Prison de la liberté

My grandparents owned the building and bar that is shown in the movie. The movie filmed the outside of the building, the inside of their bar downstairs, and also the camera went into the living quarters upstairs which can be seen in the film. We still have most of the items from that bar. Including the glassess/mugs and grandpa's roll-top desk. Film states in the beginning that it was "Filmed entirely in Plainfield". That is not true as my grandparents bar was located in Indianapolis. Really good film with great acting.

I have been searching for this film for over 35 years.

It used to be screened on an annual basis, here in the u.k in the early 1960s on our independent T.V stations.

In my opinion William Bendix was one of the most under rated actors ever.

No company in the u.k can seem to locate the film.

If anyone knows how I can obtain this film I would be extremely grateful.

35 years is too long to wait.

I first saw this film back in Public School 193 in Brooklyn now known as the Gil Hodges Elementary School. The Fifth and Sixth Grade Assemblies were given a movie treat towards the end of the school year. I remember seeing Johnny Holiday one year and the Ray Milland film It Happens Every Spring the other.

The film starred that well known New Yorker William Bendix with mostly a bunch of unknown actors and some inmates at the Indiana Boys Reformatory. Bendix is in charge of the school farm and he does take an interest in one of the young kids trying to get him back on the straight and narrow.

The title role of the film is played by young Allen Martin, Jr. who falls in with the wrong crowd, particularly Stanley Clements and gets sent to the Reformatory. Later on Clements gets caught on another beef and also becomes an inmate.

There's no reaching this kid until Martin develops an attachment to a mare named Lady who is in foal. Later on after the colt is born, the mare dies and Martin blames Bendix. At that point he becomes willing to listen to Clements.

One of the things I remember best about this film is an intergenerational argument Bendix and Martin had over what to name the colt. Bendix is an old horse cavalryman from World War I and the Mexican intervention and he likes his old commander Black Jack Pershing and wants to name it Black Jack. But Martin who grew up during World War II wants to name it after the most popular Americam of his time, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Guess who won the argument.

As the film was shot on location in Indiana, the then governor, Henry F. Schricker made an appearance in the film. And that other noted Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael plays himself at a concert arranged for the boys.

When I saw this film in 1958 or 1959, William Bendix was finishing his long run on radio and television as Chester A. Riley on The Life of Riley, a show I dearly wish that TV Land Channel would pick up. That television show made him a star and put him quite a bit above his peers as a character actor. In Brooklyn he was quite the household name.

Unlike MGM's famous Boys Town, this place definitely does not believe that there is no such thing as a bad boy. Stanley Clements is one very bad boy.

Bendix and Martin make an appealing pair and Johnny Holiday is still a nice film that I can't understand isn't shown on places like the Family Channel.

This movie never got the recognition it deserved. I enjoyed it as a kid and I still enjoy it now as an adult. Nary a boring moment. I always liked William Bendix. And Stanley Clements was TERRIFIC in this movie. The kid was pretty good, too ( never saw him in anything else,though) It's a drama,but the several comedy relief scenes are quite amusing ( Tootsie Rolls, lol )

Street kid Al Martin Jr. Is sent to the Indiana Boy's School for reforming. He has a rough start, but his ability with horses wins the grudging approval of former cavalry man William Bendix. Soon he's turning into a good boy. But if it's easy enough to fall into bad company on the streets, then it's a cinch in a reform school, and soon budding sociopath Stanley Clements has the kid's head turned around.

Willis Goldbeck took a break from MGM to write and direct this would-be Boy's Town knock-off. There are some heart-warming moments, and a few of real peril, but there's too little modulation in the performances. Bendix is always fun as a comic hard man with a soft interior, but there's just too much of him here. With Hoagy Carmichael, Greta Granstedt, and Robert Dudley.