(2 of 3)
The famed Dead End gang is two years older than it was when Broadway first saw them, but they are still as harum-scarum off the set as on. Their rowdy doings have alternately amused and exasperated Hollywood. On the train to California last spring they annoyed other passengers by playing ball in the aisles. All but 18-year-old Leo Gorcey were required by California law to attend school three hours daily, but they considerably shortened this stint by dashing out to imaginary rehearsals. They loudly and unfavorably compared their adult colleagues with the players in the stage company. Their passion for breakneck bicycling was made the subject of a ukase from Sam Goldwyn—the kids called him "Pop"—whereupon Gorcey and Jordan bought rattletrap automobiles, drove them in such a fashion that they soon had five tickets from the police. Two of them clubbed together, bought a tuxedo for social occasions, wore it in sequence at the same dinner. In their violent arguments among themselves over whether or not they liked California, they agreed on two causes for complaint: they were not allowed to have their hair cut during Dead End's making; they could not do swimming scenes every day. (The garbage-laden, oil-scummed realism of Dead End's East River is only visual; actually the garbage was fresh, the refuse sterilized daily.)
Only one of the kids, Huntz Hall, whose father is a tinsmith, ever lived on Manhattan's East Side. Last week four of the kids were back in Manhattan for their first view of themselves on the screen (they were not allowed to see any rushes while the picture was under way, for fear it might make them self-conscious), will return to Hollywood about the middle of October, when the whole gang will do a Warner Brothers picture under Mervyn LeRoy.
Bad Guy (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) employs Bruce Cabot as the ambiguous vehicle of a muddled moral message, incidentally hums a high-voltage hymn in praise of those not-altogether-unsung industrial heroes, trouble-shooting power linemen. Not so complete nor so convincing a picture of their dangerous trade as was Slim (TIME, June 21), Bad Guy shows enough shots of electricity running wild to give audiences some jolting moments; shows also Hollywood's dawning awareness of the exciting dramatic possibilities that lie on the industrial frontier.
Whether "Lucky" Walden (Bruce Cabot) was a selfish rat who would stop at nothing to feed his various cravings or whether he was really the swell guy his brother Steve (Edward Norris) insisted on remembering, is not made altogether clear. Lucky and Steve, graduates of the same orphan asylum, are expert high-wire workers, first-rate troubleshooters for a power company. Lucky is a better lineman than Steve but he does not confine his trouble to working hours. When he smashes a gambler's head in and the gambler dies. Lucky lands in the penitentiary, is just saved from the electric chair by Steve's well-meaning machinations. Paroled Lucky proceeds to steal Steve's girl, gets into various minor difficulties which culminate in his arrest on the old murder charge. With no other way out. Lucky gets Steve to help him break jail. He gets out all right, but down at the power plant, where Lucky goes to get his gun, they are having a little trouble with those big overhead cables. . . .