Looking for light entertainment a few days ago, I hit upon Dead End, a time capsule, fluffball movie starring pretty Sylvia Sidney as plucky, hard-luck girl Drina, and also featuring 38 year old Humphrey Bogart as the dapper but no-good gangster ‘Baby Face’ Martin, blandly handsome JoelMcCrea as the good-hearted, unemployed architect Dave, and Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and the other Dead End Kids as, well, dead end kids. Written by Lillian Hellman (from a hit play by Sidney Kingsley) , directed by the great William Wyler, with cinematography by the estimable Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc) this movie has a great pedigree and it delivers the goods.
If you’re interested in what a ‘class warfare’ attitude really is, this is a good primer of depression era proletarian sentiment. It’s one of several works of Hellman from this period that got her in hot water with HUAC * a few years later.
Manhattan, mid nineteen thirties: the depression seems endless. Low wages, high unemployment. The rich getting richer (and flaunting it); the poor and the working classes getting poorer. The East Side has long been a blue collar, hardscrabble neighborhood, but lately the swells have discovered how dashed pleasant it is to have a nice river view, and they’ve started gentrifying the place. Right along the river are luxury apartments, with doormen, servants, terraces overlooking the water, dames in gowns and furs, gents in dinner jackets, chauffeured limos, etc. Out in the street are the Dead End Kids, a gang of teen urchins, with nowhere to go (literally and figuratively), scruffy, kinda tough, but not so bad really. A few doors down are tenement houses with the salt of the earth proletariat: blue collar workers, widows, single moms, struggling young women looking for a break. 
Among these is Drina, a sweet young woman, barely making ends meet, while trying to bring up her teen brother Tommy, a good kid, who, to Drina’s dismay, is being seduced into life with the gang. Drina is also in love with her childhood friend, Dave, who, despite a college degree and professional training, can’t find a real job. Dave really likes Drina, but is smitten with the blonde Kay, of the wealthy set, who has taken a shine to him. Drina is understandably resentful of the rich hussie, when she is not worrying about her brother. Silvia Sidney, little known today, was the big star of this movie, and her character is the center of the story, upright, moral, worthy, yet threatened by the loss of her kid brother and the loss of love.
Meanwhile, Baby Face, a notorious thug with a big rep, lotsa dough , fancy threads and a price on his head, is back in town visiting the old neighborhood , hoping to hook up with his old flame and see his old mother after many years. There are a lot of ways to describe Bogart, but his mug doesn’t really lend itself to a character called ‘Baby Face’ – a dilemma neatly solved by reference to a recent ID shifting plastic surgery. Well, Mama rejects him and his beloved ex has become a prostitute, so we get to see a very bitter, disheartened Bogie – a disposition his mug IS well suited for.
The Dead End Kids (later known as The Eastside Kids' and later still, as ‘The Bowery Boys”) are entertaining to watch and endearing in this, their first of many films. They certainly lively up the place. I suspect you’ll recognize them, without realizing where or when you’ve seen them. Before.
Oh, the story is trite, but it moves along, and is never dull. We’re meant to root for the everyday folks, and despise the rich and powerful. There’s a curious resonance to our world. Not much has changed, eh? Except that most pictures back then had predictable happy endings.
Wyler is one of the twentieth century’s great directors, and he can certainly work a plot. Toland’s cinematography is terrific throughout, touches of noir, interesting angles, evocative close-ups. The street and the river are a bit too clean to be believed , but blame Sam Goldwyn, who vetoed a more realistic depiction.
This is by no means a ‘must-see’ flick, but it is pleasant enough and fun to watch.
Available on DVD and as a Netflix streaming movie.
*The infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Leaping ahead seventy-five years, one is tempted to argue that the current House itself is engaged in un-american activities, but that’s another blog entirely.
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