Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 76: Johnny Duncan in 'Plan 9'

From Batman & Robin to Plan 9, Johnny Duncan had a colorful career in pictures.

The morgue wagon boys.

Strange things are afoot at the old cemetery near Jeff and Paula Trent's house. Two gravediggers have been killed—torn apart, as if by a bobcat—and a handful of police officers have arrived on the scene to take the witnesses' statements and search the grounds for any clue as to who or what committed these murders. The investigation is led by plainclothesmen Inspector Daniel Clay (Tor Johnson) and Lt. John "Johnny" Harper (Duke Moore), aided by two uniformed patrolmen (Paul Marco and Carl Anthony). Lt. Harper tells Inspector Clay that the "morgue wagon oughta be along most any time" to collect the bodies. The sooner the better, since this boneyard stinks to high heaven.

Confident that Lt. Harper has the foul-smelling crime scene well in hand, Inspector Clay departs to explore the rest of the cemetery. An unwise decision, we'll soon learn. Remarkable events transpire in rapid order. A single flying saucer zooms over the area, bringing with it a blinding light and an incredible wind that is neither hot nor cold, just powerful. The Trents (Gregory Walcott and Mona McKinnon) are on their back porch at the time and find themselves thrown to the ground while having a heart-to-heart chat. Lt. Harper and the two patrolmen witness the UFO, too.

By this point, two morgue wagon attendants—decked out in matching jackets, collared shirts, and white pants—have arrived to carry away the bodies. They're carrying one of the gravediggers on a stretcher. When the saucer flies over their heads, however, all five men are knocked to the ground. The morgue wagon guys unceremoniously dump the gravedigger's body into a nearby field. Somewhere else in the cemetery, the man-mountain Inspector Clay remains standing. Fate has something far worse in store for him that night.

A body (Hugh Thomas, Jr.) is thrown into a field.

Batman and Robin (1949)

I've seen Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) countless times over the last 26 years, but it was only recently that I paid any attention whatsoever to those two guys from the "morgue wagon." (And, incidentally, that does not seem to be a standard industry term. Ed Wood simply made it up.) Part of what drew my attention to them was revisiting the colorized version of Plan 9 released by Legend Films in 2006. The addition of color to a black-and-white film brings out details that might otherwise go unnoticed, including props, sets, and, yes, background actors.

In the Legend Films edition, for instance, the two morgue attendants are tinted in such a way that they look like a set of twins in matchy-matchy outfits, as if they'd been dressing alike since childhood and carried that habit into their adult years. Once you notice them, it's difficult to ignore them as they theatrically throw themselves to the ground, then regain their composure and confer among themselves.

One of these stretcher bearers has been positively identified as actor-dancer Johnny Duncan (1923-2016), best known today for having portrayed Robin the Boy Wonder in the 1949 Columbia serial Batman and Robin. He was the second actor to play the famed DC character, following Douglas Croft in a 1943 Batman serial. And, yes, that's definitely Duncan in Plan 9. He confirmed as much in a lively, career-spanning 2005 interview. He had little recollection of the film or of Ed Wood, other than the fact that Eddie "made some cheap pictures." For the actor, it was just another job in a screen career that spanned about two decades.

That's the damnedest thing about Johnny Duncan, a Kansas City, MO native who started as a professional dancer in the 1930s when he was a teenager before leapfrogging to a movie contract with Fox. He worked with many famous people over the years, including esteemed directors like John Ford and Stanley Kubrick, and yet he did not seem to take himself especially seriously.

Duncan was the very epitome of a journeyman actor, going from job to job with no real thought as to building a reputation or personal brand. As he tells it, he never actively sought out a film career. It just sort of happened. An agent saw him and signed him, and that was that. From Westerns to musicals to comedies, Johnny was up for anything. He just went wherever he was wanted until he wasn't wanted anymore. After his career dried up in Hollywood, Johnny got out of movies and into the business world; by the 1990s, he was Vice President of Fall Creek Resorts in Branson. He seemed content to live out his days in his native Missouri, though he occasionally missed California and its people.

In his later years, long since retired from showbiz, Johnny Duncan gladly appeared at conventions to meet fans and discuss his role as Robin. Though Duncan's diverse resume includes such titles as The Wild One (1953), The Caine Mutiny (1954), and Spartacus (1960), his name will forever be connected to the deathless Batman franchise. And Johnny seemed perfectly fine with that, having been a fan of the comics before he ever took the role of Dick Grayson. He claimed he even read Batman books on his honeymoon, much to his bride's annoyance.

