Let's Get Tough!

Let's Get Tough has those irrepressible East Side Kids getting involved with hunting down an Axis Spy Ring operating in of all places the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Back in those days the Axis would pop up just about everywhere including in the Ozarks in another fabulous Monogram propaganda effort, Joan Of Ozark.

Tom Brown who is Bobby Jordan's older brother has been dishonorably discharged, but that's all a put up job because he's infiltrated the spy ring. The spy ring is an ecumenical consisting mostly of Japanese headed by Philip Ahn, but also including Gabriel Dell in a German accent that he learned in the Borscht Belt and of course the infiltrator Brown.

The East Side Kids in their burst of Pearl Harbor inspired patriotism first mess up a Chinese owned business and later have to apologize for it especially since some idiot Japanese thought he was one of them and kill him when he doesn't join the spy ring. Sad to say we've had incidents just like that after the Gulf War and the current Afghan and Iraqi Wars. Gangs of kids imbued with patriotism going after Moslem owned businesses and Moslem people. Here these kids are only wrong because they made a mistake. And of course the Orientals not be able to tell one group from another is positively ludicrous.

Robert Armstrong as your neighborhood Irish cop and Florence Rice as his daughter who is going out with Brown all add to the general daffiness of this wartime propaganda film that could only have been made during our World War II years.

In addition the film was badly edited so you have to fill in a few blanks for the story to make any sense. I doubt we'll ever see a director's cut of Let's Get Tough.

LET'S GET TOUGH (Monogram, 1942), a Banner Production directed by Wallace Fox, becomes the ninth entry to the "East Side Kids" series featuring Leo Gorcey (Muggs Maginnis), Bobby Jordan (Danny), Huntz Hall (Glimpy), David Gorcey (Pee-Wee), Bobby Stone (Skinny) and "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison (Scruno). For this edition, the Danny character not only acquires a new last name, "Collins," but a new brother, now enacted by Tom Brown. Gabriel Dell reverts back to villain role, this time as a German-born Nazi named Fritz Heinbach Jr., stationed in the Bowery section of Manhattan with his father.

With the United States into war, the story opens with the East Side Kids and crowd of spectators watching a parade of soldiers marching down the street. Wanting to do something for their country, they first try to enlist in the Army, Marines and finally the Navy, but are all too young to enlist in active duty. Danny Collins (Bobby Jordan) has a brother, Phil (Tom Brown) in the Navy. When he returns home, it is learned that he has been dishonorably discharged. This news has Officer "Pop" Stevens (Robert Armstrong) forbid his sister, Nora (Florence Rice) from ever seeing him again. Wanting to be good citizens, the East Side Kids take the law into their own hands by stirring trouble among an antique shop managed by a Japanese couple, only to be told by Officer Stevens what they did was a serious mistake on their part. Later its owner, Mr. Keno, is found stabbed by the kids, with Glimpy lifting a note from the body with Japanese writing. Making themselves "Junior G-Men," The East Side Kids do some investigating for themselves, to later discover Danny's brother might have some connection with a spy ring known as the Black Dragon Society. Further complications ensue when Nora mysteriously disappears after entering a Japanese tea shop. Featured in the cast are Sam Bernard (Fritz Heinbach Sr.); Philip Ahn (Joe Matsui); and Pat Costello (Randall, the Navy Recruiter).

More drama than comedy, comedy scenes that put this otherwise straight drama off balance are Glimpy taking violin lessons from his music teacher (Jerry Bergen), and another involving the kids with Glimpy's mother (Patsy Moran). While certain scenes are out of character for the East Side Kids, namely bearing false judgment against those who are or happen to be mistaken for Japanese, the duration of the story, with fine mix of propaganda and mystery, improves during its last half hour. Robert Armstrong, best known as Carl Denham in KING KONG (1933), is an asset here, as are the familiar faces of Tom Brown and Florence Rice in support. Theatrically released at 63 minutes, beware of badly edited jump cut 55 minute edition which makes viewing impossible to comprehend.

