Dead End

Lives Collide at Various Dead Ends
When DEAD END was released in 1937, it received four Oscars including one for best picture. It didn't win but the power that was present in every scene is as noteworthy now as then. Residents of New York often overlook that they live on an island--no matter where they turn eventually they hit a dead end. Director William Wyler applied this dead end as both a symbol and metaphor for the various collisions of lives that intersect at the edges of the East River. There are the dirt poor who can never leave. The Bowery Boys (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Hallop) are a resident gang of teenage punks who live only to act as predators on helpless victims or to idolize older miscreants who have gone to reform school, lived a high life of crime, and have returned to their origins. Humphrey Bogart is one such but in his case, he desires anonymity. He is wanted by the police, has had plastic surgery to hide his features, but returns to reconnect to his mother (Marjorie Main) and a previous girlfriend (Claire Trevor). Both attempts end disastrously. Bogart's accomplice in crime Hunk (Alan Jenkins) warns him that in life, one must never look back, only forward. This adumbration becomes the film's subtext. Those who seek to return to the Way Things Were are foredoomed to defeat. Sylvia Sidney is Trina, a hard-working decent young woman who loves Dave (Joel McRea), who desires another (Wendy Barrie), herself a former lower class resident who seeks to marry into money. Trina's brother (Garbiel Dell) is wanted by the police on an assault charge, and she must decide whether flight with him is the answer. Bogart as the vicious gangster is the center of both plot and theme. It is he who attracts the others by forcing them to respond to his antiquated notion that one can indeed Go Home Again. He can't, of course, and neither can they. DEAD END is an early masterpiece that presents the grittiness of a hardscrabble existence that demands that everyone make the same choice as did Bogart. That he failed does not invalidate the efforts of others to succeed. DEAD END ends as a celebration of the realization that perhaps Bogart was not wrong to try in the first place.

I DIDN'T GET THE JOB, SO I'LL GO AFTER BABY FACE AND COMPANY
DAVE WAS UPSET, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T GET THE JOB THAT DAY. BABY FACE HAD SO MUCH AS CALLED HIM AN "IDIOT", BECAUSE HE HAD SIX YEARS OF COLLEGE AND WAS "STARVING". I GUESS ALL OF THAT CROSSED HIS MIND, SO HE WENT AFTER BABY FACE AND FRIEND. HOW DID HE GET THE BEST OF NOT ONE, BUT TWO TOUGH GANSTERS?

A Slice Of '30s Life In The Lower East Side
"Gangs" and "juvenile delinquents" sure have changed. These kids, called "The Dead End Kids," were the poor, tough kids from tough neighborhoods of the Lower East Side in New York City in the 1930s. They are not to be confused with today's "gang bangers" which their drive-by shootings, drug use, etc. Times change.......not always for the better. If you haven't seen this movie but saw "Angels with Dirty Faces," you've seen these kids. James Cagney and Pat O'Brien starred in that movie and the kids were an integral part of the story. The same holds true here with Joel McCrea, Slyvia Sidney and Humphrey Bogart being the "adult" stars of this crime-drama-comedy-social commentary.. They, and other adult actors, are in most of the scenes but the kids are "introduced" and went on to be in a number of films, several of them becoming well-known names. Sure, it's dated, talky compared to today's fare, and too stagy, but it's still interesting and a powerful story in parts. Some people complain and call it "preachy" in parts but if the "preaching" is common sense and decency, what's wrong with that? Bogart fans will particularly like this because he gives one of his best performances of the 1930s. A mid-20s-in age Claire Trevor ("Francey") gives a memorable short performance, too. All in all, nothing super but a decent piece of New York City Americana, if you will.

early bogie
warner brother's had a stable-full of actors that graduated from the school of hard knocks w/. edward g. robinson,james cagney and humphrey bogart.While sharing the billing w/. Sylvia Sidney and Joel MacCrea,Bogart smolders w/. menace as his 'coming home party' fails to live up to his expectations.Cozying up to street urchins the Dead End Kids,Bogie hatches a plot to make his visit worthwhile. At the end is the inevitable showdown between the forces of hope (Joel MacCrea),good (the cops)and evil(Bogie).

ok but not that great
It was an ok movie. Bogie did well. The film was typical of the times. Definitely one of his minor pictures.