Filmed over the course of about three grueling months in 1949, Batman and Robin was eventually released in 15 separate chapters, each one averaging about 17 minutes. These would be shown as appetizers before a main feature. The series, directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet, is notable for including the first live-action depictions of such seminal Batman characters as reporter Vicki Vale and Commissioner Gordon. The latter is played by another Plan 9 from Outer Space actor, Lyle Talbot, bringing his usual reassuring stoicism to the part.

Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin (1949).

Johnny Duncan in The Flaming Urge.

Johnny Duncan had some funny anecdotes about making Batman and Robin, including how his paunchy costar Robert Lowery had to be squeezed into his costume each day. The costumed crime fighters called each other "Fatman and Bobbin" on the set. Already 26 at the time, Duncan was technically too old to play the adolescent Boy Wonder, but his short frame and tousled hair made him look younger than he was. His high, thin, affectless voice also contrasted with Lowery's deeper, more nuanced vocals.

Though the Columbia serial is considerably more serious than William Dozier's 1966 Batman TV series, the former was clearly an influence on the latter. It is jarring, however, to see that the 1949 version of Wayne Manor is an underwhelming two-story suburban dwelling that looks like it could be the home of Ward and June Cleaver. And the Batmobile is simply a 1949 Mercury convertible straight off the lot. A nice vehicle, sure, but not nearly as customized as other Batmobiles we've known.

Batman and Robin was just one of Johnny Duncan's many showbiz adventures. The Missourian's career as a dancer and actor brought him into contact with such luminaries as Sammy Davis, Jr., Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Lana Turner, Alan Ladd, future president Ronald Reagan, and more. Several of these Hollywood legends, including Bogey and Cagney, became close personal friends of his. He even did a number of films with the East Side Kids, including Million Dollar Kid (1944), which he called "probably the worst picture I ever did." He befriended several of the Kids along the way, including Huntz Hall. That connection was lasting. Shortly before Hall died in 1999, he called Duncan to talk over old times.

"You know it was really a sad thing," Duncan reflected, "because Huntz was really nothing like he was on the screen—stupid like that, you know?"

Johnny Duncan had never worked with Edward D. Wood, Jr. before Plan 9 from Outer Space, and the two would never again cross paths professionally. But Duncan did appear in an arson drama called The Flaming Urge (1953) with Harold Lloyd, Jr. of Married Too Young (1962) fame. Duncan had filmed his part in the movie under the more innocent title The Spark and was dismayed by the suggestive name switcheroo. "I've never seen it yet to this day," he admitted.

When asked in 2005 whether he would write an autobiography, Duncan said, "My life has been interesting to me. It really has." But he worried that younger people would not recognize such names as Joan Crawford or James Cagney. "So I don't know if it would be an interesting book to them or not." Nevertheless, in 2011, Richard Lester published a biographical volume called Johnny Duncan: Hollywood Legend. As always, Duncan was depicted on the front cover in his Robin costume. 

Mill Creek comedy classics #74: "Bowery Blitzkrieg" (1941)

Don't these posters make Bowery Blitzkrieg look exciting?

"The noisier the better is the rule when ballyhooing any East Side Kid picture. For Bowery Blitzkrieg get a bunch of rascals dressed as carelessly as the East Siders themselves and send them parading through town with instructions to create as much noise as possible. Have them carry placards with slogans similar to the scorehead teasers suggested in another column of this exploitation section. Supply the youngsters with any noisemakers available -- tin pans, horns, drums . . . and if it's at all possible get them some firecrackers which will take the town by storm when set off out of season."

