Wild Boys of the Road

Forget the Kleenex, bring the Bounty paper towels to experience William Wellman's depression masterpiece. This huge emotional epiphany packs a wallop.

Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips portray the juvenile leads Eddie and Tommy, with Darro's performance effective and appealing. Their characters indulge in the usual teenage shenanigans until the depression overtakes their parents. As times toughen, and Eddie's father can't find work, Eddie decides to sell his jalopy to help out. This sets up the first of many splendid scenes, as Eddie's tough-guy veneer drops just long enough to share raw emotions with his father (Grant Mitchell). Zero cringe factor here, Wellman excels at emotions between men and it's never maudlin.

Hitting the (rail)road to find work, Eddie and Tommy encounter Sally, an adorable, nose-scrintching Dorothy Coonan dressed as a man. And the three set off across the country, with high ideals and optimism clashing with depression realities. Brutal and raw, this is a journey you, too, must take. A page of America's history told so expertly as to make you laugh and cry simultaneously.

Ms. Coonan (Sally) quit films after "Wild Boys" to marry director "Wild" Bill Wellman, and remain his his wife until his death in 1975. My highest recommendation.

This is truly a very great Classic Film about how living conditions were for the very young and old. It clearly shows how the Depression Years effected everyone in America and were very bad times for people of all races. Mothers and Fathers were unable to support their families and children had to go on their own, or run away and find some sort of child labor. Frankie Darro,"Saratoga",'37 and Dorothy Coonan Wellman,(Sally). gave great performances eating sandwiches on a flatbed railroad car and headed to Chicago. Sally had an aunt who lived in Chicago and when she arrived, she was greeted with a huge cake to share with her friends. However, her aunt seemed very successful and greeted her with open arms, but her apartment was soon raided, as she was a HOOKER! This is a sad film, but tells the truth about the growing pains in America!

FRANKIE DARRO and EDWIN PHILLIPS play depression-era buddies with great chemistry and natural vigor and charm. They are the key ingredients in keeping the story firmly in the realm of believability throughout. An intriguing slice of life for depression weary audiences--one has to wonder what the initial effect was upon release in 1933.

Whatever, it all plays out extremely well except for what appears to be a tacked on ending that gives a positive spin to the tale.

Grant Mitchell does fine work as Darro's depressed out-of-work father who shows his love and respect for his son when Darro sells his jalopy (for a mere $22!!) to help out the family. Interesting to note Ward Bond in an unsavory role as a railroad official who is brutally punished after taking advantage of a stowaway girl.

All of the vivid railroad scenes have been expertly photographed and the incident involving the unfortunate Phillips and his leg accident is powerfully depicted. William Wellman's direction keeps things moving swiftly and satisfactorily for a tense and gripping little social drama told in little more than an hour.

Highly recommended, especially because it's a product of its time and reveals all of the societal ills rampant in the early '30s.

Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

William A. Wellman directs this Depression era drama about two boys (Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips) who run away from home and jump on the railroad route in hopes of finding a job so that they can help their families back home. Once again there must have been something inside of Wellman because there's a lot of passion in this film aimed at the poor who must do what they can to try and survive. This is a very hard hitting film that looks at this kids in a very serious light and it makes for a terrific little gem that deserves more attention than it's gotten within film history. Both Darro and Phillips are terrific in their roles and the chemistry they offer is great. Wellman's future wife, Dorothy Coonan, is also very good in her role as the boys buddy. The first twenty-minutes of the film shows the boys as normal teenagers but then we see their parents lose their jobs and thus forcing them to hit the road. This set up really sells the rest of the film and it also helps us see the suffering they're going to go through for the rest of the film. Wellman does a great job with the tender side of the story as well as a couple great fight sequences where they boys attack some railroad police as well as a rapist. Darro has a bit of Cagney in him and his performance here seems to have had a major influence on what we'd eventually see from The Dead End Kids.

This astonishing William Wellman film from mid 1933 is simply a masterpiece of neo realist cinema. Histroy raves about THE BICYCLE THIEVES and THE GRAPES OF WRATH but in 1933 years before those excellent struggle films of social decay and recovery came this absolutely riveting mini epic of hobo teens on freight trains battling every social and climate element to survive. the pristine DVD available now will truly amaze you. Crystal clear camera imagery akin to the magnificent black and white books from Ansell Adams, but as a 1933 film. Along with I WAS A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG made a year or so earlier, you could not find a more heart-wrenching and emotionally stirring depiction of the brutal reality and its effect on the human spirit imaginable. These early 30s WB Vitaphone talkies should be hallowed as genuine social pop art of their time and rightly recognized as an irreplaceable depiction of an era and a humanity for film students and anyone studying the 20th century. The scenes aboard the roofs of the freight trains, the magnificent clear sharp black and white photography and the sheer bravery of the production let alone the lives depicted makes WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD one of the most rewarding films of any genre you could imagine discovering. And Frankie Darro! What a magnetic teen star he was.... All thru the 30s and 40s in films like BOY SLAVES and BOWERY BOY films and even ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES the ideas here were recycled and exploited... but the absolute pinnacle of the genre is this 1933 film WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD.