About a year ago Turner Classic Movies began running the Dead End Kids movies on Saturday mornings. I would make sure to DVR them along with Noir Alley and the Tarzan series. I was fascinated by the series about the ruffians hustling on the streets of New York City. They were a troupe of “teenage actors” who were old enough to receive social security checks toward the end of their film run. They started on Broadway stage in the play Dead End in 1935, came out to Hollywood for the film adaptation in 1937 and stayed on screen until 1957. They even worked with Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall were movie stars and become icons with their massive number of films. Poverty Row Classics Vol. 2 – East Side Kids/Let’s Get Tough show how things evolved in their career as the world’s oldest teenagers
East Side Kids (1940 – 62 minutes) was notorious cheap producer Sam Katzman’s rip-off of the Dead End Kids. He hustled together a crew of not-quite youngsters including a few ex-Our Gang members. Danny Dolan (Harris Berger) swears his brother Knuckles (Captain Midnight’s Dave O’Brien) didn’t murder a treasury agent. He and his gang do their own investigation to see if they can spring Knuckles from death row before the executioner arrives. The neighborhood cop Pat (The Postman Always Rings Twice’s Leon Ames) wants to help the boys, but it seems like someone on the force wants him off the trail. Turns out there’s a counterfeiting ring active in the East Side neighborhood.
In what turned out to be strange timing, the Dead End Kids were looking for a new home and signed with Katzman to become the East Side Kids. This started with the second film in the series when Leo Gorcey took over the gang as Muggs. Huntz Hall joined up as Gimpy. Strange to think that the low-budget rip-off would turn into the new home, but Hollywood is a cruel town. Gorcey, Hall and the others wanted to stay in front of the cameras. Thus we get the second half of the East Side Kids double feature featuring the former Dead End kids in their new locale.
Let’s Get Tough (1942 – 62 minutes) takes place at the start of World War II. The East Side kids are inspired by a military parade. They attempt to enlist so they can kill a million japs. But none of the services want them because they are supposedly too young. Gorcey was around 25 and Huntz 22 when this was shot. They decided to do their own attack as they vandalize an import store owned by a Japanese-America. Turns out the man immigrated from China. The East Side Kids look like fools. They attempt to apologize only to find the store owner is dead. This leads them to discovering a diabolical plot in the neighborhood being run by the Black Dragon Society. Can they bust this secret Japanese spy ring and do their country proud?
While I enjoy the comedy of Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall; Sunshine Sammy Morrisson holds up against the two as Scruno. Even when Gorcey pours water on his head, Morrison’s expression turns the embarrassment back on Gorcey. I do wonder how the East Side Kids played in the South since Scruno hangs out with the white guys as a good friend and not the hired help. I can see the world’s richest man posting Tweets on his website calling Scruno a DEI hire. And he’d be wrong like he is about The Odyssey. Scruno is essential to the gang as they learn their lesson about bigotry in this film and spotting the real Japanese traitors in the neighborhood.
Poverty Row Classics Vol. 2 – East Side Kids/Let’s Get Tough is a relief as my Bowery Boys films from TCM have vanished off the DVR thanks to the time limit of how long a movie can stay in the system. Good to know this Blu-ray disc will last longer than six months. East Side Kids is interesting to see how a poverty row studio would come up with their own version. Let’s Get Tough is a ripe piece of anti-Japanese cinema that took hold in the post-Pearl Harbor era. Both films are barely over an hour and features the Boys as detectives in their neighborhood.
The Video is 1.33:1 full frame. The black and white transfers bring out the contrast. It makes the films feel a bit gritty like the East Side neighborhood. The Audio is LPCM 2.0 mono. The movies are subtitled in English.
DVD has both films.
Poverty Row Powerhouse: The Monogram Story (4:47) explains how the smaller indie studios popped up on the same studio to make films for small theaters and the second feature slot in a movie’s night. They made affordable entertainment with films cranked out in a week for under $50,000. They weren’t matching the majors. They were creating genre films that were shipped on three cans. Editors and cameramen got their start in the business. The Bowery Boys made 40 films for the studio. Monogram became Allied Artists to seem bigger.
Poverty Row Studios – A Brief History (5:08) is part 2 of the series. It starts with the Cisco Kid starring Gilbert Roland. Television and major studios squeezed out the indies in the ’50. Republic Pictures went into television production.
Streetwise on Celluloid (3:14) talks about how the scrappy kids from the streets of New York City became a new genre. Dead End Kids were major stars at Warner Brother. Monogram put out 22 East Side Kids films. The short has press stills and posters from the movies. Later they’d become the Bowery Boys.
Poster Gallery (7:26) includes the films of East Side Kids, Bela Lugosi, Westerns and more.
VCI Entertainment presents Poverty Row Classics Vol. 2 – East Side Kids/Let’s Get Tough. Directed by Robert F Hill & Wallace Fox. Screenplays by William Lively & Harvey Gates. Starring Leon Ames, Dennis Moore, Joyce Bryant, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Ernest Morrison & Bobby Jordan. Boxset Contents: 2 movies on 1 Blu-ray disc. Rating: Unrated Release Date: July 14, 2026.
