Wild Boys of the Road
Tags: depressing

Plot synopsis:
Tommy Gordon (Edwin Phillips) tells his friend Eddie Smith (Frankie Darro) that he is going to drop out of high school to look for work to help support his struggling family. Eddie offers to speak to his father (Grant Mitchell) about getting him a job, only to discover that his father has himself just lost his own. Eddie sells his beloved car and gives the money to his father, but when his father remains unemployed, the bills keep piling up, and the family is threatened with eviction. Eddie and Tommy decide to leave home to ease the burden on their families. They board a freight train, where they meet Sally (Dorothy Coonan), another teenager, who is hoping her aunt in Chicago can put her up for a while. More and more teens hop aboard the train.
When they reach Chicago, they are met by the police. Most of the transients are sent to detention, but Sally has a letter from her aunt, so they let her through. She claims her companions are her cousins; the kindly policeman is skeptical, but lets them go. Sally's Aunt Carrie (Minna Gombell) welcomes all three into her apartment. However, before they even have a chance to eat, the place is raided by the police. The trio hastily depart and continue heading east.
Nearing Cleveland, one girl, caught alone, is raped by the train brakeman (an uncredited Ward Bond). When the others find out, they start punching the assailant. By accident, the brakeman falls out of the train to his death. A little later, as the train approaches the city, everyone jumps off. Tommy hits his head on a switch and falls across the track in front of an oncoming train. He crawls desperately towards safety, but his foot gets mangled and his leg has to be amputated. They live in "Sewer Pipe City" for a while, until the city authorities decide to shut it down, in part due to Eddie's theft of a prosthetic leg for Tommy.
Finally, the three end up living in the New York Municipal Dump. Eddie finally lands a job, but needs to find $3 to pay for a coat he has to have. They panhandle to raise the money. When two men offer Eddie $5 to deliver a note to a movie theater cashier across the street, he jumps at the chance. The note turns out to be a demand for money. Eddie is arrested, and the other two are taken in as well when they protest. The judge (Robert Barrat) cannot get any information out of them, particularly about their parents. However, Eddie's embittered speech moves him. He promises to get Eddie's job back for him and dismisses the charges.

Review: If those measures didn't exactly solve the economic crisis (only WWII did that), they at least offered hope that the problems would no longer be kicked down the road to the next jurisdiction.Wild Boys may not be the most honest or best movie on those tumultuous years.
Zero cringe factor here, Wellman excels at emotions between men and it's never maudlin.Hitting the (rail)road to find work, Eddie and Tommy encounter Sally, an adorable, nose-scrintching Dorothy Coonan dressed as a man.
A page of America's history told so expertly as to make you laugh and cry simultaneously.Ms. Coonan (Sally) quit films after "Wild Boys" to marry director  "Wild" Bill Wellman, and remain his his wife until his death in 1975.
The most well known person in this film would have to be Ward Bond playing the part of the train brakeman who sees that one of the Wild Boys is actually a girl and rapes her.
Both of them could easily have been part of the gang of homeless youth.The film centers on three of them, Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips, a pair of kids from small town USA in the west somewhere are both up against it.
The film concerns their adventures on the road, the railroad to be precise as they catch rides aboard freight trains with an eye out for the railroad police.Curiously enough one Hollywood star was living just this kind of life at this point.
His memories, should his widow Dorothy ever divulge them, could make the basis for another Wild Boys Of The Road.Note in the climax scene in the courtroom where Darro, Coonan, and Phillips are before Judge Robert Barrat who usually was a bad guy in films, but is a sympathetic judge here, the Blue Eagle symbolizing the National Recovery Administration.
But later on a more substantial program directly aimed at these youths was passed right around the time Wild Boys Of The Road would have been in theaters.The Civilian Conservations Corps which took homeless kids off the streets and put them to work beautifying America's National Parks and a lot of other rural area would have been home to Darro, Phillips and the whole rest of the railroad freight hoppers.
The CCC was one of the best of the New Deal programs and it lasted all the way until World War II was declared.And it's to the CCC which provided real salvation for so many youths of the time like Darro, Phillips and the rest that this review is respectfully dedicated to..
