From Dead End Kids to Bowery Boys with Several Other Monikers in Between

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Economic history, Memorabilia, Performing arts
Little Rascals (aka “Our Gang’), 1938 (photo: Silver Screen Collection /Getty)

As a kid I developed a liking for “Our Gang” comedies, a series of American short films about a gang of poor, mainly white (but including black) children. I enjoyed the good-natured tomfoolery and minor mischief perpetrated by the juvenile gang members, particularly Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat. I’m thankful that I was exposed to the “Our Gang” shorts🅐 as it pointed me towards another cinema series about the same demographic that became part of my standard viewing fodder – the Dead End Kids series of movies and its successors.

The “53rd Street Gang” in their playground

While the antics of “Our Gang” were unadulterated if sentimentalised fun, I came to prefer the more serious tone and developed storylines of the “Dead End Kids” (DEK) movies. The early movies were starkly realistic, and this was realism of the grittiest kind, rooted in the unforgiving here and now of grim slum life in America’s depression era. These kids were dirt poor, locked into a daily struggle for survival, taking every opportunity, fair or foul, to fleece or steal from anyone or anything that presented itself. At the same time their brutal experience had made them rebels with a cause – the inequities of capitalist America…impoverished slum boys who never missed a chance to decry or one-up the “better-offs” in society.

Where it started: Dead End (1937)

The Kids from Dead End: The DEK phenomena had its genesis in a 1935 Broadway play, Dead End🅑, by Sidney Kingsley, featuring a cadre of young actors which would go on to form the nucleus of the gang in the movie series: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley🅒 and the Gorcey brothers, Leo and David. The play was successful, running for two years, Hollywood mega-mogul Samuel Goldwyn saw the show and was immediately impressed. Goldwyn bought the film rights and made Dead End as a United Artists feature film in 1937, co-starring the Kids alongside Humphrey Bogart. The film was a hit but the boys caused havoc during the production, crashing a truck into a soundstage, prompting an annoyed Goldwyn to unload them to Warner Brothers.

Angels With Dirty Faces: the Dead Enders plus James Cagney in a gangster melodrama (source: alchetron.com)

Warners Bros’ crime school graduates: At Warner Brothers the Dead End Kids made six features, typically in supporting roles to big stars (Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Anne Sheridan, John Garfield and Bogart). In They Made me a Criminal (1939) starring Garfield, the Kids don’t make an appearance until 25 minutes into the film. The Warners’ series followed the studio’s formula of serious social crime dramas with the Kids heavily involved in the plot and also lending some comedy relief (‘Dead End Kids’, www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). Billy Halop was acknowledged as the leader of the gang and was purportedly paid more than the other boys, leading to some bad feelings within the group. Despite the DEK success at Warners the studio was disenchanted with the group’s off-camera antics (more impromptu hell–raising) and released them from their contracts after their sixth film.

Sea Raiders (1941): emphasising the interchangeable nature of the group’s various names, Universal tended to use the double-billing, “Dead End Kids” and “Little Tough Guys”, in their advertising

Little Tough Guys: Universal decided to get in on the act, cashing in on the DEK’s appeal with its own (B–movie) series. Billing the gang as the “Little Tough Guys”, Universal made 12 features in the late 1930s–early 40s, featuring at one time or other all of the original Kids except Leo Gorcey. Shemp Howard, one of the popular “Three Stooges”, appeared in two of the LTG movies, and was acknowledged by Huntz Hall as an influence on the slapstick style of comedy that the group later developed.

East Side Kids: The Dead End Kids morphed into a new incarnation called the “East Side Kids” in a series made by Monogram Pictures. These were 22 films made as low-budget imitations of the DEK movies, initially crime melodramas with comedic overtones, but as the series evolved, the comedy angle took greater emphasis. With Halop gone by this time, Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were now the gang leaders. As the series progressed, the comedy duo of wise guy Leo Gorcey and zany but dim Huntz Hall became the focus in films like Million Dollar Kid and Spooks Run Wild (a horror comedy headlined by an ageing Bela Lugosi) (www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). As a variation on the usual criminals that the boys routinely cross swords with, in Let’s Get Tough (1942) they find themselves this time trying to foil Nazi and Japanese saboteurs in the US. A black former child actor of the original Our Gang movies “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and William (“Billy”) Benedict were added to the ESK retinue of scruffy working class street kids.

