Cinema Revisited: Boy Slaves (1939) Juvenile Delinquent drama from RKO studios

BOY SLAVES

Directed by P.J. Wolfson. Cast: Anne Shirley, Roger Daniel, Johnny Fitzgerald, James McCallion, Alan Baxter, Johnny Fitzgerald, Walter Ward, Charles Powers, Walter Tetley, Frank Malo, Paul White, Arthur Hohl, Charles Lane, Norman Willis, Ray Gordon

Released February 2, 1939. Running time: 72 minutes. RKO

Depression era delinquent dramas were defined by the William Wellman feature WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (1933) and then redefined by DEAD END (1937) in which the juvenile actors – Leo Gorcey, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Gabe Dell, and Bernard Punsly – became such a sensation, they enjoyed a career as The Dead End Kids (later The East Side Kids, The Little Tough Guys, and finally The Bowery Boys).

BOY SLAVES is RKO studios’ attempt to cash in on the popularity of this type of melodrama, with and aggressive B-movie that explores some of the same territory.

Jessie, a young boy, is running away from the shack where his mother can barely afford to take care of him, his older brother, and baby sister. He ends up with a gang who get picked up by the police and sent to a work farm. There are some elements to BOY SLAVES that are unlike what studios like Warner Brothers were offering. First, this is a rural area, not the inner city. When Jesse runs away, he is confronted by a gang staked out in a vast corn field. Also, the gang is multi-cultural, with African American youth actor Paul White among them (the East Side Kids would include Sunshine Sammy in their films a year later, while the 1933 delinquent drama, THE MAYOR OF HELL starring James Cagney, used the talents of Farina Hoskins).

As with most films of this nature, there are a lot of brutal scenes as well as several emotional ones. When a kid falls from a tree at the work camp due to hunger, he is so severely injured his arm needs to be amputated. “Now I can beg without the cops stopping me,” he weeps. Anne Shirley adds an attractive presence as young girl at the camp, isolated from the boys, who tries to warn them against various dangers, as WILD BOYS IN THE ROAD hand incorporated Rochelle Hudson and Dorothy Coonan.

The narrative centers on Roger Daniel who plays Jesse (and who is still living at the time of this writing). He is the good kid who was brought up well, despite being dirt poor, and whose presence in the gang offsets their more challenging backgrounds. Most of the film offers the toughness of the kids and brutality of their surroundings at the work farm, but when they decide to “write a letter to the President’s wife” it seems a bit civic minded for the ruffians. Jessie actually escapes camp to mail the letter, his hands bloodied by the barbed wire. Walking through the dark wooded area that surrounds the camp, he is spooked by his surroundings, and ends up back in the camp, the letter confiscated, getting everyone into more trouble. The others accuse him of doing it on purpose and plan to burn his face with a “squealer’s scar,” when the marks on his hands from the barbed wire reveal he is telling the truth.

There is a sexuality implied when the Anne Shirley character hides out in the boys cabin and begs them to protect her from one of the camp foremen, who obviously was attempting to rape her. They jump the foreman who has a gun, it fires, and it hits Jessie, but he does not reveal his injury to the others. A lantern falls, the cabin burns down, and the kids escape. The injured Jesse falls and dies of his injuries. He sacrifices himself so the others can escape. An angry Annie looks at the others and screams, “There’s your stool pigeon.” The emotional scenes pull out all the stops, with the orchestral score backing up Jessie’s tearful last words, “I wish ma was here. I never wanted her so much before.” The shot of Anne Shirley’s tearful doe eyes concludes the scene effectively as does the leader, Tim’s, looking to the sky and awkwardly praying, “Give him a break, Lord.”

The gang holes up in a farm house where they grab some rifles with the aid of an old lady who lives there and shoot it out with the camp authorities. Finally the police come, see what the camp people are doing, and it is they who get arrested. Tim won’t trust the cops, but Annie says “You can’t lump ‘em all together, us on one side and them on the other.” She stands up to Tim who threatens to shoot her. “Go ahead. We ain’t worth nothin.’ Not even to each other.” The cop does enter and a court case allows them to reveal the harsh condition of the camp. When the prosecuting attorney calls them enemies of society, the judge asks the attorney, “has society come into this court with clean hands?”

The message is quite a powerful attack on the era's approach to poverty and upholds a progressive reaction to the delinquents. The judge asks the kids to “learn to forgive us.” When the head of the work camp is sent to prison for peonage, he is advised to study the works of Abraham Lincoln.

Melodramatic, violent, and often delightfully corny, BOY SLAVES is a solid B-level drama that, at the time, took some courageous chances with its indictment of the prevailing culture.