The first of two films in which Ronald Reagan was featured with the Dead End Kids was Hell's Kitchen where after one stint of time in reform school in Crime School, the boys are back in the juvenile joint. The adult players take a distinct back seat to the boys in both these films.
Crime School was an out and out remake of the James Cagney classic The Mayor Of Hell and this one also has aspects of those films in it as well. We've got a self righteous warden of the school in Grant Mitchell who's once again skimming off the tops and treating the kids like dirt. His infamous cooler is an old meat locker where he locks the kids in to 'cool' them off. When one of them dies, it all hits the fan.
Challenging him for control of the institution is paroled racketeer, Stanley Fields who is playing his role like a cut rate Wallace Beery. Ronald Reagan is his nephew and Margaret Lindsay is the secretary of the school under Mitchell and who is ready to quit when Caesar arrives on the scene.
Jack Warner must have really been in a bind here because he even acknowledges a hit film from another studio. One of the reforms that Fields wants to bring in is a kind of self governing institution by the kids like Father Flanagan's Boys Town. In fact I'm sure that's why this film was made, to cash in on the success of Boys Town.
No Oscar winning performances here though like Spencer Tracy's. Still it's entertaining enough.
Crime School was an out and out remake of the James Cagney classic The Mayor Of Hell and this one also has aspects of those films in it as well. We've got a self righteous warden of the school in Grant Mitchell who's once again skimming off the tops and treating the kids like dirt. His infamous cooler is an old meat locker where he locks the kids in to 'cool' them off. When one of them dies, it all hits the fan.
Challenging him for control of the institution is paroled racketeer, Stanley Fields who is playing his role like a cut rate Wallace Beery. Ronald Reagan is his nephew and Margaret Lindsay is the secretary of the school under Mitchell and who is ready to quit when Caesar arrives on the scene.
Jack Warner must have really been in a bind here because he even acknowledges a hit film from another studio. One of the reforms that Fields wants to bring in is a kind of self governing institution by the kids like Father Flanagan's Boys Town. In fact I'm sure that's why this film was made, to cash in on the success of Boys Town.
No Oscar winning performances here though like Spencer Tracy's. Still it's entertaining enough.