-excerpt from a vintage Bowery Blitzkrieg pressbook

Charlotte Henry

The flick: Bowery Blitzkrieg (Banner Productions/Monogram Pictures, 1941) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.9

Director: Wallace Fox (Million Dollar Kid)

Series regulars: Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Ernest Morrison, Bobby Stone, David Gorcey (all in Mr. Wise Guy), Donald Haines (Pride of the Bowery)

Other actors of note: Keye Luke (The Gang's All Here), Warren Hull (A Bride for Henry), Charlotte Henry (Murders in the Rue Morgue, Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland), Martha Wentworth (Clancy Street Boys), Jack Mulhall (Mr. Wise Guy), Eddie Foster (Buster Keaton's The General, Hitchcock's Saboteur), Dennis Moore (East Side Kids), Pat Costello (Lou Costello's brother; worked as an actor, stuntman, and producer on many Abbott & Costello movies as well as their TV show), Dick Ryan (Mr. Wise Guy), Minerva Urecal (Boys of the City), Tony Carson (John Ford's They Were Expendable)


The gist of it: Danny (Jordan) has split with the East Side Kids due to personal differences with his ex-best-friend Muggs (Gorcey). Danny's now palling around with local hoodlum Monk (Stone), who dupes naive Danny into helping him commit robberies and sets up Muggs to be arrested and thrown into reform school. Fortunately, local beat cop Tom Brady (Hull), who is also dating Danny's sister Mary (Henry), sees potential in Muggs as a boxer and takes him into his own apartment. The former juvenile delinquent proves him right and is a success in the ring. But Mary mistakenly thinks of Muggs as a bad influence on Danny, which throws a monkey wrench into her relationship with Tom. Things get worse when gangster Slats Morrison (Foster) tries to bribe Muggs to take a dive in a Golden Gloves title bout. Muggs turns it down, but Slats plants the money on him anyway to make him look like he's cooperating.

Everyone is suspicious of Muggs, even true believer Tom, who tells Muggs that he'd better put up a good fight to prove he's on the level. But there's a twist, you see! During a post-robbery shootout, Monk is fatally wounded and Danny badly injured. Danny's only hope is a blood transfusion, which he gets from Muggs just hours before the fight. Danny recovers, but Muggs is in no condition to box. And yet, for obvious reasons, he cannot afford to lose this match.

In training... again: Huntz Hall with Pat Costello.

My take: To the best of my knowledge, Bowery Blitzkrieg is the second-to-last East Side Kids movie in this collection. The last one, Spooks Run Wild, doesn't show up until almost the very end of this set (#98 of 100) and it features Bela Lugosi, so I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. I can't say I'm exactly sorry to see the East Siders go. Their movies are formulaic as hell, indifferently made, and generally not that funny. Plus their annoyance factor is pretty darned high, with the Kids talking in those exaggerated Noo Yawk accents and loading nearly every sentence with "dem," "dese," and "dose," plus all that obscure 1940s street slang that I'm not sure anyone ever really used.

But I must have developed some kind of Stockholm syndrome with this series, because I actually started to care what happened in Bowery Blitzkrieg by the time it reached its dramatic apex with poor, depleted Muggs fighting for his life and his reputation in the boxing ring. Blitzkrieg isn't especially good in any noticeable way, though, and it contains many of the elements I've seen in previous ESK comedies. Muggs is trying to make it as a boxer again, so there are plenty of scenes set in a gymnasium. But the East Siders spend their time in gyms in every movie no matter what the plot is about. Hell, even the vaguely pedophilic philanthropist in Million Dollar Kid had a suspiciously-elaborate workout room in his house!

Come to think of it, none of these young men ever display more than a fleeting interest in the opposite sex, and they spend almost all their time cloistered together (often with their shirts off) in basements and back rooms. I think I've spotted them hanging out by the docks a lot, too, and they're forever being hauled off to jail or reform school. Maybe this series is the softest gay porn ever. But how, then, to explain the Kids' atrocious clothing and sloppy hairdos? (Leo Gorcey's hair, in particular, is an absolute disgrace throughout Bowery Blitzkrieg.) Well, maybe they're going for a punky "anti-fashion" thing. Modern day bohemians could learn a few things from these palookas.

A complex guy: Muggs with "Ma" Brady

Anyway, like I was saying, this movie has a lot of stuff I've already seen in other ESK flicks. These boys are always landing in the hospital, for instance, waiting for last-second miracles as their very lives hang in the balance. How often was Monogram planning to play that particular card, I wonder? And why don't these kids ever wise up and steer clear of the unctuous sharpies who are always trying to steer them down the wrong path? I swear, these morons fall for every smooth-talking con artist with a pencil mustache, a cool nickname and a pinstriped suit.

