for Yours)

• Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison (Boys of the City)

• Billy Benedict (The Sting, Kubrick's The Killing; Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster; played various characters in the Bowery/ESK series, including Butch, Spider, Skinny, and Pinky)

• Other one-and-done ESK alumni here include Eddie Mills, Dick Chandlee, and George DeNormand

Other actors of note:

• Noah Beery, Sr. (She Done Him Wrong; The Mark of Zorro; father of Noah Beery, Jr. and brother of Wallace Beery, both well-known character actors)

• Amelita Ward (The Best Years of Our Lives; The Dark Mirror; later married and divorced Leo Gorcey)

• Rick Vallin (dependable B-movie star of the '40s and '50s; TV credits include Rin Tin Tin, Superman, Have Gun Will Travel, and much more)

• J. Farrell MacDonald (best known as the guy whose tree George Bailey hits in It's a Wonderful Life; worked repeatedly for John Ford, Frank Capra, and Preston Sturges)

• Martha Wentworth (voice in Disney's 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone; appeared in Orson Welles' The Stranger,  plus The Blackboard Jungle, The Man with the Golden Arm, much more)

Ernie "Scruno" Morrison on Good Times.

The gist of it: He's finally turning 18, but Muggs McGinnis (Leo Gorcey, actually 26 at the time) is hiding out -- not just from his own gang, the East Side Kids, but also his rivals, the Cherry Street Gang (led by Benedict), and even the local beat cop (MacDonald) -- because he doesn't want to take his birthday spankings. But they all catch up to him and get their (ostensibly) good-natured licks in anyway.

When he gets home, his poor widowed mother Molly (Wentworth) is in a state. Her late husband, Muggs' father, bragged to one of his old bricklaying buddies that he had seven children rather than just one. That buddy, "Uncle" Pete Monahan (Beery), moved to Texas, became a wealthy rancher, and has been sending all seven McGinnis children checks on their birthdays for 15 years! Molly was too embarrassed to tell Pete the truth, and now he's coming to New York to meet the whole McGinnis brood.

But Muggs has a plan: he'll enlist his gang members to portray the other six McGinnis kids while Pete and his daughter Judy (Ward) are in town. Even Scruno (Morrison), who is black, will pretend to be Muggs' "redopted" brother. Pete believes that Molly has a daughter named Annabelle, so poor Glimpy (Hall) has to dress in drag and speak in a high voice. The ruse works for a while, and free-spending Pete takes the gang shopping and nightclubbing. But slimy crook George "The Gyp" Mooney (Vallin) is wise to Muggs, rats them out to Pete, then kidnaps the wealthy Texan. Danny (Jordan) follows the crooks and is also abducted. It's up to Muggs and the other East Side Kids, with some backup from the Cherry Street Gang, to rescue their benefactor and redeem themselves after taking advantage of his kindness.

Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey: Yin and yang.

My take: Miracles never cease, brothers and sisters. At first, I thought the high IMDb rating for Clancy Street Boys was some kind of statistical fluke. But as it happens, this is a very funny and enjoyable little motion picture -- far and away the best of the East Side Kids movies I've reviewed and a notch above the usual output from Monogram Pictures, too.

On the surface, this film is not much different from the other entries in the series. Muggs is still mispronouncing and misusing words (he has a whole monologue about his "illuminations" and "inductions") and impatiently slapping people around like he's a combination of Jimmy Cagney and Moe Howard. There's yet another kindly neighborhood police officer (brandishing a baton and speaking with a heavy Irish brogue) to keep the boys in check and yet another slick, sharp-dressed gangster who wants to ruin the Kids' reputation for his own benefit. There are more grouchy business owners and worried parents on hand as well. And once again, the movie builds up to a frantic action scene in which the gang members save the day by teaming up.

So what's the difference? I'd have to say it's chemistry. The cast and crew happened to be firing on all cylinders when they made this one. As a director, William "One Shot" Beaudine keeps things rolling along, and the performances really click this time around. Clancy Street Boys is a vehicle for nervy little pipsqueak Leo Gorcey as Muggs, and he does quite a good job with both the verbal and physical comedy here, as in a scene which has him threatening and smart-mouthing a rather snooty desk clerk at a fancy hotel. ("Don't be adolescent," warns Muggs. "I'll report you to the janitor.")

Laconic, passive Huntz Hall is a good balance to edgy, aggressive Gorcey. They definitely have a "yin and yang" (or at least Larry and Moe) dynamic going. Hall spends most of the movie in drag as "Annabelle" and does not overplay the role as much as you might guess. As a shy, soft-spoken woman, he's roughly as convincing as, say, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982) or Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot (1959).

