The East Side Kids were characters in a series of 22 films released by Monogram Pictures from 1940 through 1945. The series was a low-budget imitation of the Dead End Kids , a successful film franchise of the late 1930s.
22-467: The 1935 Sidney Kingsley Broadway play Dead End was a portrait of life in the New York tenements, featuring six tough-talking juvenile delinquents. When film producer Samuel Goldwyn made a film out of the play, he recruited the original kids from the play: Leo Gorcey , Huntz Hall , Bobby Jordan , Gabriel Dell , Billy Halop , and Bernard Punsly . In 1938, Warner Brothers signed these six actors for
44-609: A 4-F classification, rendering him unfit for military service. During Bobby Jordan's absence, his role in the series was taken by former child actor David Durand . Durand had been the star of Columbia's series of Glove Slingers campus comedies, and lent the same earnest sincerity to his East Side Kids appearances. Jordan returned in 1944, in uniform, for a guest appearance in Bowery Champs . Starting with Clancy Street Boys in 1943, Bernard Gorcey , father of Leo and David, played various bit parts in seven East Side Kids films. Given
66-594: A big head, and rough-hewn features that made him look like a bust by Sir Jacob Epstein ". Kingsley hired Korda as an assistant to do research for a screenplay he was writing for CBS on the Hungarian Revolution which was never produced. In 1964, Kingsley was elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America and in 1983, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame . Kingsley died of
88-479: A series of Dead End Kids dramas, the most successful being 1938's Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart , and They Made Me a Criminal in 1939, starring John Garfield . Also in 1938, Universal Pictures offered a competing series, under the Little Tough Guys brand name. At one time or another, five of the original Dead End Kids, minus Gorcey, joined the series, resulting in
110-780: A stroke on March 20, 1995, in his home in Oakland, New Jersey . ^film never produced Billy Benedict William Franklin Sater Benedict (April 16, 1917 – November 25, 1999) was an American actor, perhaps best known for playing "Whitey" in Monogram Pictures ' The Bowery Boys series. Benedict was born in Haskell, Oklahoma , After his father's death when Billy was three years old, his mother supported him and his two sisters. He took part in school theatricals, and on leaving school he made his way to Hollywood . Benedict's first film
132-632: The Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934. Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at Cornell University , where he began his career writing plays for the college dramatic club. He joined the Group Theater for the production of his first major work. In 1933 the company performed his play Men in White . Set in a hospital, the play dealt with the issue of illegal abortion , 1930s medical and surgical practices, and
154-459: The City ), boxing melodrama ( Bowery Blitzkrieg ), and horror-comedy ( Spooks Run Wild ), with the kids confronting various stock villains: gangsters, smugglers, spies, and crooked gamblers, along the way. The East Side films were problem-teen melodramas until 1943, when director William Beaudine joined the series and emphasized the comedy content. He encouraged the actors to improvise freely, adding to
176-628: The continuity between films was often ignored. As with the Little Tough Guys, the membership of the team changed from film to film, until Huntz Hall joined in 1941, when the lineup was somewhat stabilized. In total, 20 actors were members of the East Side Kids. Dead End Kid Gabriel Dell drifted in and out of the series as a gang member, a reporter, or a small-time hoodlum, as in Million Dollar Kid . In Smart Alecks he's an ex-member who left
198-474: The films released quarterly. Forty-eight Bowery Boys features were made. The last one, In the Money , was released in 1958. Many of the East Side Kids features were re-released by Astor Pictures , Favorite Films, and Savoy Pictures, the latter two companies owned by former Monogram executives Sidney Kingsley Sidney Kingsley (22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received
220-434: The films' spontaneous charm. The advent of World War II affected the series and the cast. Four of the films involve enemy spies, Nazi intrigue, and American soldiers. Offscreen, between 1942 and 1944, cast members Morrison, Jordan, Dell, David Gorcey, and Billy Benedict left the series after being drafted. Leo Gorcey, a few days after receiving his draft notice, suffered a near-fatal motorcycle accident. His injuries led to
242-513: The gang to pursue a life of crime. Rising tough-teen actor Stanley Clements appeared in three films. The stories always centered on the tough, pugnacious "Muggs McGinnis" (Gorcey) or the more innocent, clean-cut "Danny" (Bobby Jordan). Huntz Hall's "Glimpy" began as a minor character who grew in prominence as he was given a larger comedic role over the course of the series. The loose format proved flexible enough to shift back and forth between urban drama ( That Gang of Mine ), murder mystery ( Boys of