Maybe they're so easily led astray because the good-guy cops in these flicks are total weenies. Warren Hull's Tom Brady might just be the weeniest of them all. He lives with his doting mother (Wentworth) in a very old-lady-ish apartment and has a passionless, sexless relationship with Charlotte Henry's pure, virginal character, who is (not coincidentally) named Mary. The other major cop character, a police lieutenant who spends all his time behind a desk, is played by the cadaverous Dick Ryan, who was much more believable as the sadistic guard in Mr.Wise Guy but is supposed to be one of the heroes here.

Speaking of casting choices, this was apparently the first East Side Kids movie to feature Huntz Hall. (He gets an "introducing" before his name in the credits.) He wasn't exactly a newcomer. He'd been a part of the franchise since at least 1937's Dead End, in which he appeared alongside Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan. But this was technically the first of Monogram's East Side Kids films to feature Hall. (If you'll think back, he was absent from Boys of the City and Flying Wild.) He does the same "slow-witted sidekick" routine I've already witnessed several times before, so his supposed debut did not make much of an impact on me.

If there's a reason to watch Bowery Blitzkrieg, it's Gorcey. When I first started watching these movies, I found him extremely irritating, and I'm still not ready to call myself a "fan," exactly. But he brings a real intensity to his role and gives this movie a much-needed shot of adrenaline, even though Muggs McGinnis would never be able to correctly pronounce either "intensity" or "adrenaline." Gorcey's the most complex of the Kids: essentially decent and principled but also deeply insecure and vulnerable. He puts up a tough front, defending himself with sarcastic wisecracks and his fists if necessary. But there's a sad little man behind the bluster and bravado, and that comes through in Gorcey's performance in Bowery Blitzkrieg.

Is it funny: It's not totally unfunny. I'll go that far, but no further. I've run hot and cold on Leo Gorcey's confrontational, aggressive brand of humor. Sometimes I find it winning, other times just irksome. This time around, though I would have advised him to rein it in a little, Muggs is easily the movie's funniest character, especially when he refuses to take life seriously or show the tiniest bit of respect to those in power. One good though underused foil for Muggs is Minerva Urecal's dour reform school matron, whom he playfully nicknames "Picklepuss." The best comedic moment in the movie is the one in which Muggs (newly arrived at the reformatory) pretends to flirt with this humorless woman, to her utter horror: "Oh, Picklepuss, you an' me wuz made fer each udda! We c'd do t'ings! We c'd go places!" It's made all the funnier by the fact that uniformed cop Tom Brady is standing about a foot away from them, watching in total non-comprehension.

Like some other early ESK movies, Bowery Blitzkrieg takes its story pretty seriously but pauses occasionally for moments of levity, as in a self-contained vaudeville-type skit in which Pat Costello and Huntz Hall (both playing dum-dums) discuss how to tend to a boxer's injuries properly during a fight. It's very obvious from this scene that Pat was aping the mannerisms of his younger brother, Lou, but without much success.

My grade: C+

Clancy's shirt

P.S. - Scruno is in this one, so there's the expected racial humor at his expense. Same old, same old. He's a shoeshine boy and as lazy, larcenous, and cowardly as ever, liable to bolt from a room at the mere sight of a cop. There's nothing particularly vicious about the portrayal of his character, but he's still a poor role model.

More interesting is the treatment of Clancy, an Asian-American man who runs the pool hall where the East Side Kids hang out. Just like in The Gang's All Here, Keye Luke gives a dignified, positive, non-stereotyped portrayal. His ethnicity, for most of the film, is not an issue. But there's one weird scene in which Clancy shows up with a t-shirt with Muggs' name on the back and Chinese characters on the front. Muggs thinks the writing must be "propaganda," but Clancy claims he doesn't know what the characters mean. ("I got it off a Chinese calendar.") Muggs demands that he read it anyway, and... well, not speaking the language myself, I can't be sure if what Keye Luke says is real or not. But it's an off-putting, gratuitous moment either way.

Mill Creek comedy classics #73: "Million Dollar Kid" (1944)

Adjusting for inflation, this would be The $13.2 Million Kid today.

The flick: Million Dollar Kid (Monogram Pictures, 1944) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 7.1

Director: Wallace Fox (Smart Alecks)

Character man Robert Grieg

Series regulars:

• Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Bobby Stone (all in Smart Alecks)

• Billy Benedict (Clancy Street Boys, Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster)

• Jimmy Strand (cameoed in Clancy Street Boys and stayed with the series from 1943-1944; non-ESK films include Faces in the Fog and Are These Our Parents?)

