1930's Watch: Dead End (1937)

Watched:  09/15/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  William Wyler

After seeing Sylvia Sydney - and quite liking her - in Merrily We Go To Hell, we decided to check out one of her many other films.  Amazon lists things like "Oscar Nominations x4" now as you're scrolling, and as Dead End (1937) had 4 Oscar noms, we gave it a spin.

The credits on this thing are bonkers.  Directed by William Wyler, it was a movie based on a play - and the screenplay was by Lillian Hellman.  Then the cast list came up.  Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrae, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Ward Bond.... not a bad line-up.  

The credits done, the movie then moved over a multi-story, gigantic set depicting the titular "dead end" of the film as a New York street runs into the river and where a gigantic high-class apartment building had gone in amongst tenement buildings - gentrification of a rough part of town (and based on a real building, in a real dead end in New York, 53rd Street and the East River.  I believe FDR Drive now runs through the location of the play and film.)

The set has a river, restaurants, etc... all built, the intersection feeling as real and immersive as anything I think I've seen from the era.  While it's not Intolerance, it's a massive set that's as accurate as possible.  

The story is pitched online as a "gangster story", and it is that, but the crime of the film is more a byproduct of the conditions of early 20th Century tenement living and the forces of economic instability that leave kids on the street while their parents don't watch out for them for a medley of reasons, the schools don't have the ability to keep them in class, and boys grow up like Lord of the Flies - something I've seen recounted a few places,* including in the history of comics legend, Jack Kirby - who kept trying to recreate the film's "Dead End Boys" in a few comics series.  I assume this movie resonated with him tremendously.

Also, Dead End Kids is a perfect band name and has been used.

The movie interleaves a few stories, like many stage shows showing the various people of a place, more than just following a single thread with obvious main characters.  A modern version of the concept might be In the Heights.  

We do get our Dead End Kids - a gang of street rats with no guide to show them how to be anything other than hoodlums and wastrels. Sylvia Sidney plays a young woman, the elder sister of one of the boys, who is on strike for a fair wage.  She's taking abuse from cops and things are going badly, and her stupid brother can't wrap his head around their situation.  She's also just learned her lifelong crush and person she assumed she'd marry, Joel McCrea has taken up with one of the classy dames from the new luxury apartments that just went up on the block.  Bad news, as he also has ambitions of getting out of here.

Bogart is a former street rat from the neighborhood who has gone on to a life of crime, including murder - and who has had face-altering surgery to hide his criminal identity (which Bogart would do again in Dark Passage).  He has essentially tried to come home again, looking up his old flame while also trying to see his mother, who still lives here.

By 1937, a few edges had to be knocked off the film as the Code was gaining a foothold.  Claire Trevor won an Oscar for her brief appearance as Bogart's ex.  She now is coded as having TB, and things are bad... but pretty clearly, she's supposed to have syphilis and be a hooker - but already you couldn't say these things out loud in a movie, so it's all done with a polite wink for the comfort of the easily scandalized.  Unfortunately for the movie, Trevor looks... great?  Not Murder, My Sweet great, but great. Luckily, Trevor was a phenomenal actor, as was Bogart, and it sells.

Sylvia Sidney in close up is how you win the audience's sympathy

In short, the movie is solid.  Sylvia Sidney is great here, a woman who has lived to serve others, and is unappreciated by all and doesn't want to complain.  She has her own little speech that parallels what would get spoofed a bit (intentionally or otherwise) in Little Shop of Horrors, by Audrey's "Somewhere That's Green" number.  McCrae sees a future with a woman who is out of his league, and reflects his own aspirations.  Bogart is lightning as Baby Face, who believes he made good - even if there's a much reported body count to his success.  And the Dead End Kids scrap, mug a rich kid, and turn on each other over the course of the film.

The movie is politically charged - slum and tenement living becoming a social issue that the 20th Century would deal with over and over, with innumerable failed projects (not the term "projects") to try and resolve what were seen as the sources of the issues that made poverty endemic.  The movie also wisely points at the generational issues occurring, from ineffective parenting, to abuse and alcoholism, to the hood on the corner who gives kids bad ideas that will be effective if your only goal is to win the next street fight.

Sidney is a life-long victim who doesn't see herself that way, and just wants some happiness.  Meanwhile, the tenement dwellers can see the endless parties of the swells who moved in to the fancy high rise, dancing the night away above.  The doorman, Ward Bond, is the keeper of that world, the guardian protecting his tenants, and a judge of what they get to up there, which he barely lets on.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the movie holds up and is an interesting look at what issues were present in the conversation in the mid-1930's.  Reportedly, FDR saw the original play and it helped him decide to form a committee on tenement slums.  (By the way, slum living was such a big issue it was included in early stories of Superman comics when Superman was sort of a fantasy social crusader.)  

I'm a bit surprised it doesn't get mentioned more, but pre-war movies are something you sort of have to dig for, I guess.

Perhaps the *oddest* outcome of the film is that the Dead End Kids - the roving gang of thig kids - were wildly popular and would become a sort of IP of their own, with variations and changes, across multiple movies and two decades - right until Juvenile Delinquency became the watchword of the day.  To this day, things like "The Newsboy Legion" in Superman comics and media are a direct result of their existence.

*it's not too hard to draw a line from here to Once Upon a Time in America, by the way