Cinema: New Picture: Apr. 24, 1939

Streets of New York (Monogram). Among the studios great & small which turn out small-budget pictures for the nickelodeon trade, little Monogram is a knowing specialist. Its Westerns and other staples, as unpretentious as a stripped jalopy, rattle as steadily to market. Not geared for fast boulevard traffic, they are towed into it occasionally in a double feature, rarely attempt the invasion on their own power.

Monogram’s Streets of New York, whose special equipment is the once brightstar name of Jackie Cooper, is not likely to cause a traffic jam. Strikingly similar to a Universal-Cooper vehicle of last season titled Newsboys’ Home, it exhibits Jackie, now a burly, downy adolescent of 15, as an honest newsboy who struggles to become the Abraham Lincoln of Tenth Avenue by studying law at night school. He also has a racketeering elder brother.

City audiences may be fascinated by Monogram’s conception of Manhattan. The elevateds, apparently by Lionel Toys, are particularly noteworthy. The dialogue is equally rickety. Sample line (by an urchin seeing his first Christmas tree): “It’s the kind that grows out of the ground.”