Spooks Gone Wild (1941): East Side Kids v Dracula

Bowery Boys: Stoogesque slapstick and streetwise Abbott and Costello In 1945 the ESK series folded and was replaced by yet another name for the team of screen performers, the “Bowery Boys”🅓. Leo Gorcey this time had an enhanced stake in the enterprise, owning 40% of the production company🅔, acting as producer and contributing to the script. Gorcey also brought his father Bernard to the films’ players. Bobby Jordan left the series again and Gabriel Dell returned. The interaction of Leo Gorcey, with his malapropism-prone utterances as “Slip”, and Hunt as dim-witted sidekick “Sash”, continued to provide the central plank of the humour. The Bowery Boys series—made by Allied Artists, successor studio to Monogram—comprised 48 movies in all. The early efforts continued the standard fare of gangster melodrama, but after “Three Stooges” director Edward Bernds started directing Gorcey and Co, the films resorted more to slapstick comedy, Three Stooges-like wordplay and occasionally to fantasy themes (‘The Bowery Boys: Anything But Routine’, Ivan G. Shreve, Jr Classic Flix, 19-Sep-2013, www.classicflix.com). Abbott and Costello’s influence is also evident, there are obvious echoes of Africa Screams in the Bowery Boys’ Jungle Gents (1954) (‘Dead End Kids’ found new life as ‘Bowery Boys’, Jim Willard, Loveland Reporter-Herald, 07-July-2018, www.reporterherald.com).

Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954): several movies in the series sought to capitalise on the public’s craze for horror/monster movies

By the time the final Bowery Boys film In the Money is made in 1958, the series is looking tired, stale and frayed…only Huntz Hall and David Gorcey remain of the originals (Leo’s ongoing bouts with the demon alcohol saw his forced departure in 1956, replaced by Stanley Clements), the “Kids” were now middle-aged, hardly juvenile delinquent material, and their screen work lacking the verve and punch of earlier days.

In the Money (1958): ageing juvenile delinquents
🅐  syndicated for television in the 1960s as The Little Rascals

🅑 the “Dead End” tag came from the inscription on the road sign at the river’s edge in the original, 1937 film

🅒 Punsly was the odd one out among the “young punk” band of actors, he stayed in the DEK/ESK series only till 1942 (notching up 19 films) before leaving show biz for good to become a successful physician (later chief of staff at a private hospital in LA)

🅓 the Bowery is a street and neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan, NYC

🅔 Huntz Hall held 10% himself

“W”, “X”, “Y” & “Z” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

Posted on by demonymonic
Ancient history, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture

<word meaning & root formation>

Wadi: valley; stream; watercourse drying up in summer; oasis [from Arab. wādī‎, (“river” or “watercourse,”)]

Wadi in Jordan

Wanion: unluckily, due to the waning of the moon [from MidEng. waniand, from wanien, wanen (“to wane”)]

Withershins: in an unfortunate direction [from MidHighGer. wider (“against”)+ –sin (“direction”)]
Witling: a petty smart Alec; a mere pretender to wit (Bowler)[conjunction of wit + -ling]

<word meaning & root formation>

Xenium: a present given to a guest [from Gk. xenial (pertaining to hospitality or relationship between host and guest) (cf. Xenodochium: a building for the reception of strangers; a caravanserai)

Caravanserai in Fars, Iran

Xenogenous: due to an outside cause; of foreign origin [from Gk. xeno]

word meaning & root formation

Yaul: to deviate from a stable course because of oscillation about the longitudinal axis (Rocket science) (Origin unknown)

Yegg: a burglar of safes; safecracker (Origin obscure: one (dubious) suggestion is from German jäger (“hunter”))

The challenge of the Yegg (Chubb advertisement)

Yemeles: negligent; careless; heedless [OldEng. from Germ.]

Yisse: desire or covet (Origin unknown)

word meaning & root formation

Zeigarnik: (Psych.) the theory that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks; the tendency to remember an uncomplicated task [named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik (Zeigarnik Effect]

Zelotypia: morbid zeal; excessive jealousy [L. zēlotypia (“jealousy”) (Pliny) from Gk. (“jealousy, rivalry, envy“) 

Zoilism: carping; destructive criticism [from Zoilus, ancient Greek grammarian and literary critic … was hyper-critical of Homer (Zoilus the “Homeromastix”)]

Zoilus of Ephesus

Zooerastia: (–asty) the practice of a human engaging in sexual intercourse with an animal; bestiality [from Gk. zoo + -astia]

Zoopery: experimentation on animals [from zoo + L. –operārī (“to work, labor, toil, have effect”)]