• Buddy Gorman (this is the first of his ESK films I've reviewed; he was with the series from 1943-1951; he also appeared in White Heat and Meet Me In St. Louis)

• David Durand (did three ESK films at the end of his career; had previously appeared in Angels with Dirty Faces and Bob Hope's The Ghostbreakers, plus a series of "Terry Kelly" short films at Columbia)

• Bernard Gorcey (Leo's dad; appeared in quite a few ESK/Bowery Boys movies, including Clancy Street Boys; other films include The Picture of Dorian Gray and Chaplin's The Great Dictator)

Other actors of note:

• Noah Beery, Sr. (Clancy Street Boys)

• Iris Adrian (The Stork Club, I'm from Arkansas)

• Herbert Heyes (Miracle on 34th Street, The Ten Commandments)

• Robert Grieg (Hollywood and Vine; the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers and Animal Crackers; Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story, Unfaithfully Yours, Sullivan's Travels, and The Lady Eve)

• Johnny Duncan (Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, Kubrick's Spartacus)

• Mary Gordon (James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man)

• Patsy Moran (a Monogram stock player; worked on TV and in films with Lucille Ball, Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope, and more)

• Stan Brown (Only Angels Have Wings, You Can't Take It With You)

• Al Stone (nothing else; this was his first and last movie)

• Louise Curry (Citizen Kane, The Reluctant Dragon)

Funny lady Iris Adrian

The gist of it: Muggs (Gorcey) is upset about a string of muggings that have been giving the East Side a bad rep and nearly as upset that dimwitted Glimpy (Hall) has invited his even-more-dimwitted cousin Herbie (Stone) to join the East Side Kids. One night, the Kids save wealthy Mr. Courtland (Heyes) from being mugged by some tough gangsters. Courtland is grateful and gives the Kids his card. Later, Glimpy and Herbie find Courtland's wallet and the money inside it, leading Police Captain Matthews (Beery) to believe that the East Side Kids themselves are the muggers.

At the police station, Courtland exonerates the Kids and invites them to his home to use his elaborate gymnasium. The Kids get along surprisingly well with Courtland, but they soon notice that not all is well with the rich man's children. His older son is away, flying for Uncle Sam in WWII. His lovely daughter Louise (Curry) is engaged to charming conman Andre (Brown) who claims to be a French military officer but is actually an American phony whose "uniform" came from a costume shop. After tailing him, Muggs and Glimpy discover that Andre is two-timing Louise with a floozy nightclub singer named Mazie Dunbar (Adrian).

This little conundrum is pretty easily (and cleverly) solved when Muggs brings the outraged Mazie to Andre and Louise's engagement party, but there's a more serious issue with Courtland's younger son, Roy (Duncan). You see, Roy is part of the gang of muggers that's been terrorizing the neighborhood -- not because he needs money, but just because he's bored and looking for kicks. When the Kids learn that Courtland's older son has been tragically shot down in combat overseas, they do everything they can to bring the real muggers to justice without incriminating Roy so that nice Mr. Courtland won't lose both of his sons. Things get complicated, though, when the crooks kidnap one of the Kids, Skinny (Benedict).

Perry juxtaposes silly and serious.

My take: Since the unexpected success of Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005), critics have complained about writer-director-star Tyler Perry combining deadly serious issues with broad, silly comedy in a clumsy and artless fashion, i.e. juxtaposing domestic violence with the sketch-comedy buffoonery of "Madea." But Million Dollar Kid proves that this is nothing new. Yet again, an East Side Kids movie takes an entirely unwanted detour into heavy melodrama, then still tries to keep the Three Stooges-type wackiness going. I get emotional whiplash from these movies.

As Danny Peary points out in his book Cult Movie Stars, the Dead End/East Side movies are liberal sermons at heart. The point is that uneducated, lower-class youths are not inherently bad; they just need kindly benefactors, including policemen and wealthy philanthropists, to set them on the right path. His level of moral turpitude varies from film to film, but Leo Gorcey is usually a goody-two-shoes in these movies, despite his tough talk. Huntz Hall is weak-willed and therefore more fallible. He always ends up doing the right thing, but it's because Gorcey slaps him around if he doesn't.

