El malhechor

Introducing Audie Murphy as the wayward seventeen year old "Danny", we find that he has luckily found himself being taken under the wing of the kindly "Brown" (Lloyd Nolan) and his wife "Maud" (Jane Wyatt) who run a Variety Club ranch for other young men who have strayed to the wrong side of the tracks. Now the stroppy adolescent in this case is proving quite recalcitrant and resistant to their charms; is perfectly happy to remain obnoxious and to talk with his fists at the drop of an hat. The army-trained enforcer (James Gleason) is inclined to consign him to the compost heap, but "Brown" is determined to get to the bottom of his new charge's behaviour and quickly discovers a family history that goes some way to explaining just why "Danny" is the pain in the neck that he is. Question is, though, can "Brown" manage to rein in the man before he falls back into his naughty ways and this time finds the judge (Selena Royle) inclined to reinstate her original sentence of 20 years in chokey? This has something of the Good Samaritan about it extolling the virtues of a scenario when the system co-operates with some good will to save a man from himself, and along those lines we safely travel with little jeopardy for ninety minutes. Murphy is handsome enough - in a central casting sort of fashion - and he does enough, but he doesn't really impose himself in any way that might make you think a star is born here. Nolan hasn't really enough to work with from the script to enable his normally quite pithy and characterful delivery and some of the sub-plots seem designed to drip roast facts for us in all too convenient a fashion. It's all watchable enough but it's not really anything special.

Best line in this predictable flick starring Audie Murphy. The cast is pretty good, except Stanley Clements as the unfunny "comic" relief.

Hollywood was in the midst of solving all problems with one good psych session, so you could tell where this one was headed early on.

Despite the limited script, it's not that bad.

1949's "Bad Boy" was distinguished (and duly advertised) as the first starring role for decorated war hero Audie Murphy, earning 33 medals of valor for dispatching 240 Germans before the age of 20. After a couple of bit parts it looked like Murphy had no future in front of the camera, but this role was tailor-made for the 24 year old newcomer (certain aspects of his own background built into the script), selected for his Texas heritage as the lead in this grim melodrama produced by the Variety Boys' Club in Copperas Cove, TX, though filming took place at California's Conejo-Janss Ranch north of Los Angeles as "The Story of Danny Lester." Producer Paul Short was guaranteed financing only through Murphy's casting, and judging by the results those who scoffed at his inexperience must have been dazzled by his performance. His Danny Lester is the 'Bad Boy' of the title, a huge rap sheet by age 17, whose most recent scrape, an attempted robbery in a Dallas hotel, results in his being transferred to a ranch for juvenile delinquents run by Lloyd Nolan's Marshall Brown. Eager to throw a punch at the smallest provocation, Danny remains tight lipped and unapologetic toward the other youths, but at least shows a softer side toward Marshall's pretty wife Maud (Jane Wyatt), assigned chores working for her in the kitchen and around the yard. Old habits die hard though, sneaking off into town to steal a cash payment cleverly mailed to himself at the ranch while Marshall calls on Danny's tyrannical stepfather (Rhys Williams) and stepsister (Martha Vickers), who relate an awful story of how the boy killed his own mother and struck his stepfather before setting fire to their home. Digging deeper into the tragedy, he finds out that Danny's former employer (Francis Pierlot) was coerced into blaming Danny for slipping two sleeping pills into his ailing mother's drink by his bible thumping stepfather, whose refusal to allow her any treatment (blaming her illness on the devil) resulted in her death from natural causes. By now it may be too late to save the boy, having stolen a gun and ammunition before driving off in a stolen car for the inevitable showdown with police, then another from his hospital bed with a former partner in crime. The script carefully keeps the odds in Murphy's favor by not allowing his character to sink low enough to kill, and his remarkable performance belies his own low assessment of any acting talent in keeping the viewer off guard as to how dangerous he can be. Jane Wyatt would become typecast as the perfect mother opposite Robert Young on FATHER KNOWS BEST, but for STAR TREK fans she is forever beloved as Spock's Earth mother Amanda in "Journey to Babel."

That depends of which point of view, but considering the history of Audie Murphy's life, the latest was not the common law abiding citizen. Not far from the end, his character says he is not afraid to kill; if you know the true life of Audie Murphy before he became an actor, this sentence seems so accurate and true. And this role was the best opportunity for him to begin in the business, and in a lead role; unlike his two first pictures that he made before. The relation between young Audie Murphy and the already vet Lloyd Nolan is interesting. And as the first film sentence says, the main character, this young delinquent, is not a Dead End Kid. No cliché here, but it's not LES HAUTS MURS either. It could have been more gritty, poignant, brutal too. Because young delinquents world is sometimes very tough, violent. This looks like a propaganda and cheesy film, but it is still interesting to see Audie Murphy between his true life war hero character and his westerns one, that will follow very soon after this movie.

Looks like this movie was piggy-backing on the similar "troubled boy" film of a year earlier, Boys' Ranch (1946). This version, however, is more melodramatic than the sometimes humorous Boys' Ranch.

Here, troubled boy Danny (Murphy) is remanded to the head of Variety Ranch (Nolan) after conviction of armed robbery. At the ranch he causes trouble by refusing to reform, to the point where even the patient head, Mr. Brown, is about to turn him over to the state reform school. Just what is Danny's problem, we wonder.

Considering how quickly farm boy, war hero Murphy was thrust into the national spotlight and then onto Hollywood, he does pretty well in this his first starring role. Oddly, he seems to have the most difficulty projecting the occasional meanness his role calls for. Anyone familiar with his later cowboy roles knows how he can snarl with the best of them. Here, I gather, he is still learning, and more than anything else, comes across as a nice boy. Only the script tells us otherwise.

It's a well-meaning little film, with that fine actor Lloyd Nolan in the lead and everybody's favorite mom of the 1950's Jane Wyatt as his understanding wife. Then there's a 60-year old James Gleason as a surprisingly effective ranch enforcer. But it's the irrepressible Stanley Clements who steals the film as the goofy Bitsy—I really liked his plowboy-cowboy song and the scene that went with it.

All in all, it's an entertaining little programmer with a good positive message that you just don't see anymore. (In passing—I note that the Variety Clubs of the show- biz world produced the movie and apparently helped sponsor the real Texas boys' ranch. I wonder if they still do.)