Garçons en cage

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."

Just caught this movie after watching virtually all his other movies - the most amazing part is he was just out of the service and had received the MOH , it must have been strange for these adult actors , Loyld Nolan , Jane Wyatt etc to treat him as a teenager in the movie story after all he had been through and done in WW2 . It was an early effort and the 25 year old Murphy gamely played the troubled teenage delinquent. At he end the rehabilitated "Danny" is marching with Texas AM military candidates, touch of irony there , Audie Murphy made many good and enjoyable westerns to follow , A genuine hero who we now know suffered the effects of his combat experiences and loss of good friends . RIP.

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.

Audie Murphy, a BAD BOY on his way to career in the pen, is sent to Lloyd Nolan's ranch for delinquents in a last effort to straighten him out. Can Nolan find out what makes Murphy act so mean before he becomes a lifer at San Q?

Audie Murphy gets a bit of a bad rap as a movie star, because his movie star career, sometimes, felt like the reward of a grateful nation for his extraordinary war heroism. It's not fair. Audie can be very good -- as he demonstrates here, in his first starring role. In this movie, Murphy personifies a nice, polite, southern boy with a dangerous streak. This is the sort of kid who, one minute, can charm (in a mother/son kind of way) Lloyd Nolan's wife with good manners and genuine sweetness, and in the next, pound the smithereens out of one of his colleagues at the ranch for no good reason. Of course -- this being the 40s -- there is a very Freudian reason for this -- but until we get the psychotherapeutic ending, Murphy plays a kid on the knife's edge of good and rotten exceptionally well. What's interesting is that there is none of the acting awkwardness found in some of his early Westerns. One wonders if Murphy's directors didn't know what they had.

All the character actors give the performances you expect (Nolan is quite good here), the story moves along crisply, and one is left wondering why this one isn't better known. And, also, why Murphy didn't get to do more crime movies -- he has the acting chops for it.

Juvenile delinquency was a popular Hollywood genre in the 1950s, offering star turns to many young actors, e.g. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, Montgomery Clift, and, here, in his first lead, Audie Murphy. War hero Murphy, at 24, plays a 17 year old violent psychopath, who is facing a 20 year sentence, until Lloyd Nolan convinces the Judge to send him to Nolan's camp for "underprivileged" boys, where he's certain that he can turn him around, especially with help from his wife, Jane Wyatt, and his associate, James Gleason. Murphy, despite very limited acting experience, is believable and unpretentious; Wyatt plays her usual goody two-shoes role and Nolan conveys the liberal message again and again. But 86 minutes is not too big of an imposition.