The writers and directors at Monogram had apparently stopped trying to give any of the other Kids individual personalities by 1944. Other than Muggs and Glimpy, the other gang members are interchangeable. Obviously, Monogram was trying to switch things up a little by bringing in the new character Herbie, who manages to be even dumber than Glimpy. But just as obviously, that little experiment didn't work and the character (and the actor) disappeared forever. Frankly, though, all this is moot.

When Mr. Courtland gets that most-dreaded telegram from the War Department, Million Dollar Kid stops being a goofball comedy, and no amount of pratfalls or malapropisms can bring it back. Oh, and I couldn't help but notice that this movie yet again took the East Side Kids out of their natural environment. In this case, Muggs and the boys spend virtually all their time at the ritzy home of the Courtlands. I felt really badly for the butler (Grieg) who gets fired for being slightly snooty to the rude, destructive Kids. The movie forgets about this character, and I shudder to think what must have happened to him after losing his job. Damn those East Side Kids!

Leo and Bernard Gorcey

Is it funny: Nah, not really. If there's humor here, it's in the subplot about the fake Frenchie and his bottle-blonde bimbo girlfriend. I would have made this the main focus of the movie and completely left out the "prodigal son" story, which only serves to drag the movie down.

For me, the funniest moment of the movie is when Stan Brown tries to keep his pathetic charade going after the jig is clearly up. There was some real potential with these characters, but they don't get enough screen time. "New guy" Herbie, on the other hand, gets way too much screen time. While all of the East Side Kids are overaged to one degree or another, Al Stone looks like a middle-aged man. Muggs cracks wise about this very topic, but that only makes the situation worse by calling attention to it.

For these reasons and more, Million Dollar Kid just didn't do it for me. Leo Gorcey does have a funny little scene with his dad, Bernard, who looks like a shrunken, older version of his son. However, Bernard plays a delivery man who arrives at the Courtland house to bring the fateful telegram. Therefore, it's monstrously inappropriate to have these two engage in vaudeville-type banter at this point in the movie. What could the makers of this film have been thinking?

My grade: C

P.S. - Scruno had dropped out of the East Side Kids by this point -- Ernest Morrison fought for real in WWII, then got out of acting altogether -- but Million Dollar Kid still manages to sneak in a little bit of old-timey racism when Muggs makes a crack about "Ubangis" and Glimpy responds by grabbing his lips and stretching them out. This is a reference to a cultural misnomer about Ubangi tribeswomen wearing lip plates. Hey, folks, don't blame me. I didn't write these movies.

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.)

Walter Woolf King, normally a villain, plays a surgeon here.

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 work in 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 #70: "Pride of the Bowery" (1940)

Leo Gorcey, unusually pensive and pink, on the VHS cover for Pride of the Bowery. Huntz Hall actually isn't in this one.

Carleton Young

The flick: Pride of the Bowery (Monogram Pictures, 1940) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.4

Director: Joseph H. Lewis (Boys of the City)

Series regulars:

• Leo Gorcey (Boys of the City)

• Bobby Jordan (Boys of the City)

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

• Donald Haines (Boys of the City)

• David Gorcey (Flying Wild)

• Bobby Stone (Flying Wild)

Other actors of note:

• Kenneth Howell (played "Jack Jones" in a series of films from 1936-1940; his homosexuality ended his marriage in '45; died by his own hand in 1966)

• Mary Ainslee (appeared in several Three Stooges shorts, including He Cooked His Goose)

• Kenneth Harlan (Meet John Doe, Topper)

• Carleton Young (A Bride for Henry)

Kenneth Howell

The gist of it: Muggs (Gorcey) is practicing to be a boxer, but he doesn't want to sweat it out in some crummy gym all summer. Danny (Jordan) fixes it so the whole gang can go to what he promises is a training camp. Actually, Danny has volunteered them all for the Civilian Conservation Corps, where they will work and live in military-type conditions for half a year, earning $20 a month for their families. Muggs is the last to learn about this, and he immediately starts breaking rules and challenging authority.

For some reason, he picks a fight with the very bland and innocuous Allen (Howell), and the two become rivals. Once he understands his situation, Muggs calms down somewhat and even saves Allen's life. Captain Jim White (Harlan) is so impressed with this that he grants Muggs a special request. And what does Muggs want? A boxing match with Allen! The fight goes off well, even catching the eye of local boxing promoter Mr. Norton (Young), but Muggs is incensed when Capt. White stops the match before it's finished. He refuses to shake Allen's hand and becomes a pariah in the camp for his poor sportsmanship. He also becomes enamored of blonde Elaine (Ainslee) before realizing she's the Captain's wife.

