Boy Slaves

It's a somewhat Horatio Algerian tale of some wild boy runaways who end up indentured servants in a rural turpentine mill. It's a great study of how the peonage system was being used in America at the time, letting people get goods and food on credit at inflated prices and then making them work it off forever.

It was just an unexpected fine piece of filmmaking given the exploitative title, and in the very end it kind of turns into White Heat as enacted by Mrs. Cagney's 8th Grade Class, And you know what? I liked it.

Highly recommended and quite well shot, with very fluid camera movement and great use of light especially in the final court room scene where natural sunlight seems to be streaming through the windows.

Anne Shirley doesn't show up till the final act, but when she does she's incredible in an absolutely sensational performance. Have you ever seen a performance by an actress in a 1930 or 40 something film where she was actually properly styled and they didn't have her hair set and glamorously made up because she was in the part of someone poor or a child? There were parts of watching her final moments in the film that seemed like it was a present day actress merely filmed in black-and-white. Just riveting. The only way this film could be better would be if Eleanor Roosevelt showed up in a tank with the National Guard at the end.

This 1939 RKO flick's not as well produced nor structured as Warner's 1933 Wild Boys Of The Road, but does manage moments of genuine grit, plus a few surprises. Like its better known predecessor, it deals with the effect of the Depression era on a generation of rootless boys. All in all, the 70-minutes is a real "find" for old movie fans

Jesse's a rather sensitive lad who leaves his destitute home to seek a fortune "by working hard". Instead he falls in with a tough gang of runaway boys who live a roving hand-to-mouth existence. What direction Jesse's youthful idealism will take now becomes a key question. The gang's leader, Tim, is a natural leader but has become mean and thoroughly alienated from what has for him been an uncaring society. Soon the gang is sentenced to a work camp that operates on debt peonage. There the boys exist under prison-like conditions without hope of paying off their individual debts to the camp.

There's a strong Depression era subtext underlying the various tribulations. In that regard, the movie retains historical interest, despite Bowery Boys overtones. I really like the way Jesse is too scared by the nighttime forest to deliver the crucial help-note. That's a surprisingly realistic turn. Notice too that the boys have addressed the note to "Mrs. President", that is, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklyn's wife, well known for her empathy for the downtrodden (a sign of the times).

There are a number of positive points. Clearly the boys were not chosen for their Hollywood looks, thereby lending an unusual movie appearance. Then too, the addition of a Black lad (Paul White) as just one of the guys seems a bold move. I guess my only misgiving is adding Anne Shirley to the work camp without explanation. She's just sort of "dropped in" about midway through. It's as though the producers suddenly discovered they needed a commercial name on the marquee amongst all the no-names. At least, she's a break from all the ugly guys.

Anyway, despite the hokey title, the movie's a worthy reflection of its era, and deserves better circulation than what it's gotten.

The lurid title is tabloid drama but the film is a surprisingly effective drama of teen hobos rounded up and shunted into working like prisoners on a rural turpentine farm by unscrupulous racketeers. Probably made as RKOs answer to The East Side Kids or The Little Tough Guys or (pre) Bowery Boys, this even has lookalikes to Huntz hall and Frankie Darro. The lead juvenile Roger Daniel is excellent and research reveals he almost immediately went straight into obscurity (maybe the War intervened as he was 15 in 1940) and only turned up in several Monogram teen/rural pix and later their JOE PALOOKA films of the mid 40s in a bit part. Pity, as he is a good young actor. The older teen Tim played by James Mc Callion is exactly like Frankie Darro but plays his part a lot like a young Cagney. Far more successful as an actor and can be seen briefly in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. He had a long film and TV career right up until 1990. One of the kids, Walter Tetley ended up being the voice of Sherman in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons in the 60s. BOY SLAVES is a good small RKO drama worth catching. There is a very clever scene early in the film by a swamp with interesting model work using a model of a freight train 'in the distance'.

BOY SLAVES (RKO Radio, 1939), directed by P.J. Wolfson, from an original story by Albert Bein, ranks one of many social dramas produced during the depression era. With Anne Shirley heading the cast, the film rightfully belongs to newcomer, Roger Daniel, who, along with other unknown actors supporting him, remain unknowns. An intense melodrama coping with homeless teenagers searching for a better way of life is quite reminiscent to the more famous structure of WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (Warner Brothers, 1933) starring Frankie Darro, but coming six years later, BOY SLAVES shows great promise, but offers little or nothing more to what's been done before, yet somehow manages in holding its own.

