Boy of the Streets

A great deal more social commentary got into Boy Of The Street than you would normally find in a Monogram Production about the Lower East Side of New York. Jackie Cooper has the lead in this one and while it looks like a Bowery Boys movie it most certainly is not.

Jackie is a teen gang leader who idolizes his old man and his big talk about big deals he's cooking up with the political bosses of the area. Father is played by Guy Usher who is just waiting for his ship to come in rather than go to work. Mom is Marjorie Main who's had a reality check along time ago about her husband.

Several plot elements fit into Boy In The Street. Of course there is Jackie and his gang. Secondly there's a young girl played by Maureen Connor who has the snoops of the Children's Aid Society asking about her. The doctor who runs the neighborhood clinic and the new landlord of the building where they all live Bill Elliott and Kathleen Burke find a solution.

Lastly there is Jackie's wake up call when he finds that the big bosses downtown have his father down as just a tinhorn chiseler that bones get thrown to every now and then. That knowledge drives Jackie to work for gang leader Matty Fain with some bad consequences.

That is indeed Bill Elliott soon to be cowboy hero playing the doctor. And another part worth noting is George Cleveland who is actually a flunky to the flunky. He's the one I remember best from the film. And also to be noted is Robert Emmett O'Connor as the quintessential Irish- American beat cop, a type that has vanished forever.

Boy Of The Streets will be a pleasant surprise for you if you're expecting some of the lowbrow hijinks of The Bowery Boys.

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.

Monogram tries its hand at producing a social drama on the order of DEAD END or ONE-THIRD OF A NATION. Jackie Cooper gives a high-energy performance as a leader of a street gang, but the entire production slides over into standard melodrama. Neither does the cheap production value help -- even though it might seem to for a film of this sort. However, the photography by Gilbert Warrenton is a little too glossy for the piece.

Guy Usher as Jackie's father and Margorie Main as his mother give fine performances, and the movie may be the first feature to use the standard "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" in its soundtrack, but despite its aspirations, director William Nigh never seems to manage much of either great significance or entertainment.

It's Halloween in an Irish New York City slum. Sixteen-year-old hoodlum Jackie Cooper (as Chuck Brennan) and his gang get in trouble for making some prank telephone calls. Home from the police station, Mr. Cooper worries mother Marjorie Main (as Mary), who feels her son will grow up like boozy good-for-nothing father Guy Usher. The family's poor tenement is enchanted by young Maureen O'Connor (as Nora) singing "Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?"

Sadly, Ms. O'Connor's tubercular mother is taken to a sanitarium. When not scuffling with rival gang members, Cooper and his pals help O'Connor get a singing gig, but the moralistic "Children's Aid Society" interferes...

Cooper left MGM and the peroxide to continue his teenage career elsewhere. Monogram Pictures was a poorer studio, but Cooper gives this social consciousness drama a richer performance than anyone expected; he received good notices and won a "National Board of Review" award. "Boy of the Streets" obviously rides on the coattails of the recently released "Dead End" (with Ms. Main) but plays ahead of its curve by including Paul White (as Spike), a relatively admirable ethnic gang member.

******* Boy of the Streets (12/8/37) William Nigh ~ Jackie Cooper, Maureen O'Connor, Marjorie Main, Paul White

... I swear there is a supporting actor among the street kids in this one that is a spitting image of Jerry Mathers of Leave It to Beaver Fame, but I digress.

This is one of Jackie Cooper's first post-pubescent roles. Cooper had to leave MGM after he was no longer the cute little kid. Because there is a name for the 30s child stars MGM kept around after puberty, and that name is Mickey Rooney. He is actually 15 here playing a boy, Chuck Brennan, who is 16-17 years old. He lives in a New York tenement, has his own loosely organized street gang that frequently has it out with a neighboring street gang, plays pranks on the police, and partakes in some light thievery and fist to cuffs. His mother (Marjorie Main) is worn down by life and by the broken promises of her husband, who claims he is a political operative but is actually just a poser. Nora is a well liked neighborhood teen girl whose mother has been sent to a sanitarium for tuberculosis treatment, and she is in danger of being picked up by the authorities and sent to what amounts to a work house for orphans. Complications and social problems related to generational poverty ensue.

If I had a finer graded rating system I would probably give this one a 5.5 rather than a 5/10. The script is plodding and the dialogue has all of the finesse of Ed Wood, but there are three good actors here - Jackie Cooper, Robert Emmett O'Connor playing a cop as he so often and so skillfully did, and Marjorie Main just as she was getting noticed and before she got picked up by MGM. Their performances save the film. This was the only filmed appearance of Maureen O'Conner who plays Nora. Unfortunately, Monogram seems to be unsuccessfully trying to make her into their own Deanna Durbin with her operatic screeching. I can't blame Ms. O'Conner - This was something all of the studios were trying to copy, usually with very limited success.