FRANKIE DARRO and EDWIN PHILLIPS play depression-era buddies with great chemistry and natural vigor and charm.
Whatever, it all plays out extremely well except for what appears to be a tacked on ending that gives a positive spin to the tale.Grant Mitchell does fine work as Darro's depressed out-of-work father who shows his love and respect for his son when Darro sells his jalopy (for a mere $22!!) to help out the family.
William Wellman's direction keeps things moving swiftly and satisfactorily for a tense and gripping little social drama told in little more than an hour.Highly recommended, especially because it's a product of its time and reveals all of the societal ills rampant in the early '30s..
One of the surprisingly realistic dramas that Hollywood created in the early 1930's has teenagers hitting the road during the hard times of the Great Depression.With their east coast (New "Yawk?") accents, and rough around the edges "Bowery Boys"-style (harken, Leo Gorcey!), Frankie Darrow and a gang of displaced down-on-their-luck (formerly middle class?) teens band together and roam the countryside on foot or by rail, getting into hot water seemingly everywhere they go.
Amazing graphic scenes for 1933 include a kid's leg being amputated by a train and an attempted rape scene.Miserable living conditions and hunger are also depicted with kids lying cheating and stealing to stay alive, but willing to straighten themselves out when given a chance.You'd think Warner Brothers was taking a risk financing a film that was so bleak and lacking in entertainment value for people that may have been LIVING the kinds of scenes shown, but the film also seems like a propaganda piece for Roosevelt's New Deal.
There's a Roosevelt look-alike judge who places his hand, almost in a blessing, on poor Frankie's head and says "things are going to get better very soon".Overall, Wild Boys of the Road is an interesting social drama that deserves more exposure and recognition..
"Wild Boys of the Road" released by First National/Warner Brothers Pictures in 1933, is a harrowing story of a group of teens who hit the road in Depression-ridden America.
Actors Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips shine in this story of two teens who are forced to hit the road when both their families lose their jobs.
The scenes aboard the roofs of the freight trains, the magnificent clear sharp black and white photography and the sheer bravery of the production let alone the lives depicted makes WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD one of the most rewarding films of any genre you could imagine discovering.
Wellman directs this Depression era drama about two boys (Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips) who run away from home and jump on the railroad route in hopes of finding a job so that they can help their families back home.
The first twenty-minutes of the film shows the boys as normal teenagers but then we see their parents lose their jobs and thus forcing them to hit the road.
During the "Great Depression", energetic Midwestern teenager Frankie Darro (as Edward "Eddie" Smith) helps his high school buddy Edwin Philips (as Tommy Gordon) sneak into their "Sophomore Frolic" dance by dressing him up as a girl.
Begging, panhandling and job-hunting, they eventually end up living in a New York garbage dump...Then, an apparent lucky break may derail the trio...Based on a story called "Desperate Youth" (which would have been a good title, too) by Danny Ahearn, "Wild Boys of the Road" is one of the best films of its genre.
While similar to "Wild Boys of the Road", this later film is truly terrible and isn't really worth your time.Also, in "Wild Boys" there is one short but awful scene involving the teen army throwing eggs at the railroad detectives.
Engrossing Pre-Code drama from William Wellman about two teenage boys (Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips) who leave home to try and find work so they won't be a burden to their unemployed parents.
This is a very refreshing type of casting, as Frankie Darro, who seems more like a Dead End Kid, is the product of the average family, with a happy life, while Edwin Philips as Tommy, who is a much more traditional young leading man (he looks startlingly like Ryan Phillipe at times), is from an unseen home, struggling with poverty from the start, struggling with being an outsider.Eddie gets the bulk of the character work in this movie, to the point that it's astonishing just how much you also grow to care about Tommy and Sally.
If Wild Boys of the Road were made today, Eddie and Tommy would fight over Sally.
William Wellman was unhappy that his downbeat ending was changed, but unlike the odd, self-referential last scene of Heroes for Sale, the changes just add to the power of Wild Boys of the Road.
Wonderful, gritty and realistic portrayal of depression-era kids struggling to survive, marred only by absurd ending with kind-hearted judge playing a deus ex machina version of FDR.
