Les enfants de la crise

One of the surprisingly realistic dramas that Hollywood created in the early 1930's has teenagers hitting the road during the hard times of the Great Depression.

With their east coast (New "Yawk?") accents, and rough around the edges "Bowery Boys"-style (harken, Leo Gorcey!), Frankie Darrow and a gang of displaced down-on-their-luck (formerly middle class?) teens band together and roam the countryside on foot or by rail, getting into hot water seemingly everywhere they go. Amazing graphic scenes for 1933 include a kid's leg being amputated by a train and an attempted rape scene.

Miserable living conditions and hunger are also depicted with kids lying cheating and stealing to stay alive, but willing to straighten themselves out when given a chance.

You'd think Warner Brothers was taking a risk financing a film that was so bleak and lacking in entertainment value for people that may have been LIVING the kinds of scenes shown, but the film also seems like a propaganda piece for Roosevelt's New Deal. There's a Roosevelt look-alike judge who places his hand, almost in a blessing, on poor Frankie's head and says "things are going to get better very soon".

Overall, Wild Boys of the Road is an interesting social drama that deserves more exposure and recognition.

The only studio in Hollywood that acknowledged that there was a Depression out there for the most part was Warner Brothers. It was only from this studio that Wild Boys Of The Road could have been made and done as well as it was.

The story and the situation is what puts this film over. There are no stars in Wild Boys Of The Road although some of the players eventually got reputations as competent character actors. The most well known person in this film would have to be Ward Bond playing the part of the train brakeman who sees that one of the Wild Boys is actually a girl and rapes her. Bond in his early days did play thugs like these for the most part.

The generation that proceeded me lived through the Great Depression. My uncles were in their teens at the time this film was made. In fact one of my uncles before he died told me how he left school and went to work on a farm in Brockport owned by the husband of my grandmother's cousin. He considered himself incredibly lucky to even get that kind of work even from family. Both of them could easily have been part of the gang of homeless youth.

The film centers on three of them, Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips, a pair of kids from small town USA in the west somewhere are both up against it. Darro's father is laid off and Phillips's has died, leaving both families right on the poverty line as they would be described today. Darro and Phillips take off for the east and along the way meet up with Dorothy Coonan who is in drag for her own protection, rightly so as she finds out later. The film concerns their adventures on the road, the railroad to be precise as they catch rides aboard freight trains with an eye out for the railroad police.

Curiously enough one Hollywood star was living just this kind of life at this point. Robert Mitchum and his brother John would have been teens at this time and also left home to find any kind of work. His memories, should his widow Dorothy ever divulge them, could make the basis for another Wild Boys Of The Road.

Note in the climax scene in the courtroom where Darro, Coonan, and Phillips are before Judge Robert Barrat who usually was a bad guy in films, but is a sympathetic judge here, the Blue Eagle symbolizing the National Recovery Administration. It was one of the first initiatives of the New Deal and its presence in the film is a symbol of hope for these kids. But later on a more substantial program directly aimed at these youths was passed right around the time Wild Boys Of The Road would have been in theaters.

The Civilian Conservations Corps which took homeless kids off the streets and put them to work beautifying America's National Parks and a lot of other rural area would have been home to Darro, Phillips and the whole rest of the railroad freight hoppers. Back then liberal was not a dirty word and it was all right for government to care about the welfare of its citizens. The CCC was one of the best of the New Deal programs and it lasted all the way until World War II was declared.

And it's to the CCC which provided real salvation for so many youths of the time like Darro, Phillips and the rest that this review is respectfully dedicated to.

Mention the Great Depression and most folks draw a blank or nod off. After all, who wants to be reminded of soup kitchens, dour old men, and dust bowls. Seventy years later and it's a closed book, forgotten and unlamented. Now and again, however, that dusty book needs re-opening. Because, in spite of the best efforts of the best of us, the past is not alway past. This edgy little Warner Bros. production provides a brief picture of the youth of that day, a harrowing story of survival amidst economic collapse.

The movie wouldn't work so well without the contrast the first half-hour provides. Darro and friends are typical middle-class teens, fun-loving and care-free. It's a world of proms, necking parties, and harmless pranks. Then without warning things change. Why they change is never really explained which is the way it should be. For most kids knew nothing of stock markets and dis-investment. They only knew that suddenly Dad doesn't go to work anymore and mom cries a lot, bills pile up, and no one gets a job, anywhere. Middle-class privilege plunges into no-income poverty, and Darro and his buddy do like millions of others. They hop a freight, hoping the next town, the next state, the next someplace, will give them a chance to make a living. What they get instead are private armies, battalions of cops, and a forest of billy clubs. They're driven on to the next jurisdiction and the next welcoming committee. Nobody wants the footloose unemployed adding to their own local problems. Maybe the attitude's not charitable, but it makes practical sense.

The battles atop freight cars and in hobo jungles are expertly filmed and dynamically staged, a stark panorama of social desperation. These scenes make up the movie's centerpiece. If anything they're mildly presented compared to the actual blood-letting that surrounded the desperate and up-rooted. Union organizing was especially bloody and bitterly fought-- an explosive topic Hollywood has only timidly touched on over the years. Nonetheless, the nail-biting episode on the train track stands-in for at least some of the actual pain and suffering caused by those crisis years.

Darro may be small, but he's energetic, something of a younger Cagney. His determined spirit to keep going no matter what is convincing, and helps drive the others on. I expect it also had that effect on audiences of the day. I like the way director Wellman suggests the kids can set up their own constructive community, if given half-a-chance. Some reviewers complain about the final scene with the understanding judge. Yes, it is pretty contrived, but it wasn't unrealistic given the package of New Deal reforms then in the works. If those measures didn't exactly solve the economic crisis (only WWII did that), they at least offered hope that the problems would no longer be kicked down the road to the next jurisdiction.

Wild Boys may not be the most honest or best movie on those tumultuous years. Still, it does furnish a provocative and entertaining glimpse. In any event, some books should not remain closed. After all, who knows when the unfortunate history of that era may again repeat itself.

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.