Trouble arises when Willie (Stone) steals $100 from White's office, then tells Muggs he needed the money to send to his aunt and brother. Muggs goes to Norton and agrees to fight for six rounds to earn back the hundred bucks for Willie. He takes a beating in the ring but manages to go the distance. While replacing the money, Muggs is caught by Captain White, who threatens him with a dishonorable discharge. But Muggs isn't about to fink on Willie. Luckily, Danny figures out who the real thief is and begins to set things right.

This movie is Leo Gorcey's Raging Bull, more or less.

My take: As I've now learned, early 1940s East Side Kids movies are like those mystery bags you sometimes find at gift shops. Before you pop one into the DVD player, you never quite know who's going to be in the lineup this time or how serious the movie will be. In this flick, the cast is basically the same as that of Boys of the City (1940), but the tone is more serious, like that of East Side Kids (1940).

I hated Boys of the City and was lukewarm on East Side Kids, but Pride of the Bowery is not half bad. It's part-boxing movie, part-military movie, and the focus is clearly on Leo Gorcey as Muggs. He's as ornery as ever and still an incurable smart-aleck, but he doesn't do any of his trademark malapropisms, mispronunciations, or Moe Howard-esque slaps in this one. I didn't really miss those traits, and I didn't miss the Kids' crowded, noisy, poverty-stricken neighborhood either.

Just as Boys of the City took place almost entirely in the country, Pride of the Bowery strays far away from the Bowery. It's possible that the creative minds behind the ESK series got bored with the urban setting and decided to transplant the main characters to a more pastoral locale just for the sake of variety. So in this movie, we get to see Bobby Jordan and Leo Gorcey in an area where there are lakes and trees and fresh air.

The story is very simple and corny, but I still got surprisingly involved in what was happening -- the stolen money, the pivotal boxing matches, etc. A lot of that is due to Gorcey, whom I'd underestimated as an actor. He even shows some dramatic chops, as when Muggs gets dressed up, buys a bouquet from Scruno (Morrison), and visits Elaine (who has flirted with him), only to be crestfallen when she emerges from her house with Captain White. It's a melancholy, wordless moment as Muggs registers what has happened and reacts to it. You really get a sense of the sad little man behind the gruff exterior. Of course, this being a comedy, there's a funny little tag to the scene in which Muggs tries to get a refund on the flowers.

I was glad that the boxing scenes were played fairly seriously, too, and not for slapstick as they easily could have been. Considering that this is an East Side Kids movie, I thought for sure that Norton was going to turn out to be a crook trying to lead Muggs astray, but he's on the level. I'm always grateful when an ESK movie deviates from the series' rigid formula.

Is it funny: Eh, only somewhat, but this is a movie in which the comedy exists to ease the tension. Clancy Street Boys was an out-and-out farce, and a fairly decent one at that, but Pride of the Bowery is a drama with comic relief.

Of course, Muggs has to be the consummate wisenheimer and make with the zingers wherever he goes. But he also has to be believable as a guy who would risk his life and his reputation to save others, so his wilder comedic traits are dialed back in this film. His silliest moments are near the beginning, when he walks around the camp like a king, bossing everyone around (especially his superiors), not realizing that he's signed on to be a lowly laborer. When he's shown his bunk in the barracks, for instance, he says he was promised a private room with a bath. Danny, Muggs' dim but loyal sidekick, is allowed to be a little goofier, and of course Scruno is a completely comedic character. Generally, though, this movie is pretty straight-laced for an ESK flick.

My grade: B

P.S. - Weirdly, in this movie, Scruno is not one of the usual gang. He's just one of the kids at the CCC camp.  His portrayal is mildly racist, I'd say, but nowhere near as bad as Boys in the City. For some reason, when Muggs and his pals arrive, Scruno is the one tasked with carrying their luggage and delivering it to the barracks like a clumsy bellhop. Later, when he's selling flowers on the street, Scruno tells Muggs that he stole his merchandise from a neighbor's yard and says that he'll be selling watermelons tomorrow. And in another scene, he complains that he worked until he was "black in the face." So, yeah, not one for the Wall of Fame. But overall, Scruno is not ill-treated in this film.

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.