The Same—With Change Of Gender

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 34, 3 February 1939, Page 14

The Same—With Change Of Gender

{Crime School."? Warners. Directed by Lewis Seiler. Starring the "Dead End" Kids, Humphrey Bogart. Just refeased.] A FTER the preview of "‘Crime School,’’? someone tried to persuade me that it is a better film than "Dead End." it certainly isn’t; but it is likely to be just about as popular. it isn’t as good a film as "Dead End," because it’s by no means the first of a kind, and because it lacks the explosive force, the disturbing truth of Mr. Goldwyn’s freak picture. It is likely to be just about as popular because it stars the ‘Dead End" Kids and Humphrey Bogart again, concentrates more on theatrical action, and gives them all a nice, happy ending. Boys For Girls [T was more or Jess in the natural order of things that the "Dead End" Kids would find themselves

eventually in reform school. What is more difficult to credit that their course of reformation would be as successiul as "Crime School" suggests. The story of "Crime School" is the story of "Prison Without Bars" with the genders changed. For girls, read boys. For Edna Best, read Humphrey Bogart, appointed to reform the manifold abuses in a reformatory which, prior to his arrival, has been coaducted on strictly disciplinarian fines by a sadistic headmaster who believes that to spare the cat-o’-nine-tails is to spoil the child. In this story, Billy Halop {nicesilooking of the "Dead Endies’’) is the bad iad upon whose regeneration depends the success or failure of the new superintendent’s theories about erime-correction. He and his gang are in for assault and battery; and their first horrible taste of the reform school is not such as to make them amenable to reason, Hard-Boiled O Mr. Bogart, when he takes over the management, finds his hands full. It is comparatively easy to remedy such abuses as flogging almost to death and food that practically walks off the tables: it is harder to change the mental attitude of such hard-

boiled specimens as Frankie (Billy Halop), Squirt (Bobby Jordan), Goofy (Huntz Hall), Spike (Leo Gorcey), Fats (Bernard Punsley) and Bugs (Gabriel Dell). ’ {Note for cynics: An Ameri- . can producer does not scruple to portray an American reformatory as a veritable hell on earth. An English producer on the same theme keeps the setting in France.) The Boilers Burst NHE proposition developed in "Crime School" is that nothing can bring about a change of heart in criminals quicker than serious accidents and the threat of death, I beg leave to remain dubious. So far as it applies to the "Dead Hnd Kids," anyway. But the sequence in which the naughty boys stoke the reformatory boilers till they burst, and Mr. Bogart heroically risks his life to rescue Squirt, and thereby causes them ail to turn over new leaves, is more than exciting enough to justify its inclusion in the script. So, too, with the slight love interest between Bogart and a neweomer named Gale Page, who is worth watching, She has the role of Frankie’s sister, and Bogart looks at her with eyes of love. But somebody suggests to Frankie that there was another kind of look in his eye, so Frankie sets himself up as a defender of maidenly virtue, produces a gun, and almost undoes all the good that phe nice Mr. Bogart has been able o do. Grim And Graphic EVERYTHING about "Crime School," except the theme, is vigorous and realistic, and fuli of grimly graphic detail. And the dialogue is even saltier than in ‘Mead End." As for the acting, it is first-class, especially that of the boys, whose team-work and toughness impress me even more since I have read an article (which I believe to be authentic), stating that they are all nice boys really, and brought up in quite good homes,