With other Depression era accounts depicted in 1933 pertaining to unemployed showgirls from GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, to war veterans struggling to survive the failed economy in HEROES FOR SALE (1933), WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD goes one further with more victims of the Depression, the victims being teenage kids, headed by Frankie Darro in possibly his best or at least finest lead performance of his entire career.The then current events starts off amusingly during its character introduction with Eddie Smith (Frankie Darro) driving in his Leapin' Lena heap accompanied by his best pal, Tommy Gordon (Edwin Phillips), and their dates, Grace (Rochelle Hudson) and the compassionate kissing Harriet Webster (Shirley Dunstead).
Not wanting to be a burden to their parents, Eddie and Tommy quietly leave home to strike out on their own taking the next freight train bound to the city to find jobs.
While on board, both boys encounter Sally (Dorothy Coonan), a tough but appealing girl dressed in boys clothes, also a victim of hard times bound for Chicago to live with her aunt Carrie (Minna Gombell), whom she hasn't seen since she was a child.
After a promising start, things go so dramatically wrong, forcing the trio, along with other wild boys of the road in freight trains traveling from city to city before ending up panhandling on the street and facing a judge (Robert Barrat) at a superior court while in New York City.As with most Depression era stories of the 1930s, WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD is pre-code with situations as grim as where one of the boys meets with an accident to have his leg amputated.
Unlike I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932), the story offers some hope for the kids, although Depression era despair continues to be in the horizon.Other hundreds of credited and uncredited wild boys of the road seen in the list of extras are: Sterling Holloway (Ollie); Sidney Miller (The Boy selling a letter); along with Ann Holvey (Lola); Willard Robertson (Captain of Detectives); Charley Grapewin (Mr. Cadmust); Barbara Rogers (The Movie House Cashier); George Cooper (The Homeless Man) rounding out the cast.
While the players are not top marquee names, their performances come as if viewers are watching actual kids in real life situations.A true reflection of the times with current popular song tunes as "The Shadow Waltz," "Pettin' in the Park" and "We're in the Money" from GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, underscored during the party sequence, there's even a movie within a movie sequence set in a theater where patrons are seen watching James Cagney and Guy Kibbee in a scene from the backstage musical, FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933).Of the dark and grim melodramas of this period, WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD is one of the forgotten ones which have, at least, been profiled with highlighted scenes clipped into a public television documentary on Warner Brothers movies from the 1930s titled "The Movie Crazy Years" (1971).
Wellman, discussing about the making of WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, followed by clips of the movie including Darro's pleas for the homeless kids of America as well as an interesting insight about casting the teenage Dorothy Coonan, a Busby Berkeley extra chorus girl from the Warner Brothers musicals, for the lead, and how she soon became his wife for life, Mrs. Wellman.
Many decades later, WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD became part of the Warner Brothers archive of movies presented occasionally first on Turner Network Television (TNT) in the late 1980s before becoming a permanent fixture on Turner Classic Movies since 1994.With this and Frankie Darro sharing the spotlight opposite James Cagney in THE MAYOR OF HELL (1933), with Darro playing another "Smith" character, this time named, Jimmy, Darro's movie career consisted mostly of playing leads in forgettable low-budget programmers or assuming minor parts as horse racing jockeys for major film studios.
I'm attracted to the cultural products of the time: music, movies, fashion, architecture (why did the world have such thrilling elegance in a time of so much suffering?) But I'm also drawn to the zeitgeist: a profound disillusionment, ranging from wry to bitter, which stands out sharply from America's traditional optimism and innocence.Please forgive this personal digression, but I think it is relevant to my appreciation of WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, one of the most vividand least glamorousdepictions of the Depression I've ever seen.
They are Eddie (Frankie Darro, the junior Jimmy Cagney), a pugnacious but tender-hearted boy, and his best friend, the more retiring, sleepy-eyed Tommy (Edwin Phillips.) Tommy's fatherless family is already on the skids, and Eddie promises to help out, until he learns his own father has been laid off, and they too are soon on the verge of being evicted.
The film really makes one reflect on how good we actually have it today, even as present day warnings of another Depression begin to grow stronger and more frequent.The picture's energy comes from Frankie Darro, just sixteen at the time of the picture, and to many observers, a younger version of Jimmy Cagney.