Rick Vallin is a pretty standard baddie, but the real wild card in this movie is Noah Beery, Sr., who literally rides into this movie on a white horse while wearing full cowboy regalia. This is a big part, and Beery really goes to town with it, hollering and guffawing and just generally acting like a rich Texan on a spree in New York.

I should really mention what a swell time capsule this film is. It was made in 1943, smack dab in the middle of America's involvement in WWII, so there are references to war bonds, Nazis, the draft, and rationing. On the last count, Muggs makes a joke about having to eat horse meat due to the scarcity of other, more desirable foods. He also name checks a then semi-recent Jack Benny film called Charley's Aunt (1941). Besides that, the actors use some of the vintage mid-century slang not normally heard outside of a Coen Brothers movie. Some examples, all spoken by Gorcey:

• "That's the corniest gag in the world. It had whiskers on it when I was going to kindergarten." 
• "Don't let that slug know that you're wise to him."
• "You jivin', man?"
• "Well, wind me up and set the alarm!"
• (my favorite)  "Let's lam."

Muggs even calls someone "a wrong gee" at one point. Back then, furthermore, there was apparently an inconvenient law which prevented adults from ordering alcohol at a restaurant if they were sharing a table with minors. Imagine the trouble that would cause at Applebee's today! You also get some sense of what New York's immigrant neighborhoods were like in the 1940s. The opening credits are actually printed on the laundry hanging from a clothesline between two tenements, which is a neat touch.

Since this was 1943, Clancy Street Boys could proudly include a chase scene in which a vendor's fruit cart is overturned without it seeming like too much of a cliche. Perhaps the most interesting historical tidbit is the opportunity to see Leo Gorcey interact with his future wife (and future ex-wife) Amelita Ward. There's no romance between Muggs and Judy, but the two performers definitely flirt during their first scene together. If they only knew what was coming!

Huntz Hall as "Annabelle."

Is it funny: Yes! Clancy Street Boys is not a subtle or cerebral film in any way, but it made me laugh pretty consistently from beginning to end. In my favorite scene, Uncle Pete takes Muggs and the boys to a fancy supper club and then pays the owner to keep the place open long after closing time while an increasingly-weary violinist is forced to play "Home on the Range" over and over again. But the movie is full of odd and amusing little moments, as when a man (whom I think is Muggs) pretends to be a mannequin so he can surreptitiously kick passersby without getting in trouble.

Hall has some good moments, too, as he awkwardly accompanies Judy to her bedroom and to a high-end dress shop. He's in drag through all this, of course, and she thinks he's really a woman. He just wants to get the hell away as soon as possible. He's especially uncomfortable when she's "freshening up" in the bathroom while he waits in the adjoining bedroom. She inadvertently shocks him by asking, "Would you like to play with my lariat?" I think this is an example of a slightly naughty joke smuggled into the film by screenwriter Harvey Gates (a prolific but undistinguished scribe who also wrote The Corpse Vanishes). In another scene, Muggs cuts short a rendition of "Happy Birthday to You" after about two seconds, presumably because he knows full well the song is under copyright. How nice of him to save Monogram Pictures a few bucks that way.

And I will admit to getting some chuckles out of a dumb running gag in which the Kids are completely bewildered by Uncle Pete's use of Spanish phrases. To his jovial hasta la vista, Muggs replies, "Same to you... and many of 'em."

My grade: B+

P.S. This film has some racial and ethnic humor in it, but I didn't find it insulting or offensive in the manner of previous ESK films. Scruno's race is an issue, sure, but he's trying to pass himself off as Muggs' brother. Obviously, the fact that Muggs is white and Scruno is black is going to come up. The movie handles it in what I thought was a funny, charming way. No one in the movie seems the least bit prejudiced. If any character is portrayed as a coward, it's Glimpy rather than Scruno.

The Kids' neighborhood is peopled with ethnic stereotypes, but these characters are portrayed with affection rather than ridicule as when an elderly Jewish lady with a very thick Yiddish accent criticizes Pete's mangling of the English language while ignoring her own. Muggs makes a joke about Indians, but it's just a harmless pun on the word "reservation." (Maitre'd: "Have you a reservation?" Muggs: "Whaddya think I am, an Indian?") And Judy has this similar reaction when a saleslady tries to interest her in some sandals: "What do you reckon I am, a A-rab?" Here, the joke is not at the expense of Arabs but at the expense of Texans. I can live with that.

Mill Creek comedy classics #17: "Boys of the City" (1940)

The East Side Kids come to the aid of Inna Gest in Boys of the City. And it's Jordan, not "Jordon."

