The best East Side Kids movies (like Spooks Run Wild) are pretty plot-free, contented to let the “East Side Kids” run wild through a certain scenario. This works on the series’ strengths, the actors’ chemistry. The only heavy lifting occurs in the first and third acts, where the situation is either set up or resolved. This overall approach works best for simple, streamlined stories, filled with Nazis or ghosts getting punched in the face. This is a comic attitude, built upon individual sketches like a youthful variant on the Marx Brothers or Abbott & Costello.
But the series retains a foundation of melodrama and social relevancy, employed so successfully in the actors’ earlier Dead End Kids franchise. This does not jibe well with the increasingly silly East Side Kids trademark approach, nor do the plots of crime-ridden slums compliment the comedy.
Consider the central notion of Mr. Wise Guy (which sounds like a Jackie Chan movie), to place the “East Side Kids” in a reform school (aka juvenile hall). It would be a simple enough thing to get the group nabbed by the coppers, then work out some final act reformation to give a sense of closure. But nooooo, not with those schnooks over at the Hays office! No, our heroes can never be outright criminals – for that sends the wrong message – Rather, they have to be wrongfully imprisoned, as in basically all crime-based ‘40s films (which have a bad, Hays-demanded habit of instead making our justice system look negligent). This sort of mentality also dictates how Mr. Wise Guy must end, with another miscarriage of the law prompting the East Side Kids to thusly escape from prison and set things right. All this is mightily complicated, and it gets in the way of what we’re here to see.
Things like Glimpy (Huntz Hall) dressing in women’s clothing for little justifiable reason, beyond the guffaws it engenders. This is in an early slapstick routine that ought to get our leads good and arrested…but it doesn’t. Rather, exposition of a most muddled variety impresses upon us that a criminal called Luke Manning (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) has escaped from the East Coast’s ersatz Alcatraz, and has generically illegal things in mind. It is his involvement that somehow, in a way I cannot wholly grasp, gets the East Side Kids sent to the clink. For he steals a truck, and next thing the cops know, the kids are those nearest the truck. Okay, it took 10 minutes too long, but our heroes are where they ought to be – children’s prison!
That’s not the end of the adults’ unnecessary involvement, for they already start setting up Luke’s secondary villainy which shall get the East Side Kids’ attention in the third act. All in all, Mr. Wise Guy has the least screen time for the “East Side Kids” of any East Side Kids entry, odd considering their celebrity was at its Monogram height around now.
Instead, our concern is with Danny’s brother, for Danny (Bobby Jordan) always has a brother. Only here it is not Dave O’Brien, but a wholly new character and actor in Bill (David Fowley, incomparable ‘40s heavy in a rare heroic role). It seems Bill was a former guest at the unnamed camp the kids now find themselves at, which is an artificial way to suggest this script is tighter than it really is. (One really starts to miss the underlooked writing contribution Carl Forman and Charles R. Marion brought to Spooks Run Wild.) Bill is romancing an attractive yet unremarkable brunette, Ann, simply because series formula says he must – you won’t find me complaining about this.
And here’s what happens. Luke decides to rob a flower shop, or something, and to off screen murder the proprietor for no reason except it dictates plot to come. I feel bad for this unseen shopkeep. As Luke leaves, Bill happens to be nearby in his idling jalopy, having just accomplished a most chaste date with Ann. So Luke commandeers Bill’s auto, at gunpoint, and the cops give chase. Of course, in the end it is only Bill who is caught – and for very contrived reasons that get all the more contrived the more the movie insists upon them, Bill is accused of the murder. I’ve seen this enough to know the instant the expected spinning newspapers appear that Bill will be condemned to execution, for that is how these things always work. For the time constraint it creates. And see?, for these plots to function, the police force must be just terrible.
Would that I could now go on over to our boys and ignore all this, but not quite yet! For we spend more and more time in Luke’s company, getting to know his tremendously oddball ring of cronies. And damned near all of them are rotund, spherical, fat humans, and would be considered such even in 2010. Most notable is a sap with the good dignity to be named Knobby, played by Billy Gilbert – a forgotten period comic most famous for having a good sneeze. Whuh?! There is also a dame, name unnoted, filling in for Ann’s absence and fulfilling that almighty eye candy need. Oh, and Luke’s criminal plans, though they shouldn’t even matter at this point, keep on coming – for poor scriptwriting, muddled enunciation and poor preservation sound quality, I dunno what those plans are. I suspect it has to do with Knobby impersonating a horse in a boat regatta, or whatever, but we never see it so it doesn’t matter.
Sigh! That’s all the heavy lifting in Mr. Wise Guy, which is somehow deemed essential for the sheer, simple pleasure of seeing the East Side Kids in a new location. I resent this minimization of the leads’ screen time in favor of a poorly-told pseudo-noir, seeing as 8 entries in, a franchise’s function should be set in stone. But enough bitching, for here we are.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Wise Guy works best when the “East Side Kids” are simply left alone to do as they will, to ad lib to a basic template as they bounce off against wardens and other authority figures. Of note is their contemporary and fellow inmate, Charles Manning. (I only realize after the fact he shares last names with Luke, which I attribute to “the screenwriters couldn’t think of any other last names.”) Charles is played by Gabriel Dell, a longtime costar of Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan…and he ain’t even credited as an “East Side Kid” here! Indeed, Charles is diametrically opposed to our core six, and Monogram is beyond confusing audiences with a rotating star roster for the time being. Nonetheless, Dell will eventually become a part of this posse, and this film marks his introduction to this series.