Zugzwang: a state of play in chess where the player is at a disadvantage as his or her next move will worsen their position in the game (cf. snookering) [from Ger. (“compulsion to move”)]

Zugzwang

Desperately Seeking William…Just William

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Memorabilia, Popular Culture
William’s literary debut, 1922

“Head boy of fiction”

If you could travel in the Tardis back to my primary school days, you’d find me most lunchtimes in the school library with my head in the fiction section habitually combing through the shelves for any books from my favourite series of reads for kids that I hadn’t yet wolfed down. Precisely I’d have my nose in the ‘C’ section – ‘C’ for Richmal Crompton, the author of the “Just William” series of books. From about the age of nine or ten I was hooked on the rebellious juvenile role model William, a 1920s–1960’s version of Harry Potter in his all-consuming cult appeal🄰…William became as integral to my childhood as Classics Illustrated comics, plasticine and chocolate malted sundaes. With more energy than I could ever summon for my obligatory school home work, I dedicated myself with missionary zeal to reading every single Just William book I could lay my hands on! Fortunately for me there was plenty of scope for that ambition, Crompton having written 39 Just William books in all. In the end I’m not sure if I actually read all of them (did the library hold the entire collection?), but I was certainly exposed to enough of them to become a vicarious member of “The Outlaws”.

The popularity of the Just William books prompted multiple other media spin-offs, including several television series—the 1962 series cast Denis Waterman (above) as William—as well as films and radio serials

William (Brown) is 11, and like Peter Pan he doesn’t age, despite the Just William entries in the series stretching over a period of nearly half-a-century!🄱 William in appearance is scruffy-haired and untidy, in nature straight talking, anarchic and rebellious – which generally lands him and his own small gang of school friends “The Outlaws” in hot water. Guy Mankowski attributes the series’ success (12 million books sold in the UK alone) to the English love of the rebel. My own recollection of the general tenor of mainstream Western society circa 1965, before the societal ripples of the Counterculture and Vietnam were felt, was still very conformist and strait-jacketed. I delighted in the character of William, his rebellious free spirit and sense of fun, constantly waging a war against the rules of adults which stop children like him enjoying the fun things in life (like unlimited ice cream). What also endeared me was William’s sheer inventiveness, constantly coming up with sometimes zany, always hilarious schemes to make money or to teach grown-ups a lesson or two, and the like. And I might add just quietly, William’s loud anti-school rhetoric didn’t diminish his appeal in my books as well.

Early volumes

Two things I only found out about Just William in my adulthood…I had from the start assumed that the author of the William books was a man, he had to be a man to write about a mischievous albeit good-natured boy with such knowing authority, I thought (plus, though “Richmal” was a weird first name, it sounded more like an upper-class toff’s name than a women’s name). Wrong on both counts! Miss Richmal Crompton Lamburn was in fact a school mistress (ironically – in an all-girls school!) who contracted polio and spent the rest of her life writing the William series of books as well as 41 separate adult novels (which she rated as her real true literary work)🄲. The second discovery was that John Lennon also harboured an all-consuming passion for the Just William stories growing up in Forties and Fifties Liverpool. Had I known at the time that no less a global cultural luminary of the Sixties than Beatle John hero-worshipped the fictional rebel William, my own cup of infatuated fandom for “Britain’s favourite naughty boy” may have runneth over even more than it did🄳.

Miss Crompton with juvenile “proofreaders” (photo: Keystone/Getty Images)

Something else that slipped under the radar of my 11-year-old self was the topicality (and sometimes controversial nature) of the William stories. In the 1940s in William and the Brains Trust William responds to the publication of the Beveridge Report—the blueprint for radical social policy change that profoundly affected postwar UK—with a list of his own child-centred demands. William the Dictator reflected the Western world’s concern with the rise of fascism and National Socialism. The US/USSR space race in the Fifties inspired the Just William titles William and the Moon Rocket and William and the Space Animal.  Occasionally Crompton strayed onto edgy and even highly controversial turf. In the 1934 short story ‘William and the Nasties’ William and his Outlaws copy Hitler’s jackbooted Nazis by harassing and persecuting a local Jewish sweet-shop owner…passages such “There came to William glorious visions of chasing Jew after Jew out of sweetshop after sweetshop” definitely wouldn’t pass the politics or ethical pub test in our avowedly PC times. The anti-Semitic tone of ‘William and the Nasties’ has ensured its exclusion from modern editions of the William series.

