This is a re-packaging of a 1985 docu-appreciation of a seldom-hailed but prolific Hollywood low-comedy franchise, the Bowery Boys (as they were ultimately called). It contains additional footage and upgraded digital conversions.
The troupe racked up a remarkable 90 or so features, typically of the B-variety, from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Bowery Boy properties had second lives as TV reruns and are now in public-domain cheapie video labels and streams.
The core group of juvenile talent (Leo Gorcey, Henry 'Huntz' Hall, Bobby Jordan, Bernard Punsley, Gabriel Dell, and Billy Halop) were originally cast on Broadway in the Sidney Kingsley plays Dead End and went to Hollywood for a prestige 1937 MGM adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart. It was serious about big-city poverty and crime, but the scene-stealing, rascally delinquents (often providing the lighter moments) worked so successfully together that the "Dead End Kids" became regulars in similar hardboiled fare, like the 1938 James Cagney death-penalty classic Angels With Dirty Faces.
Loanouts to other studios and added/dropped cast members got the fluid troupe confusingly rechristened the "East Side Kids" and the "Little Tough Guys" - in one programmer the East Side Kids even met the Little Tough Guys!
Their clowning bits—verbal malaprops, slapstick, culture shock, flag-waving WWII patriotism, and a fair amount of racial stereotyping (unfortunate side effect of a grownup "Our Gang" black star Ernie Morrison joining in and briefly making the East Side Kids a rare, integrated ensemble) tended to overshadow their dramatic moments. The boxing tale Pride of the Bowery (1940) has a particularly good role for Gorcey. Leo Gorcey, son of veteran Broadway stage actor Bernard Gorcey (who would also become a regular player in these flicks), developed business moxie and took a producer role in the low-budget series.
It was Leo Gorcey who branded the franchise officially as the Bowery Boys—though they were hardly "boys" any longer in a steady stream of films up until the latter 1950s. During this time, a divorce-and-alcohol-ridden Gorcey ultimately ceded his co-starring part to onetime East Side Kid Stanley Clements. Rubber-faced Huntz Hall—whose smart business investments, we hear, made him wealthy offscreen—stayed to the end.
This retrospective's dated approach leans much on old cine-film interviews with bit players (there is very little Hall and Gorcey input), plus numerous clips from VHS-era public-domain footage—largely blooper reels and vintage trailers. It reminds one poignantly that except for Peter Bogdanovich, very few movie scholars interviewed masters of old-time knockabout, a crowd-pleasing comedy about their craft.
In the vast catalog of Bowery-ology, one must trust the opinion that Jinx Money (1948) is a worthwhile mobster farce, or that Bela Lugosi impishly insinuated an onscreen swear word into Spooks Run Wild (1941), or that the final Bowery Boys entry In The Money (1958) wasn't too bad and ended the long-running antics on an up note.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
Yeah, yeah youse guys, so it ain't da best Bowery Boys documentary that couldda been made, but as an okay tree-tiss on da subject, dis one can fit well in any movie-oriented collection.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
Film history (particularly golden-age Hollywood and classic—or not-so-classic—comedy) classrooms can welcome this group of titles.
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
Except for the possibility Bela Lugosi slipped a PG profanity past the censor, nothing here should discomfort junior-high and above viewing