Before the plot gets underway, there's a forward message that reads: "Since the beginning of civilization, man's love and defense of his children has been primary instinct. In America, fathers have fought, bled and died on the battlefield so that they might hand down to their children a heritage of freedom. Yet today, in some isolated community, hidden away from the law, there exist men who hold their love of money before humanity. Other men's young children labor for them from sun up to sun down. It is with these men this picture deals with hope that their mothers and fathers of America will search them out and expose them to the law." Set in a poor factory town where widow, Mrs. Thompson (Helen MacKeller), lives with her baby and two older sons, upon her return from her all night job, she finds that her eldest son, Harvey (Georgie Breakston), was fired from his, while Jesse (Roger Daniel), her second son, has left home to do his bid looking for work to help support the family. While on the road, Jesse encounters a gang of homeless boys headed by Jim Marley (James McCallin) who beat and rob him of his money. Regardless, Jesse decides to join them, hopping aboard a passing train after being chased off by the police. After getting arrested for panhandling and robbing a rich kid (Charles Peck), Jesse and Jim are arrested by the sheriff (Arthur Hohl) where they face a judge. Because Jesse unwittingly earlier revealed the whereabouts of the other boys, leading to their arrest, Jim labels him a "squealer." Sent over to a juvenile labor camp run by the "law abiding" Mr. Albee (Charles Lane), the boys are promised better living conditions, but Albee's Turpentine Company if far from being Father Flanagan's Boys Town as they see their heaven with a barbed wire fence. Finding themselves "Climbing trees like a monkey," "working hard like mules" and given food "unfit for pigs," they also must cope with Peter Graff (Alan Baxter), a sadistic guard, whose eyes on Annie (Anne Shirley), the camp's only female member, to be far from honorable.

No doubt that BOY SLAVES, if released by Warner Brothers, would have starred none other than The Dead End Kids, with Bobby Jordan playing Jesse, Billy Halop as Jim, and Bonita Granville as Annie. In fact, Warners did produce its own juvenile camp related theme titled HELL'S KITCHEN (1939) with The Dead End Kids, a remake of its own THE MAYOR OF HELL (1933) featuring Frankie Darro, so stories of this nature were common factor at the time. Being an expose on brutal conditions in juvenile camps, BOY SLAVES has its share of occasional passages of hard hitting drama, though there are portions of the story that leave some questions unanswered. Its most powerful scene occurs after Jesse's failed escape attempt to get help. Believing he betrayed the gang, Jesse finds himself confronted by Jim, holding a hot metal iron to brand on Jesse, who, in near crying conviction, tries to protect himself raising his bloody bruised hands acquired climbing the barbed wire fence.

Regardless of Anne Shirley being RKO's top juvenile star and her long range of movies dating back to the 1920s, her role is extremely limited. With long stretches involving others, BOY SLAVES makes one forget she's in the film at all. Roger Daniel, who captures the role of Jesse Thompson with conviction, gets plenty of camera close-up revealing facial expressions of sadness and sympathy to honor plenty of attention from critics and viewers. In spite of his other showcase performance in KING OF THE TURF (United Artists, 1939), opposite Adolphe Menjou, Daniel never achieved the stardom of a top teen idol in the personification of Mickey Rooney nor leading roles in any second feature production, but instead, drifted mostly to minor or unbilled roles before disappearing from the Hollywood scene altogether by 1946.

Other members of the cast worth noting include Peter White as Atlas, the harmonica playing black member of the gang; Johnny Fitzgerald ("Knuckles"); Walter Ward ("Miser"); Charlie Powers (Lollie); and the familiarity of Walter Tetley as "Pee-Wee'). With Charles Lane as the unsympathetic camp leader, his role would have been quite more effective and stronger with notable screen villain Charles Middleton enacting the same part. The judge giving his closing speech is played by Roy Gordon.

Seldom seen in recent years, this 72 minute "B" product has turned up on American Movie Classics prior to 1994, and sparingly on Turner Classic Movies. While BOY SLAVES is not for all tastes, it remains a time capsule reflecting the times of youth survivorship and hardships during the great depression. (***)

"Boy Slaves" is the first movie by James Mc Callion, the tough kid who plays the lead of the young hobos : he plays and looks perfectly like James Cagney in every scene, and some are quite tough like during their final escape. But there are too many scenes in the "East Side Kids" or "Bowery Boys" lousy comic style. I'll have to check his characters in classics like "Vera Cruz", "The Big Combo", "Kiss me deadly". And there's the lovely Anne Shirley, only girl in the gang, before her ultimate character in "Murder, my sweet".

It's also the only movie directed by PJ Wolfson who will be after a screenwriter and producer (the very good "Saïgon" with Ladd-Lake).

The cinematography is by J. Roy Hunt who lightened a few noirs like "Crossfire" and "The devil rides a thumb". In "Boy slaves", he did a fine work with travellings and light effects in the last trial scene.