William the Lawless, the final book in the series, published in 1970, the year after Crompton’s death

🄰 perhaps a better analogy is with Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole character although Adrian is way too timid and wimpishly sensitive juxtaposed to William

🄱 2022 was the centenary of the publication of the first Just William book in the series, although William’s debut in print was in a 1919 magazine story

🄲 Crompton Lamburn apparently based the character of William on a combination of her younger brother Battersby and her nephew Tommy

🄳 in William the Lawless (1970) William receives as a present, a Beatles’ LP

Debenhams plc: The Rise and Fall of a High-end Draper

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Commerce & Business, Economics and society,

The lethal force of the Covid-19 outbreak unleashed on the world in 2020 has killed to date in excess of seven million people globally (worldometers.info). In addition to this great toll of human life the pandemic and the ensuing commercial lockdown had a deadly effect on struggling businesses. One such victim is Debenhams plc, a retailing national institution with a continuous history centuries old. The British high street retailer went into liquidation and irrevocably out of business in May 2021, drawing the curtains on a trading lifespan extending back nearly 243 years.

Debenhams: Oxford Street (London) flagship store (photo: Debenhams plc)

Debenhams, the world’s oldest department store, was an iconic brand with a trusted reputation, a staple for household goods, beauty brands and clothing. The department store titan was bought out of administration by online fashion retailer Boohoo for £55m with the purpose of its famous brand being reinvented as an online bazaar – which is an ironic outcome given that Debenhams’ reluctance to refocus its sales strategies around the online platform (see below ).

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Debenhams stores across the UK

Debenhams was founded by William Clark in 1778 as a drapers’ store in Wigmore Street, London. In 1813 Clark partnered with investor William Debenham, trading as Clark and Debenham in London and Cheltenham. After Clark retired Debenham partnered with Clement Freebody in 1851 (under the name Debenham and Freebody). Into the 20th century the company was still in the hands of William Debenham’s descendants and in 1920 acquired upmarket Knightsbridge department store Harvey Nichols. Debenhams experienced a business crisis in the late 1920s involving its subsidiary Drapery Trust, the fallout of which forced then owner Ernest Debenham to sever his family’s connections with the retail chain that still bears his name…as a result the company went public.

Era of expansion: The 1930s and 40s saw considerable expansion for Debenhams, becoming the biggest department store chain in the UK by 1948, with takeovers in several British cities (in 1950 there were 110 stores in the UK). In the 1970s Debenhams found itself in more volatile waters, having to fight off takeover attempts, culminating in it being acquired by the Burton Group in 1985 (subsequently the two demerged in 1998). From the 1990s the retail company took on an international profile with stores opening in 18 countries. Debenhams stores spread to Ireland as well as acquiring the Danish department store chain Magasin du Nord, plus a raft of widespread franchises encompassing the Middle East, Asia, Malta, Russia, Australia and elsewhere.

Debenhams’ Belfast (NI) store: closing sale (photo: news.com.au)

Profits decline while debts inflate: The Covid pandemic put the shutters on Debenhams’ retail existence but the decline of the household name in British retailing can be traced to business failures and wrong strategies over the preceding two decades. The decline had been precipitous, in 2016 the 166–store strong chain had been worth £900m, just three years on, this had plummeted to £20m. Retail analysts attribute Debenhams’ demise in part to its failure to read the future, to embrace change in consumer preferences resulting from the advent of the iPhone and online shopping. Simon Reynolds, a branding consultant, skewers management for neglect of the company’s historic brand – missing in Debenhams was a “clear brand proposition for its customers…it couldn’t demonstrate what made it different to its competitors and it lacked relevance to younger customers”. Debenhams’ expansion plans in 2006, its stated intention to double the then 120 stores it operated𖤓, added an additional cost burden§ which failed to be offset by a sales revenue boost (sales remained static in fact). This down-spiralling trend, according to retail consultant Richard Hyman, demonstrated that Debenhams had lost its relevance in the competitive retail environment (‘Debenhams: Three things that went wrong’, Rebecca Marston, BBC News, 09-April-2019, www.bbc.com). The end was nigh.

 

𖤓 in 2017 when it should have been closing underperforming stores, and just one year before a record loss toppled Debenhams into administration, the company inexplicably was still opening new stores! Poor store placement was a negating factor as well, opening new stores in small population areas like Stevenage or too close to existing Debenham stores was symptomatic of the injudicious path taken by the retailer (‘One ‘reckless’ decision that killed UK retail giant Debenhams’, Benedict Brook, News.com.au, 21-May-2021, www.news.com.au)

§ a combination of prime-site large properties, big rents and long leases, high rates and large staffing needs