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#1732848387413264-515: The historical drama The Patriots , which told the story of Thomas Jefferson and his activities in the young American republic and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Kingsley continued writing for the theater late into his career, adapting Arthur Koestler 's novel Darkness at Noon for the stage in 1951, and writing Lunatics and Lovers in 1954 and Night Life in 1962. In addition to his work for
286-401: The low budgets, simplistic stories, and crude, assembly-line production of the East Side Kids series, its enduring popularity relies on the cast's rambunctious energy, breezy banter, often ad-libbed and containing inside jokes, fast-paced action, and Leo Gorcey's trademark malapropisms . Eg, "This calls for drastic measurements". By 1945 Leo Gorcey had asserted himself as the top-billed star of
308-451: The new team. This was a one-shot film, designed to cash in on a popular trend. When Dead End Kid Bobby Jordan became available, Katzman signed him for Boys of the City . "The East Side Kids" became a series, released by Monogram Pictures . Monogram was a "budget" studio, making inexpensive films for double-feature theaters. Sam Katzman's productions were even cheaper. A typical major-studio "B" picture cost $ 200,000 to $ 300,000 to make, and
330-507: The only African-American in the Jordan-Gorcey gang. In the first few films, Dave O'Brien , familiar to audiences from low-budget westerns and serials, and as the accident-prone star of the Pete Smith comedies, played Jordan's older brother Knuckles Dolan, who always seemed to be getting roped into chaperoning the kids from adventure to adventure. O'Brien appeared in different roles as well;
352-505: The series, now billed as "Leo Gorcey and The East Side Kids", and insisted that producer Sam Katzman double Gorcey's $ 5,000 salary. Katzman, always cash-conscious, flatly refused and stopped the series after 1945's Come Out Fighting . Undaunted, Gorcey and Bobby Jordan retooled the series as The Bowery Boys . They recruited Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Billy Benedict, and David Gorcey from The East Side Kids. The Bowery Boys became an exceptionally popular staple of theaters and drive-ins, with
374-817: The similar East Side Kids movies, usually playing a member of the East Side gang, but occasionally in villainous roles. The East Side Kids became The Bowery Boys in 1946, and Benedict stayed with the series, as "Whitey", to the end of 1951. Other films included My Little Chickadee (1940) starring W. C. Fields and Mae West , The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Ed Wood 's Bride of the Monster (1955), The Sting (1973) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975). Benedict never shook his juvenile image completely, and continued to play messengers and news vendors well into his sixties. He often worked in television commercials, and in television series, including The Andy Griffith Show , All in
396-820: The stage, Kingsley wrote a number of scripts for Hollywood productions, mostly based on his own work. He later also wrote the scripts and templates for numerous television series and television films. Despite reaching the rank of lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II , soon after, in 1951, Kingsley's name was placed on the Hollywood Blacklist by HUAC , which ended his film career. His marriage to actress Madge Evans in 1939 lasted until her death in 1981. The couple lived together in their 18th century Oakland, New Jersey home for 42 years. Meeting him in 1957, Michael Korda described Kingsley as "a short, powerfully built man with broad shoulders,
418-588: The struggle of a promising physician who must choose to dedicate his life to medicine or devote himself to his fiancée. The play was a box-office smash. Kingsley followed this success with the play Dead End in 1935, a story about slum housing and its connection to crime. The play was fairly successful, being filmed and eventually spawning the film troupe The Dead End Kids . Kingsley's two successes were followed by his 1936 anti-war play Ten Million Ghosts and his 1939 work The World We Make, which were both flops and had short runs. In 1943, Kingsley had success with
440-399: The studio billing the gang as "The Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys." In 1940 producer Sam Katzman , noting the financial success of other tough-kid series, made the film East Side Kids , using two of Universal's Little Tough Guys, Hally Chester and Harris Berger. He added former Our Gang player Donald Haines , Frankie Burke , radio actor Sam Edwards, and Eddie Brian to round out
462-411: Was $ 10 Raise (1935) starring Edward Everett Horton , which launched the blond-haired young man on a busy career. He almost always played juvenile roles, such as newsboys, messengers, office boys, and farmhands. In 1939, when Universal Pictures began its Little Tough Guys series to compete with the popular Dead End Kids features, Billy Benedict was recruited into the cast. These films led him into
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#1732848387413484-465: Was filmed in four weeks. Notorious penny-pincher Katzman spent only $ 33,000 per feature and made them in only five to seven days. He wasted no time or money on subtlety, story development, or more than two takes per scene. Leo Gorcey joined the series, with his brother, David Gorcey of the Little Tough Guys. "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison , the first child actor in the Our Gang comedies, was cast as "Scruno,"
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