Well…Phew! The setup is complete (for me, at least – the movie continues to insist upon chronicling Luke’s unamusing daily affairs), leaving very little time left over for isolated “East Side Kids” shenanigans. This is the best stuff, effortlessly natural and breezily entertaining, if also hopelessly dated (see the sad return of token Scruno’s obsession with watermelons). And the highpoint is a scene that barely even has anything to do with juvie, as the East Side Kids simply harass a flock of chickens, hurl eggs about, throw milk, do all sorts of stuff PETA would have a conniption fit over.
But efforts to jumpstart the finale start a tad too early, as Danny learns of his older brother’s predicament. Cue his melodramatic inclinations, Danny moistening his bed sheets (with tears, sicko!) even as he remains at a loss to ever do anything proactive. (The other kids are right to point and laugh.) This kind of self-pitying is not becoming, and does a good job of stealing the thunder away from a fistfight between Muggs (L. Gorcey) and Charles.
The movie has a damned hard time of tying the Kids’ plot in with Bill and Luke, despite Danny’s constant hateful wailing and moaning. In fact, their solution is a newsreel, as the East Side Kids take a break from rapscallionizing to simply sit back and watch a movie. Who’s to say if this was commonly allowed in 1940s child jails, but whatever? We too get to simply relax and watch the reel unspool leisurely, it’s not like we came to see an East Side Kids movie or anything. After random footage of 1942’s brightest debutantes, and other nonsense, a news story comes on concerning Bill’s upcoming hanging. But no matter how much the universe prods him, Danny remains in a stuporous funk! Do something, Danny boy!
At last Charles comes along with a little extra exposition (and a reconciliation with his hated enemy, Muggs). He tells all he knows of Luke, from reading the newspapers (not from being family, for they are not family, do not let their names fool you) – this exposition is way too much, as we saw all this in those interminable scenes with Luke himself. Monogram movies do often have mighty problems with the basic elements of storytelling, do they not?
The East Side Kids escape from juvie, simply by bursting out the window – This in place of Muggs’ original plan to anticipate The Shawshank Redemption and shimmy through the sewage pipes. And they’re off for a final confrontation with Luke and his gang!
Meaning of course now the movie decides that it is not interested in the East Side Kids, nor Luke. Nope, it is most concerned with Knobby, in all his corpulent glory, and never mind Knobby has nothing to do with the story at this point, and is not entertaining either. Probably Gilbert had some sort of contract negotiation with Monogram for screen time, was trying to convince audiences he could be hysterical if simply allowed to bellow at the top of his lungs and ruin their sound recording equipment. (What is it with old comedies and their opinion that yelling is funny?!) For that is what we get, Knobby endlessly berating a series of put-upon sales clerks, waiters, and other service industry types. There isn’t even any clever dialogue; rather, witness Knobby mispronounce “cream of onion” as “ice cream.” You know, for a pun to work, you need to put in a little effort.
Don’t even get me started on Knobby’s inability to order a coherent cup of coffee, this being half a century before the Starbucks era added about 50 new variables to the equation!
At last Knobby calls off his aimless and despicable night on the town, and waddles on home to Luke’s empty lair, barely squeezing his elephantine frame through the doorway. Now the East Side Kids beset upon him, fulfilling two of my desires – To see more of the movie’s stars, and to see Knobby get beaten violently. Of course, Knobby shrieks like a tomcat in heat, and man, Billy Gilbert is no Lou Costello, he ain’t.
The movie cannot conclude with a mere henchman getting smacked about, so along comes Luke and his more able minions, as –
The movie simply cuts out. See for yourself. That’s the thing with public domain pictures – they aren’t in the best of condition nowadays. Considering this was 63 minutes into the film, in a series that usually only runs 61 minutes – we were no doubt but a few moments from the end anyway. So let me try to predict how things turn out…
Luke et al easily get the better of the East Side Kids, shooting them all dead in cold blood, before going on for a long and fulfilling life of crime.
Bill is hanged, as Ann looks on, a wretched husk of her former self.
For his failure at basic human competence, Luke drowns Knobby in the ocean.
…Or, more realistically, the East Side Kids easily get the best of Luke in an unusually short slapstick battle, most likely with head-clonking. Such a mediocre thrashing would be enough for Luke to confess everything Bill’s been accused of, and it would also somehow get the East Side Kids released from prison. Of course, most of this would remain hinted at, as these films cannot be bothered to over-elaborate upon their epilogues. And good on them.
But while these Monogram endings are usually nice and terse, and efficient in their plotting, the same cannot always be said for the bodies of their films. But thankfully, it seems as though the follow-up to Mr. Wise Guy, Let’s Get Tough!, returns the “East Side Kids” to a realm they are more comfortable in – roughhousing the Nazis!
Related posts:
• No. 1 East Side Kids (1940)
• No. 2 Boys of the City (1940)
• No. 3 That Gang of Mine (1940)
• No. 4 Pride of the Bowery (1940)
• No. 5 Flying Wild (1941)
• No. 6 Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941)
• No. 7 Spooks Run Wild (1941)
• No. 9 Let's Get Tough! (1942)
• No. 10 Smart Alecks (1942)
• No. 11 'Neath Brooklyn Bridge (1942)
• No. 12 Kid Dynamite (1942)
• No. 13 Clancy Street Boys (1943)
• No. 14 Ghosts on the Loose (1943)
• No. 16 Million Dollar Kid (1944)
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