I watched Wild Boys of the Road expecting to see something hokey - instead, I saw a heart-wrenching depiction of the poverty and homelessness that was common during the Great Depression.
The rape of one of the girl riders and subsequent street- corner justice administered by the boys and the scene in which Tommy's leg is severed by a passing train are powerful.There actually is a happy ending to this movie, and the speech Eddie gives to the judge once he, Tommy and Grace are arrested is both notable and relevant today.
Among Wellman's strong production of the thirties ,"Wild boys of the road" and "heroes for sale" are the stand outs.Released in the short space of one year (with three other movies ,including the excellent " Lilly Turner" ) ,it was ,along Frank Borzage's and Mervyn Le Roy's works,the best American cinema of the era.The first pictures reveal nothing of the harshness which will follow.It's a graduation ball ,but boys have to pay 75 cents to enter.
Eddie and Tommy have got to leave their families because their parents cannot feed them anymore.So they hit the road and they meet Sally.Their friendship keeps them together ,and with the other kids they meet along the way ,they all stand together when the men in black want to drive them away from the freight trains,or from their shanty town ,or when one of those hateful adults rape one of them.The lines always ring true and many scenes are admirable:Eddie's last hours in his dear home: "I did not like that costume mom!" and the nod to the mother;the old car sold to a junk man ;the empty garage.Tommy trying to crawl out of the railroad track;his operation;all the things he "won't have to do now" .Sally's aunt's apartment:there's a similar scene in Borzage's "Little man what now?" when the lovers come to a relative 's place in Berlin .Eddie telling the judge about his plight ;the young actor is so convincing that he will drive you to tears.My favorite scene: Eddie doing a cartwheel across the sidewalk and suddenly realizing his pal cannot do that anymore ;he goes to him and takes him in his arms.Follow Eddie,Tommy and Sally on their rocky road:you will never forget them..
William Wellman - especially in his early sound films - excelled in telling stories economically thus packing a great deal into 7 or 8 reels.
This one takes Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips, then adds pert Dorothy Coonan to the mix, on a road adventure that fitfully represents the dark side of the teenage hobo life, and then crashes to an unconvincing closing.The film takes enough time to show us that Darro and Phillips were "ordinary kids" (albeit Darro has a bit of a fixation on Jimmy Cagney) of small town America, throw into a life on the road through no fault of their own.
The film shows how police and railroad officials persecute the traveling kids, including a really excellent set piece scene where cops break up a hobo camp with high powered water hoses.Wellman keeps things moving at the exact right pace, the whole thing feels just real enough to be convincing, but not excruciatingly "realist." It only lets us down at the ending, a conclusion so ill-fitted to its picture that it's quite easy to believe this ending was forced on Wellman by WB executives more concerned with glamorizing FDR's NRA than with depicting true misery in America.
This is director William Wellman's unsparing scenic tour of America in the Great Depression from the children's point of view.Frankie Darro and his friend Edwin Phillips feel they are a burden on their unemployed parents so they impulsively pack their bindles and take off on a freight train.
Teenagers Eddie (Frankie Darro) and Tommy (Edwin Philips) run away from home because they can't find jobs and their parents can't afford them.
The two boys decide to flee to the big city (ANY big city) to find work so they can send money back to their families, and stow away on cross-country trains, encountering hundreds of kids just like them.
Darro and Phillips do not play their roles like the Dead End Kids later did in their early "tough" films; They are simply All American kids down on their luck who simply want to do the right thing.
Frankie has a couple of big emotional scenes, at the end, when he is telling the judge a thing or three and here, when he is trying to prove to his father that selling his car is no big deal - needless to say, there won't be a dry eye in the house.They soon meet Sally (Dorothy Coonan), with her funny little nose crinkle!!
It goes unnoticed as Eddie and his gang battle the real villains of the movie, the tough road guards, whose job it is to keep the "wild boys" off the trains.
Restoration Pays Off. This William Wellman depression era work from 1933 is a very good example of film making before the censors cracked down on what went on the screen.
Their teen age son Eddie sells his car to help mom & dad and then he & his best friend run away from home to try and get a job and relieve the folks of the burden they are on them.Because of Wellman's direction, the sequencing is better than most 1933 film produced.