Making the Dead End Kids mayor of New York for a week is a fatal mistake they may not recover from. In 2013, the race for mayor truly is a circus, so one of the mayoral candidates could be as intelligent as this mayor and his cabinet. The story originally focuses on reform school kid Gabriel Dell who moves to a new neighborhood with sister Ann Sheridan, finding he can't escape his past, even though he's quickly adopted by the Beale Street gang which consists of Dead End Kid veterans Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. When a nasty criminal element takes over, Dell is framed for starting a tenement fire which kills a crippled young boy and results in Dell's being sentenced to ten years in adult prison. This leads to the rest of the gang to use their week in city government to prove Gabe innocent.
Dell reforms thanks to an adult, here played by that master of screen art, Ronald Reagen. The boys are supported by Sheridan who is romanced by Reagen, and by Bonita Granville, with Margaret Hamilton as their judgmental teacher and Berton Churchill as the rolly-poly mayor who looks nothing like Fiorello La Guardia. Marjorie Main is particularly haunting as the mother of the dead boy who gets support by the entire neighborhood in a touching scene. Hamilton is initially seen chastising Dell for his past in front of the other boys, then discourages the gang's mayoral candidate, and is noticeably upset when he wins. She represents the type of teacher who discourages as opposed to encourages, a genuine problem in public school education.
Some tough action sequences, particularly a fight between Dell and the gang when they first meet, the blazing fire which is blamed on the new kid on the block (resulting in a climactic trial which reveals the corruption in some parts of city government), add much needed excitement to the initially comic structure. The simple message of the film is to never under- estimate the young. They start fighting for their future the minute they see what's at stake and how past generations have screwed it up. Warner Brothers did their own version of MGM's "Babes in Arms", released the same year, which ironically featured Hamilton as a city busybody fighting to get kids off the street and into a reform school.
Dell reforms thanks to an adult, here played by that master of screen art, Ronald Reagen. The boys are supported by Sheridan who is romanced by Reagen, and by Bonita Granville, with Margaret Hamilton as their judgmental teacher and Berton Churchill as the rolly-poly mayor who looks nothing like Fiorello La Guardia. Marjorie Main is particularly haunting as the mother of the dead boy who gets support by the entire neighborhood in a touching scene. Hamilton is initially seen chastising Dell for his past in front of the other boys, then discourages the gang's mayoral candidate, and is noticeably upset when he wins. She represents the type of teacher who discourages as opposed to encourages, a genuine problem in public school education.
Some tough action sequences, particularly a fight between Dell and the gang when they first meet, the blazing fire which is blamed on the new kid on the block (resulting in a climactic trial which reveals the corruption in some parts of city government), add much needed excitement to the initially comic structure. The simple message of the film is to never under- estimate the young. They start fighting for their future the minute they see what's at stake and how past generations have screwed it up. Warner Brothers did their own version of MGM's "Babes in Arms", released the same year, which ironically featured Hamilton as a city busybody fighting to get kids off the street and into a reform school.