Des hommes sont nés

This is a pretty famous movie, one of those old-fashioned feel-good films that bring a tear or two to the eye of the sensitive individual.

It's very dated, yes, but part of that "dated" means mostly nice kids, not brats and more nice role models, instead of extremely-flawed heroes. It seems, as film fans, we normally got one of the extremes thrown at us: overly good or overly bad. This is overly good.....but I'm fine with that.

Mickey Rooney really livens the film up with his appearance. He and most of the characters represent an America that is long gone, people and ideas that are way too "corny" for today's audience. Sometimes it's sappy but sometimes it's refreshing to see, too.

The "bad" kids in this film seem pretty nice and tame to today's bad kids, believe me. "There are no bad boys," as Father Flanagan put it, and one would wonder if that still applied today. Flanagan is nicely portrayed by Spencer Tracy. The priest is shown to be one who had a real heart for wayward boys.

Spencer and Rooney are the obvious stars of this sentimental story but little "Pee Wee," played by Bobs Watson, is the most endearing character in the movie.

Corny but a remembrance of a much more innocent America.

Boys Town is not the actual story of the founding of the famous orphanage in Nebraska for homeless male youth. True some of the problems that Father Edward J. Flanagan had in making his dream come true are dealt with here. But about a third of the way through the story line changes and it deals with the problems of one of the youths Boys Town takes in.

The youth is Mickey Rooney and Father Flanagan is played by Spencer Tracy. They are some contrast in acting styles. It's a tribute to Director Norman Taurog in that he was able to reign in Rooney, who's performance some times goes a little over the top.

Tracy however beautifully underplays against Rooney. San Francisco two years before was a milestone film for Tracy. Previous to San Francisco, Tracy had played mostly roughewn types on either side of the law. No pun intended, but as the priest there, Spencer Tracy became the wise paternal figure so beloved in so many films.

There's a lot of Father Tim Mullin continued on in Tracy's Father Flanagan. No new ground was broken, but the ground was carefully cultivated by Tracy in Boys Town, earning him a second Oscar in a row. That Oscar resides at Girls and Boys Town today, the place did go co-ed in the Seventies.

Tracy was under a lot of pressure in this part because Father Flanagan was still alive. Rumor hath it that he enjoyed Tracy's portrayal very much.

Well if my life story was ever important enough to bring to the screen, I couldn't ask for anyone better than Spencer Tracy to play me.

The film takes a long time to get going - I almost gave up on it after the first half-hour. But mercifully, after the documentary-style and resolutely non-judgmental opening, "Boys Town" acquires a plot - and some sense of direction. The trigger for this is the introduction of the first character in the entire film who is allowed to be flawed. So far, everyone else has been shown to be either a curmudgeon with a heart of gold, a rascal with a heart of gold, or an unashamed saint; but Joe Marsh is a flashy and unrepentant young criminal.

He is not entirely beyond redemption, however. He loves his younger brother, who hero-worships him in turn and longs to emulate him; and it is doubtless a sad reflection on human nature that it is only with the arrival of strife in the Eden of Boys Town, in the shape of Joe and Whitey Marsh, that the film manages to become at all interesting.

What follows is a story that has been told many times before, from Louisa May Alcott's "Jo's Boys" onwards. This is the story of a rough boy who rebels against unaccustomed gentle surroundings and tries to corrupt his new world to match the one he knows, and whose ultimate saving grace is his protective love for a younger child.

The main problem for this film is the role of Father Flanagan, a thankless part for any actor. The man has - literally - no weaknesses, no human flaws, not even any self-doubt. His charm can apparently melt the hardest heart and conjure water out of a stone - or out of a hard-headed pawnbroker, which according to the script comes to the same thing. The man is too likeable to be 'insufferable'; but it was surely not the intention of the director that the audience should end up by willing Whitey to resist the priest's moral pressure, to shield his brother even at his own expense and that of his adopted community - and to be so pleased when the boy attempts to do so.

To be honest, I don't see that this part deserved to win an Oscar for Spencer Tracy - not because the actor played badly, but because the character as written simply doesn't present him with enough challenging material to demonstrate his craft. It is the child actors who play the various boys who deserved the real praise in this film. Ultimately I suspect Tracy's Oscar was an award aimed at rewarding the efforts of the *real* Father Flanagan rather than at his performance in this film.

Very touching story about a man who knows the right thing to do and is selfless in giving the boys a chance at life with no regard to how it might affect his own life. I think that viewing this should be manditory for some of the people who have lost touch of what matters most in this life and it's not money.

SPENCER TRACY underplays the role of Father Flanagan who was the man behind the creation of BOYS TOWN and yet Hollywood thought his performance deserved an Oscar in 1938. The film looks very dated now and the sentiment is laid on a bit thick. The delinquent boys seem more like stereotyped cardboard characters dreamed up by the scriptwriter with only occasional glimmers of truth in the acting.

Best among the supporting cast are GENE REYNOLDS (always a fine child actor who later turned his talents to directing) and little BOBS WATSON, who does a remarkably convincing job of playing the little boy who worships "Whitey," played by MICKEY ROONEY. Rooney's performance is a bit too blustery but there are moments when his acting nails the truth.

Still, it's hard to know how much "truth" there is in the story told here, since so much of the script seems to depend on contrivances that make one suspect it's a purely fictionalized account of the actual story behind the development of Flanagan's Boys Town. Anyone with a fondness for Tracy and Rooney will find it easy enough to sit through, but I don't think it's the finest work of either star.