Available on both home video and DVD format, cable television broadcasts for LET'S GET TOUGH have been on either Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: May 24, 2004) and MGM Plus. Next in the series: SMART ALECKS (1942). (**)

For the most part, the material in this East Side Kids feature is, in itself, fair to about average for the series. The main point of interest comes in its depiction of the gang in the days following Pearl Harbor, when the national mood had swung suddenly in favor of war with Japan. Like a good number of other movies in this era, including others in the same series, this one takes many opportunities to promote its version of patriotism.

The story has the gang turned away from the enlistment offices because of their young ages, and proceeding instead to channel their energies into taking on a local group of Axis spies and sympathizers. The stereotyped depictions of the Japanese and German characters may not have elicited any significant degree of objection at the time, but they are very obvious now. Only the generally comic tone of the movie keeps them from becoming a more serious flaw.

In itself, the story and the movie do have their share of good moments, usually when Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, and the rest are allowed to indulge their free-wheeling style for a bit. There are better features in the series, but this one is all right, and it provides an interesting example of the many kinds of movies, stars, and genres from the early 1940s that showed a strong wartime influence.

How could Tojo and his Pearl Harbor sneaks hope to win a war when we've got Gorcey, Hall, and the East Side Kids on our side. Released just a few months after Dec. 7, '41, the flick's a hurry-up job, but still manages to amuse in typical Kids' fashion. Okay, so whatever you do, don't let Hall teach you the violin- otherwise you may avoid music forever. Also, don't let him fix your burning stove unless he spits on your stew. Plot-wise, our patriotic guys want to join up, and any service branch will do. Trouble is they're too young to be accepted; nevertheless, they show goofy tactics that could soon make guns obsolete.

Story-wise, our red-white-and blue Kids soon tumble into a Japanese scheme to smuggle explosives into the US. Too bad it appears to involve Glimpy's (Hall) brother Phil (Brown). So, Americans, beware, the enemy could be anywhere. After all, it is 1942 and the war's still young.

Hall and the guys are in usual lick-speed form, along with rapid fire pacing. The flick does okay in combining the patriotic subtext with the Kids brand of knock-about humor, not letting either overwhelm the other. All in all, however, you may need a score-card to keep up with all the characters who keep ricocheting in and out. At the same time, note the great Korean-American actor Phillip Ahn (Joe Matsui) who got a ton of war-time work as the all-purpose Japanese enemy. I wonder if those Hollywood roles redounded into his personal life and safety. I hope not.

No, the flick's not front-rank Kids. Still, fans of the knock-about shouldn't pass this one up, not only for the usual laughs but for insight into how even Hollywood's goofiest productions were gearing up for The Big One.

(In passing- note how the Japanese are referred to in the movie as "Japs", a now politically incorrect term, but perhaps understandable at the time given the adversarial conditions. Much, I suppose, like "Krauts" for Germans.)

Following the World War II Japanese attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, "The Eastside Kids": Leo Gorcey (as Muggs), Bobby Jordan (as Danny Connors), Huntz Hall (as Glimpy), David Gorcey (as Peewee), Ernest Morrison (as Scruno), and Bobby Stone (as Skinny) want to serve their country. But, both the U.S. Army and Navy reject them as too young. Still wanting to "knock off about a million Japs", the "boys" attack an Asian clerk, who turns out to be Chinese. The unfortunate incident does, however, lead the gang to help uncover some really nasty Japanese and German people.

If "too young" is defined as "under twenty-one", only Mr. Jordan and Mr. Stone would be rejected for military service. But, it's possible recruiters were turned off by the office manners displayed by Mr. Gorcey and Mr. Hall. "Let's Get Tough!" was made during what the script accurately describes as "open season on Japs" - for this and other reasons, it hasn't aged well. It's a wasted effort, but the regulars performs ably, with Tom Brown moving the storyline along, as Jordan's spy brother.

*** Let's Get Tough! (5/29/42) Wallace Fox ~ Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Tom Brown