The flick: Boys of the City (Monogram Pictures, 1940) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.2

Director: Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy, The Big Combo)

Actors of note:

• Bobby Jordan (Angels with Dirty Faces, Dead End)

• Leo Gorcey (They Made Me a Criminal, Spooks Run Wild)

• Hal E. Chester (School for Scoundrels, Curse of the Demon)

• Frankie Burke (Shadow of the Thin Man, Nancy Drew... Reporter)

• Dave O'Brien (Reefer Madness, 42nd Street)

• Minerva Urecal (Harvey, Marty, Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt)

• Inna Gest (Hangmen Also Die!, Babes in Arms)

• Forrest Taylor (Reefer Madness, Winchester '73)

The gist of it: In order to avoid jail after playfully assaulting a street vendor, the East Side Kids -- a gang of New York street toughs led by Danny (Jordan) and Muggs (Gorcey) -- are sent to a farm upstate for the summer, under the supervision of Danny's older brother, exonerated murder suspect Knuckles Dolan (O'Brien). Along the way, though, they have some car trouble and end up staying at a spooky, secret-passageway-riddled estate with mean, crooked Judge Parker (Taylor) and a bunch of other fast talking guys in suits who, for reasons I couldn't quite suss out, are all trying to kill each other. Oh, and there's an innocent dame, Louise (Gest), and a creepy maid, Agnes (Urecal), who figure into the plot as well somehow. Eventually, all the right people are murdered, and the Kids can eat their cake and go home to commit more mayhem.

Alex and his droogs: Latter-day East Side Kids?

My take: It would take a genealogist to sort out the evolution of the East Side Kids, a.k.a. The Bowery Boys, a.k.a. The Dead End Kids. They started out as supporting players in gritty dramas like Dead End (1937) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) but then got their own series of low-budget comedies that grew sillier and less realistic over time. The Kids (or Boys) bounced around from studio to studio, generally moving down the food chain in terms of budget and production value and occasionally changing names for copyright reasons.

The lineup changed over the years, but Leo Gorcey (whose character, Muggs McGinnis, was rechristened Slip Mahoney when the team became known as the Bowery Boys) stayed with the series until 1956, when he was pushing 40. The series went on two more years without him.

Frankly, I'm baffled as to why America kept these guys on the payroll for 20 years. Watching Boys of the City (which takes place almost entirely in the country), I got sick of them after 20 seconds. They all have nasal, heavily-accented Bugs Bunny voices, wear those stupid newsboy caps everywhere, and speak almost entirely in obscure slang expressions. Since they converse in a very eccentric sort of lingo and gleefully gang up on an older man at the beginning of the movie, the East Side Kids reminded me a bit of Alex and his droogs from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1972), only here they're supposed to be the good guys.

In retrospect, the Kids were among the first rebellious teens ever seen in the movies, certainly the first to be the heroes of a whole series. In a way, that does make them ancestors of the droogs and may also explain why the Beatles were so fond of them. In 1967, the Fab Four wanted Leo Gorcey to be among the spectators on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but he wanted $400 for the use of his image. The Beatles balked and used his Bowery cohort, Huntz Hall (who wasn't in Boys of the City), instead. Gorcey died two years later of liver failure at the age of 51. He was on his fifth marriage at the time.

Menacing Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.

Is it funny: Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I found the Kids, especially Gorcey, to be extremely irritating and not funny in the least in this film. Their constant complaining about everything gave me a headache.

Much more troubling to modern audiences, however, is Scruno (Ernest Morrison, dubiously billed as "Sunshine Sammy"), the one African-American in the group. First seen obediently fanning Muggs, who calls him "boy," Scruno embodies every possible negative black stereotype. His fear of "g-g-g-ghosts" is a relentless running gag throughout the film, and he is given to pronouncements like "I sure loves catfish!" and "I sure do miss that old plantation!" Most humiliating of all is a dinner scene in which Agnes, having served what seems to be soup to the other Kids, places a huge slice of watermelon in front of Scruno, who proceeds to bury his head in it like an animal eating out of a trough. Ugh.

Agnes, however, is mostly an asset to the film. Minerva Urecal gives a totally unhinged performance, very similar to Cloris Leachman's Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein (1974). A scene in which she menaces young Louise has very strong lesbian undertones, echoing Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and the corresponding character of Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). I'm guessing that Agnes' obsession with her late mistress, Judge Parker's deceased wife, was imported directly from Rebecca, which had been a successful novel two years earlier.

Honestly, I was grateful for the mystery and suspense elements in this film because they offered some respite from the awful "comedy" of Gorcey and company. To be fair, there is one joke in this film that did make me laugh. One of the Kids, Skinny (Burke), compares Agnes to the Witch from Snow White and advises Danny, "If she gives ya an apple, don't eat it." And even though he gives a lousy performance, I did smile broadly when I recognized Dave O'Brien, the psychotic dope smoker Ralph from Reefer Madness (1936).

My grade: D

P.S. - This film is by far the worst example of racist stereotyping I've seen in the set so far. Scruno is so embarrassing that he makes Mantan Moreland look like Martin Luther King, Jr. in comparison.