Boy of the Streets

After years of being at M-G-M, Jackie Cooper was now a teen whose cuteness was no more though he did look pretty handsome growing up. Still, the studio no more wanted him, neither for awhile did the other major studios so for a while, he ended up at Monogram-a poverty row studio. This was his first movie for them. It has him portraying a member of a tough street gang who're playing phone pranks though he doesn't make the calls but an African-American member (Paul White) does. I'll stop there and just say Cooper wasn't too bad though the story seems to meander sometimes from his encouraging a girl teen (Maureen O'Connor) to audition for a nightclub singing job even though she's underage to a brief misunderstanding between a doctor (Gordon Elliot) and a society woman (Kathleen Burke) who's the new owner of the tenement building that seem to hint of some kind of romance though it's thankfully not carried through. Besides Cooper, the only other recognizable face here was that of Marjorie Main, who previously appeared in the play and film that inspired this one-Dead End, and who'd get more lasting fame as the Ma in the Ma and Pa Kettle films. In summary, Boy of the Streets was okay for what it was, nothing more.