The first Little Tough Guys film, Little Tough Guy, was a success well over its meager qualities, and Universal sought to continue films under their just-created “Little Tough Guys” banner. Not sequels exactly (surely not in the modern sense), but a franchise with the same name and cast. There was one problem. The majority of their cast had returned to Warner Brothers to continue their superior Dead End Kids franchise, seeing as Universal had simply borrowed them in the first place.
Ah, but two of their kids in Little Tough Guy weren’t a part of Warner Brother’s roster – David Gorcey and Hal E. Chester. Keeping them around, Universal could maintain a “Little Tough Guys” poster call-sign, and simply fill in the other four spots from the ranks of Hollywood’s generic child actors.
And so the films engendered by “Dead End,” Dead End and the Dead End Kids continued on, even without a single of the “Dead End Kids” appearing in them.
The kids wrangled up in the early days of Little Tough Guys were never all that important, and floated in and out rather heedlessly from film to film (eleven boys in all). As long as some kids remained consistent, specifically Gorcey, the franchise label could remain.
And what a…presumably underwhelming franchise Little Tough Guys must’ve been, for pretty much the remaining 11 films (and 3 serials) are not to be found. [Sigh.] They’re not on DVD, not in any significant way (unless I want to pay $150 for a used copy of a single 60 minute B-movie), nor are they even on any of the public domain resources. (For the most part – I will be watching something though.) Well, when this happens, I resort to lame sum-ups…
Little Tough Guys in Society (1938) – What speedy turnaround! They made three Little Tough Guys in the series’ first year alone! Eat that, Saw movies.
After the overwrought melodrama of Little Tough Guy, Little Tough Guys in Society goes the sensible route and instead focuses on lightweight comedy. It examines the class barriers in a silly manner, not unlike a Marx Brothers comedy (I am assuming), fish out of water, snobs vs. slobs, prince and the pauper, all that. Here, antisocial rich kid Randolph Berry (returning non-troupe member Jackie Searl) requests some time with other boys “of a lesser social stature” to break out of his shell. Through a series of supposed comic misunderstandings which include the destruction of a glass factory, the Little Tough Guys come onboard – though they’re really just trying to hide from the cops. They grow friendly with Randolph, who ultimately triumphs on his birthday against a set of bumbling thieves who break into the family house – yikers, it sounds like Home Alone.
And then the Little Tough Guys are all sent to prison, because they were shown breaking the law early in the film (glass factory). Because the Hays Code couldn’t let a single step out of line go unpunished – such task master disdain did they hold over all fictional characters.
New kids include Frankie Thomas, Harris Berger, Charles Duncan and William Benedict. Among these, Benedict is most of note within the series, as he would stay on with the troupe (however you define its revolving door cast) in the East Side Kids and Bowery Boys franchises. Then he was in The Sting! Otherwise, these are mostly professional child actors, with extensive resumes with little distinction.
The boys’ hilarious names: Danny, Sailor, Murphy, Monk, Yap, Trouble.
Newsboys’ Home (1938) – Back to drama! Or melodrama, sadly. And what’s known of the story? Well, the longest plot synopsis I can find is a whopping 13 words long, straight from IMDb, and here it is: “A beautiful girl inherits a newspaper that sponsors a charity home for boys.” We are officially in the B-movie realm now.
The boys’ hilarious names: Sailor, Murphy, Monk, Yap, Trouble. Yup, the same characters as before (a rarity in the “troubled teen” format). Somehow Frankie Thomas’ Danny isn’t here, for whatever reason.
Code of the Streets (1939) – It’s the same setup as Little Tough Guy, with the lead boy’s father wrongly arrested for the murder of a police officer. Only this time it’s done right. Rather than an aimless melodrama about juvenilia, instead the Little Tough Guys band together to do something useful, to solve the crime and acquit their leader’s old man.
Without having seen it, it sounds as though Code of the Streets again reshifts the Little Tough Guys genre ever so slightly, a bit into mystery and crime – that’s a little closer to Angels with Dirty Faces, which is a good thing. And this plot demands some specifics – like a gambling club suspected of a frame job. So begins an elaborate con involving radios, phony telegrams, and something called the “dicta-phone” which I’ve only ever heard Mr. Burns talk about.
The boys’ hilarious names: Bob, Sailor, Murphy, Monk, Yap, Trouble. Okay, it’s basically the same kids again (couldn’t they devise new monosyllabic monikers?!), though Frankie Thomas is back in a “new” role, as “Bob.” Ooh, creative!
By this time, towards the end of 1939, the “Dead End Kids” contracts were drying up over at Warner Brothers, who were through doing what they could with their Dead End Kids franchise – besides, they were tired of the boys repeatedly vandalizing the commissary, or whatever. Free agents again, Universal slowly started gobbling up the “Dead End Kids” like Pac-Man with so many pixilated dots.
