Let's Get Tough!

This is one of the more wretched East Side Kids films--mostly because it is really mean-spirited and racist. Now some of this isn't surprising--after all, it was meant as a WWII propaganda film and instilling hatred of the Japanese and Germans in the American public was the purpose of this and other Hollywood films of the day. However, this film goes MUCH further--and seems to encourage the persecution of German and Japanese-Americans. Because of this and bad writing, it's a nasty little film.

The movie begins with the Kids wanting to do their part for the war effort. However, they try to enlist but they are repeatedly turned away because they are underage. So, they do the next best thing--they pick out what they THINK is a Japanese-American business and break in and trash the place! Here is the rub--they find out that the guy is really a Chinese-American, so they feel bad about this--as if the film is saying this sort of vigilantism is FINE provided you carefully pick your targets!! Unfortunately, when they are destroying the place, they find the owner's dead body--and this eventually leads them into a Nazi-Japanese spy ring. And, given that this is a bad film, they take on the entire spy ring all by themselves and succeed in keeping America safe.

As I said, the film is amazingly jingoistic. While I am NOT a politically correct sort of person, even I felt offended by the film and it's shabby messages. Pretty bad from start to finish. Oh, and did I mention the fried chicken and watermelon remarks made to their Black friend, Sunshine Sammy?!

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). (**)

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.)

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.

I can't say that I enjoyed this movie. It's anti Japanese propaganda made to look like a comedy. It didn't offend me in any way. It just wasn't funny. It was interesting where it shows how people thought 70 years ago.