Boys in Brown

In this well-intentioned movie, Richard Attenborough gets slung into a Borstal with Jack Warner as the warden and Derek Bogarde as the rather creepy guy who rules the cell blocks. Although the Borstal system -- which I know as turning out junior-grade spivs -- was for those youths who were less than 24 when they went in, the actors playing the boys ranged in ages from 29 through their early thirties. In their shorts, they put me in mind of 1950s Bowery Boys.

Still, the actors are good, Jack Warner utters some platitudes and the result remains watchable. With Jimmy Hanley, Barbara Murray, Patrick Holt, and the mighty Thora Hird.

Amazon notwithstanding, a DVD of this is available and I recently ran across it. The story is pretty basic and not very believable but you do learn quite a bit about the time in which it happens. Unlike the US where kids were already defining their own style of dress, their own music and gathering places devoid of adults, the British kids dress like miniature adults with clean white shirt, tie and dark sport coat....even when robbing stores! You get the feeling that success for them means getting what the adults already have rather than renouncing the world of their elders. And they are comfortable hitting a pub for a drink. It's no big deal. I guess the British drinking age is a bit lower than that in the US. But while the British world might have welcomed the youngsters into the fold, the British film industry took things to a ridiculous extreme; all the borstal "kids" are old enough to be guards themselves. Check the biogs of the actors. Several of them are in their 30's, playing teens. Hanley, playing the part of Bill Foster, is 32 and sports an enormous belly. He is almost old enough to have a son of his own in a borstal. Attenborough and Bogard are a little less obvious, but not much. Apparently Rank, like American International and Roger Corman, had difficulty finding suitable juvenile actors and simply used adults dressed as kids. After a while you get used to it since the teens act like little adults anyway. Actually a rather interesting picture from a historical aspect. If you can find it.

Boys in Brown is a British juvenile delinquency film from 1949, courtesy of Gainsborough and directed by Montgomery Tully.

Dirk Bogarde had made maybe 10 films - he would become noticed in his next film, The Blue Lamp.

At any rate, the star is Dickie Attenborough, with Jack Warner running the Borstal Institution, where boys who commit crimes are sent. As shown in another film, Good-Time Girl from 1948, these places apparently were under heavy criticism in England.

It's post-war. Jackie Knowles (Attenborough) is on probation for committing petty crimes. Needing money, he agrees to be the getaway driver for a jewel robbery. He's arrested and sentenced to three years in a Borstal Institution, which has the goal of rehabilitation.

Jackie has the best of intentions but is led astray by some boys planning an escape, including the manipulative Alfie (Bogarde). Knowing Jackie has a girlfriend, Kitty, he tells him that Kitty has forgotten about him and is seeing someone else. Jackie agrees to go along with the group. Trouble ensues.

Like Good-Time Girl, these kids haven't been reformed sufficiently. It was fun to see these young actors, who would come up through Rank Studios, particularly Attenborough, Bogarde, Alfie Bass, Michael Medwin, Robert Desmond, and Jimmy Hanley.

Someone pointed out that although there were appropriately aged actors for these roles, Rank used their actors who were too old for the roles, i.e., well into their twenties. They were still being trained for the most part.

Nice to hear Bogarde doing Julius Cesar.

Some great British actors were building their career foundations in this drama about the pressures of life both inside and outside a Borstal reform institution. In particular, Dirk Bogarde makes an excellent scheming manipulator of his fellow inmates while Richard Attenborough is his naive prey.

The Borstal governor and his staff lament that the young men in their charge won't try harder to become good citizens, while the young inmates themselves can't see beyond peer pressure and adolescent rebellion - that much at least hasn't changed since 1949.

But the passage of time has not served this movie well. Its main interest now is historical, in the very early performances of future superstars and in documenting a vanished way of British life and values. We've all seen a multitude of tough prison movies made in later years and in their light this one seems rather pale.

At the time of making this film Borstals had inmates up to the age of 23, so the actors look right for the parts they play. One of the inmates in the film is married and has 2 children so the critics who say the actors are too old are wrong.