The pejoratives fly in this pre-code gay nineties film about the famed lower East Side and its denizens of this rough and tumble section of New York City. Taking shots at a multitude of nationalities it's a crassly sentimental work of broad and boorish behavior.
Chuck Connors (Wally Beery) and Steve Brodie (George Raft) have an ongoing rivalry that Brodie seems to have the edge on. Connors is beloved on the Bowery as an easy touch with a larger than life personality. When a woman (Fay Wray) comes between them matters only intensify.
Bowery reunites Beery with child star Jackie Cooper after their highly successful pairing in The Champ but it fails to have the magic of the former as director Raul Walsh fleshes out location with drunks and dimwits that make for a sloppy comic burlesque. Beery is over the top, Raft stylish and slick, Wray wispy, Cooper whiny, Pert Kelton, a comic delight.. There's some historical name dropping as John L. Sullivan shows for a second and Carrie Nation and mob destroys a bar but the piece in its entirety is a heavy handed comedy drama, its only draw the outrageous use of words (shockingly summed up in a bar's name) no longer allowed in polite society.
Chuck Connors (Wally Beery) and Steve Brodie (George Raft) have an ongoing rivalry that Brodie seems to have the edge on. Connors is beloved on the Bowery as an easy touch with a larger than life personality. When a woman (Fay Wray) comes between them matters only intensify.
Bowery reunites Beery with child star Jackie Cooper after their highly successful pairing in The Champ but it fails to have the magic of the former as director Raul Walsh fleshes out location with drunks and dimwits that make for a sloppy comic burlesque. Beery is over the top, Raft stylish and slick, Wray wispy, Cooper whiny, Pert Kelton, a comic delight.. There's some historical name dropping as John L. Sullivan shows for a second and Carrie Nation and mob destroys a bar but the piece in its entirety is a heavy handed comedy drama, its only draw the outrageous use of words (shockingly summed up in a bar's name) no longer allowed in polite society.