A steady, sputtering dribble, their next film, Call a Messenger, saw two “Dead End Kids” added to what was now a roughly permanent and separate “Little Tough Guys” troupe. Resolving whatever legal foofaraw existed, Universal even called this newly-assembled crew “Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys.” As unwieldy as it is, this title remained with the series for the remainder of its run, meaning…
Oh my dear, I do believe it’s a crossover now! One that stuck for 11 movies! (This could even be what inspired Universal to later crossbreed their monster pictures.)
Anyway, Call a Messenger welcomes lead boy Billy Halop and second banana Huntz Hall back into the fold. With Charles Duncan temporarily absent, this knocks the boy count up to 7, thrilling the sort of people it shouldn’t thrill. By now, the hilarious boy names are mostly cemented: Huntz is “Pig,” Chester “Murph,” Benedict “Trouble,” Gorcey “Yap” and Berger “Sailor.” Only Halop takes on a new title, as he always does as the dramatic core of his tales, now playing Jimmy (as opposed to Tommy, Johnny, Billy or, er, Soapy).
Call a Messenger concerns Jimmy’s time served as the post office’s gofer, in repayment for his attempt to rob the post office (stealing what exactly?). In short order, all the Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys (or DEKALTGs) are working there with Jimmy, because such is the way of the world. Plot comes a-knockin’ as the boys try to find a man for the hyper-attractive Post Mistress General (again, what universe is this?). Gangsters get involved, intent on robbing the post office, and whuh?!...Okay, I guess the post office mailed important things then, whereas today it’s simply the federally-mandated Netflix service. Okay then.
Come 1940, even more “Dead End Kids” became available, eager to join servitude at Universal. So the cast list becomes mighty unwieldy, with somewhere around 10 or more distinct boys doing time in You’re Not So Tough. (It doesn’t help that the “Little Tough Guys” were still adding and subtracting players at random.)
New hilarious names: Rap, String, Ape, Lacey, Jake…Second Newsboy, First Worker. Seriously, the invaluable David Gorcey is plummeted down to fifteenth-billed, in this casting binge, given a job description for a name.
A change of setting occurs, the lads all moved from New York’s East Side for California’s Central Valley – mostly so it’d be easier to film outside of Los Angeles, I’d wager. Here, Billy Halop’s character (the synopses are no longer even bothering with the character names) befriends an elderly farm lady, initially with intents to falsely convince her he is her long-lost infant son. But soon they grow genuinely close, and Billy defends the lady’s ranch from a greedy labor organization which seems straight out of a lesser Range Busters entry.
Around now, a formula plot starts to emerge, as it must in all franchises. The lead boy Halop shall end up in the employ of some authority figure, slowly grow to respect the figure he’d first meant to bilk, then protect that figure from some greater outside threat. Just switch it from post offices to ranches to whatever comes next.
The films continued on, all but lost to the modern day, without DVD release, without fan pages, without Wikipedia entries and with but single-sentence plot synopses on the IMDb. Series tone changed (and cheapened), the films now becoming comedies of some nature. This is best exemplified by the fact that Shemp Howard, Stooge extraordinaire, appeared in three of the later films. Indeed, his presence would have far-reaching influences on the boys’ later franchises, inspiring Hall and David Gorcey in particular to pursue a stridently slapstick template. But that was in the future, with the films now simply someplace on the bizarre curve between farce and melodrama. Someplace with a number of detours into the gangster genre.
With hardly anything left to go on, let me try to summarize IMDb’s miniscule film write-ups into even shorter synopses…
Give Us Wings (1940) – Involves crop dusters.
Hit the Road (1941) – Involves a mob war.
Mob Town (1941) – Involves gangsters, in a most generic way, and something called a “recreational program.” Knowing Hays, that’s not what you’d think it is.
Tough as They Come (1942) – Involves finance companies. Exciting!
Mug Town (1943) – Involved racketeers now.
Keep ‘Em Slugging (1943) – Involves silk hijacking hijinks.
The only factoid of note for these boring movies is Billy Halop’s departure prior to the final Keep ‘Em Slugging to go fight in World War II. Either he was older than the other boys, or simply more patriotic. Whichever way, Huntz Hall took the lead gig in Keep ‘Em Slugging, early evidence of the increasingly strong role he would take in the future franchises (East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys) as the movies got even worse.
You’d think with this, the series is complete. But it’s only getting interesting, for I have overlooked three entries entirely, in light of in-depth discussion later. I’ll simply stop now with the following promise:
MOVIE SERIALS!
And like any good serial, we end on a cliffhanger…
Related posts:
• No. 1 Little Tough Guy (1938)
• No. 7 Junior G-Men (1940) Chapters One - Three
Chapters Four - Eight
Chapters Nine - Twelve
• No. 10 Sea Raiders (1941) Chapters One - Six
Chapters Seven - Twelve
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