They Made ME a Criminal | John Garfield, The Dead End Kids

They Made ME a Criminal | John Garfield, The Dead End Kids | John Garfield meets the Dead End Kids

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They Made ME a Cri...

	They Made ME a Criminal John Garfield, The Dead End Kids Hollywood Movie Classics, 1987 average customer review:based on 8 reviews
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The boys are working on a farm. Here comes John Garfield.

This is the fourth Dead End Kids film. (Dead End [1937], Crime School [1938], Angels With Dirty Faces [1938]). A boxer (John Garfield) has a little party after his fight. In an apartment, Johnnie trys to swing a punch at a nosy reporter, but he is so drunk he misses and ends up passed out in a chair. Another man hits the reporter over the head with a whiskey bottle. The reporter McGee ends up dead. Later, they decide to make Johnnie take the fall. Johnnie is innocently drunk-sleep. The bad man and woman try to make there getaway, but with the police catching them, they go off the road and instantly die. They think it is Johnnie who is dead. But one detective is on the hunt. Johnnie runs away and he comes across a farm where the delinquent Dead End Kids (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Bernard Punsly) have been sent to work. There he meets the boys who he trys to reform. Also a woman at the date farm, Peggy (Gloria Dickson), softens his heart too. Meanwhile a detective (Claude Rains) is close on the trail.
This is a good film for Billy Halop, who practically steals the film. Great acting from Halop. Good performances by May Robson who played the Grandma on the farm. Filmed at Palm Desert, California. Great ending. Get a hankercheif. On this DVD version, Alpha Video only offers an "index" which is a chapter selection. Very good print of film.
John Garfield also appeared with Leo Gorcey (and Bernard Gorcey) in "Out of the Fog" (1941).

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John Garfield meets the Dead End Kids

Future superstar, John Garfield, is cast as a boxer on the lam from a (false) murder rap.
Claude Raines is miscast as the detective who pursues him.
Garfield winds up at a farm where the ever-popular Dead End Kids are too.
There's plenty of action, drama and intrigue as Garfield gets involved with the farm's gorgeous owner and the Dead End Kids, who come to idolize him.

East Side Kids Outshine Garfield

John Garfield stars as Johnnie, a prize figher with a distinctive style of fighting. He unfortunately takes it too far and accidentally kills a reporter, forcing him to take action. However, two of his friends (including the beautiful Ann Sheridan) die in an automobile accident, and the cops mistake one of them for Johnnie. In an attempt to save his skin, Johnnie flees to the countryside where he stumbles upon a home for wayward boys (The East Side Kids). He becomes a role model for the boys and eventually learns not to be so selfish.

Suprisingly, Garfield is not the big attraction for this film. Instead, The East Side Kids take presidence over the star. They have their own brand of talent stemming mainly from truth. Here, none of them stand out above the other, both a good and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Leo Gorcey shoots his mouth off, but he is hardly the leader he came to be in later films. Huntz Hall is the goofy comic relief. Bobby Jordan is the innocent little brother type. The boys work exceptionally well in a tense swimming scene in a water silo, the most memorable part of the film.

This movie has all the makings of a b-movie, but it's cast makes it highly enjoyable.

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A Very Thirties Film

The always intense John Garfield stars as a boxer framed for the murder of a newspaper reporter who was about to expose the real story behind his carefully crafted public image. Conveniently, the real killer and the only witness to what really happened are both killed in a car accident, leaving Garfield without a defense. So he takes off, ends up in California and gets mixed up with the Dead End Kids, a girl, and an old lady who befriend him, not knowing his real identity. There's a lot left to luck in this film as dogged detective Claude Rains chases after the boxer. The Dead End Kids are an acquired taste, although in this film they aren't as grating as they would become in later years. Garfield, as usual, is very watchable and believable. Rains, on the other hand, is miscast as the detective and never for a moment seems convincing. Ann Sheridan is equally miscast as Garfield's drunk girlfriend, although she makes a quick exit in the film, despite her uncalled-for high billing. Gloria Dickson, the girl he falls in love with, has a few good moments, but lacks star quality. The script has a number of holes in it, but it also has some good moments. I particularly enjoyed the dramatic water tower sequence, as the boys must try to escape from a water tower where the water is going down. This is very much an old fashioned movie, especially in the boxing scenes, but that is also part of its appeal, since it is a great example of the kind of film Thirties audiences enjoyed.

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They Made Me a Criminal

Interesting, corny story of professional boxer John Garfield who takes it on the lam after being wrongly charged with murder. He starts in New York and ends up in Arizona. Hires on with a mother and daughter team who are also in charge of a number of juvenile delinquents, the Dead End Kids, who've been sent west to `reform.'
In the late 30s Warner Brothers was cycling most of its gangster stars (Bogart, Cagney, etc.) through the Dead End Kids mill with a fair amount of success. Garfield wasn't an established star yet, but he had the accent, the attitude, and could dance a convincing boxing scene.
THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL is just all right, although fans of the Dead End Kids (none in this room) should probably enjoy it more than those who find them incredibly annoying. Garfield plays the innocent pug with ease and the story has us rooting for him throughout. The usually reliable Claude Rains is miscast as the tough talking, big city cop who stays hot on his trail. Ably directed by famed choreographer Busby Berkeley.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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