Boys Town (1938) - film review

Called to the cell of a condemned man, Father Edward Flanagan wonders how the man would have turned out if he had been given a better deal when he was a child.  The streets of the town where Father Flanagan lives are full of homeless boys who get into trouble and are then lured into a life of crime.  If only there was someone to take care of them and offer them an alternative... With the help of a philanthropic shopkeeper, Father Flanagan raises money to build a private home for abandoned boys, which he names Boys Town.  The home is run on democratic lines, with its own elected mayor, its own laws and its own system of punishment.  Despite the scepticism of Father Flanagan’s detractors, the home proves to be a great success, transforming hundreds of wild and unruly infants into responsible, law-abiding young men.  Just when Father Flanagan appears vindicated, he faces his greatest challenge, Whitey Marsh, a young tearaway who is determined to follow in the footsteps of his gangster brother.  Whitey’s rebellious streak not only creates ructions in the home, but will almost result in its closure...

Back in 1938, this largely fictionalised account of the real-life endeavours of Father Edward J. Flanagan was enthusiastically received by the critics and cinema-going public alike.  Today, it is almost unbearably hollow and mawkish, dripping sanctimonious piety and simpering sentimentality in such copious volumes that you almost believe you will end up drowning in the stuff.  Social realism this is not.  It is contrived, superficial, mushy, and more manipulative than any government that has ever tried to con the country (any country) into re-electing them.  If you get to the end of this dismal schmaltz fest without choking on your own vomit you’ve done pretty well.  For your next impossible feat, you may want to consider tackling the North Face of the Eiger in a Fozzie Bear costume with a fridge-freezer strapped to your back.

Hard to believe that Boys Town was once a highly acclaimed production.  MGM supremo Louis B. Mayer considered this his favourite of all the films his studio made, in spite of his ambivalence towards the Catholic Church.  The film won two Oscars, the Best Actor Award for Spencer Tracy and the award for the Best Original Screenplay.  The film undoubtedly had a positive impact, by opening people’s eyes to the issue of juvenile delinquency and child homelessness.  Yet, viewed today, it appears to wallow in its own saccharine complacency like a herd of fat lazy hippos languorously lolling about in a pool of malodorous fly-infested mud.

The sad thing is that Boys Town is, from a technical point of view, a supremely well-crafted piece of cinema.  The visuals tell the story so effectively that the dialogue is pretty well superfluous; indeed it is the dialogue which destroys  the film’s credibility and undermines the important social messages that it wishes to convey.  There are a few scenes which are genuinely moving - these tend to be the ones that are underplayed, do not involve the actors opening their mouths and are invested with real emotion, not the synthetic alternative that dribbled from the pen of a well-meaning but over-zealous screenwriter.

Spencer Tracy’s Oscar win is ill-deserved, since the actor fails to make his character anything other than a pious good-guy who is expecting to receive his canonisation through the post at any moment.  Of the child actors, only Bobs Watson (as the heartstring-tugging Pee Wee) gives a convincing performance; all of the others appear horribly self-conscious and unsure of themselves.  Worst of this bad bunch is Mickey Rooney, who fails to inject anything approaching real emotion into his portrayal; his gratuitous over-acting and obvious inability to carry his demanding part soon become painfully aggravating.  Just why Rooney was ever so popular is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe.

The dubiously earned success of this film led to a sequel, Men of Boys Town (1941), in which Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney were reunited for another ghastly round of sentimental moralising torture.  The only real value of Boys Town today is that it provides an object lesson on how not to make a socially themed drama.  If you want to see how the issues of child delinquency and homelessness should be tackled, you should see William A. Wellman’s, Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a vastly superior work which still has a profound resonance.

© Steve Chandler 2010

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