Smart Alecks

Whom do kids look up to and imitate? Certainly not parents nor any adults. Kids admire older kids. Thus, the East Side Kids were a good act for the grade school crowd of the 1940s.. Their later Bowery Boys iterations were way too old to be the comedy sensation of the fourth grade. They wore suits for Pete's sake. Thus, the East Side Kids could be-and should be- childishly silly and immature. They had to act like kids and to a great extent, they did. They seemed like a real gang of street kids (albeit a tad too old) as opposed to the adult hapless loafers of The Bowery Boys

Here the bad guys are kids also. Maxie Rosebloom played a character (as usual) so dumb that he made Satch/Glimpy seem like a veritable Stephen Hawkins He was the "boss" of the criminal gang-which only seemed to have one other member, anyway. Perfect!

The only critical issue is: did kids like this movie when it came out? Well, I did