In the Money

The last block of the Bowery in the Bowery Boys series was reached with In The Money. With Huntz Hall having completed his contractual obligation, the series was canceled. Quite frankly it was never the same after Leo Gorcey quit and Bernard Gorcey died.

Still this was a better film than most of the ones with Stanley Clements trying to take Leo Gorcey's place. In The Money finds poor Sach being hired by Leonard Penn for a rather exorbitant salary to escort a dog on an ocean liner to the United Kingdom. Only Huntz Hall would be dumb enough to think that getting a few thousand dollars for this task that something more than fear of dog-nappers was up.

Clements and the rest figure that much out and stow away on the ocean liner with what I will say is a rather clever gimmick. Scotland Yard Inspector Paul Cavanaugh is also eying Penn and his companions John Dodsworth and Patricia Donahue. But the crooks just tell Sach that Cavanaugh is one of those dog-nappers to be avoided. And the poor dummy believes them.

One thing that was a regular item running through the Bowery Boys series is Huntz Hall always getting vamped by a beautiful bad girl. The last of them and one of the best is Patricia Donahue, mainly because she doesn't at first come on sultry. But for such dumbbell Huntz Hall did all right in the screen babe department.

In The Money also illustrates another favorite premise of mine that plot situations can be both dramatic and comedic. If the bad guys were smuggling narcotics instead of jewels, Huntz Hall would have been a drug mule. The same situation could become quite deadly then.

Anyway In The Money was hardly the worst of the series and not the worst of the post Gorcey films.

The Bowery Boys limp across the finish line with "In the Money", their final movie. It's a completely laughless affair. The jokes are cornier than usual. Huntz Hall is not as annoying as he often can be but that doesn't mean he's funny in this movie. Hall cannot carry a Bowery Boys movie on his own. He needs the company of Leo Gorcey and Bernard Gorcey. On his own, Hall is in trouble. The production quality of "In the Money" is also lacking. It has the look of a low budget movie of its era. The supporting cast is functional but there aren't any standouts. Patricia Donahue is the best of the bunch, especially the brief moment when she gets wet. "In the Money" is one of the Bowery Boys weakest efforts.

After a successful run of 58 movies from 1946 to 1958, the Bowery Boys series came to an end with this movie. It probably died from a combination of the inroads television was making, the fact that the boys were getting too old to play adolescents, and the loss of Leo Gorcey for the last 7 movies. (He said he couldn't continue after his father, Bernard Gorcey, died in 1955.) His malapropisms, leadership and confidence was sorely missed by me. Stanley Clements takes his place in this movie, and I counted just one malapropism. Huntz Hall is up to his usual childish tricks (which made him so endearing to his fans, including me), dog-sitting a poodle on an ocean voyage to London for some diamond smugglers. But the other members of the gang, who were stowaways on board, seemed like excess baggage, and Hall just couldn't carry the comedy by himself. The movie didn't have the energy of the early entries, which Leo Gorcey and even Bernard Gorcey provided. A sad ending to a series I enjoyed as a kid.

The Bowery Boys series mercifully comes sputtering to an end with this forty-eighth entry. This one has Sach getting mixed up with diamond smugglers and a poodle plot. It's Huntz Hall's show the whole way, for better or worse (bet on worse). The rest of the gang - Stanley Clements, Eddie LeRoy, and David Gorcey - offer typically weak support. The rest of the cast includes Dick Elliott, Paul Cavanagh, and Patricia Donahue. It's a pretty yawn-worthy effort that's only of interest to fans of the series who want to check it off their list. No memorable lines or gags. A forgettable end to a long-running series that itself was preceded by other series (Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids). The only Dead End Kid from the beginning still standing at the end was Huntz Hall, whose shtick grew increasingly unfunny (for me, at least) as he got older. Still, pretty impressive to think that a group of kids from a dramatic Broadway play would go on to become a comedy franchise that lasted over twenty years with different series at different studios, and over eighty films.

Lunching on the sandwich he delivered to a travel agency, messenger Huntz Hall (as Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones) impressed some crooks with is dimwittedness. They hire Mr. Hall as bodyguard for a poodle named "Gloria" and book them passage to London, England. Hall hoped "Gloria" was blonde Patricia Donahue (as Babs), but she's no dog. Hall doesn't know it, but Ms. Donahue is part of a smuggling scheme. "Gloria" has been shaved and strapped with fake fur containing stolen diamonds. In order to protect Hall from danger, fellow "Bowery Boys" Stanley Clements (as Stanislaus "Duke" Coveleskie), David Gorcey (as Chuck) and Eddie LeRoy (as Blinky) decide to stowaway on the ship.

"In the Money" was, thankfully, the last film in "The Bowery Boys" series. These films ran from 1946-1958, with highlights including "Bowery Buckaroos" (1947) and "Hold That Baby!" (1949). There were some good films released during the 1950s, but the decline was most noticeable in "Jungle Gents" (1954) and "Crashing Las Vegas" (1956). "The Bowery Boys" was a legally necessary spin-off from "The East Side Kids" (1940-1945), which is nicely represented by "Bowery Blitzkrieg" (1941). Before that, they were most well known as "The Dead End Kids", which boasted many spin-offs and sequels. Comparing "Dead End" (1937) to "In the Money" shows just how exhausted the ideas had become.

**** In the Money (2/16/58) William Beaudine ~ Huntz Hall, Stanley Clements, Patricia Donahue, David Gorcey