Boys Town

In his final hour, a man about to go to the electric chair rails against the system that never protected him as a boy on the streets. In attendance when the man delivers his dying lament, Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) is inflamed by the convict's words and decides to do something drastic.

Boys' Town (1938) is the story of the real life crusading Catholic priest Father Flanagan, who embarks on a scheme to rescue abandoned, abused and hopeless boys from the streets and keep them from sinking into a life of crime like that condemned prisoner. With the help of the cranky but secretly sympathetic pawn shop owner Dave Morris (Henry Hull), who contributes needed funds to Flanagan's cause, the priest buys a parcel of land outside his Omaha, Nebraska parish to begin his life's work.

Flanagan opens a community, a "City of Little Men," where 500 boys live in a microcosm of American democracy, voting for their own mayor and policing themselves with regular confessions to Father Flanagan. Living by the creed "there's no such thing as a bad boy" Flanagan has that faith tested when a fast-talking prisoner persuades Flanagan to take in his juvenile delinquent kid brother Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney) a defiant, slick hipster on his way to a life of crime and the Big House.

Whitey immediately clashes with the smoothly run community and when his actions lead to the near-death of one of its members and then a charge of murder and robbery, the entire future of Boys Town is jeopardized.

At the time of the film's production, Father Flanagan's Boys Town was responsible for rehabilitating some 5,000 troubled boys. Flanagan's model community was visited by MGM writer Dore Schary, who was inspired by that visit to develop his story into a film. He was so moved by the boys there, whose basketball team won game after game in tattered uniforms, that he even convinced MGM to supply new uniforms for the players.

Spencer Tracy was at first uninterested in playing the role of Flanagan and one reason might have been a fear of typecasting. He had previously won a Best Actor nomination for playing another priest in San Francisco (1936). Another more likely reason was his alcoholism which MGM publicists kept under wraps. Just prior to filming Boys' Town, Tracy was said to be in the midst of a drinking binge and was unfit for work until he "dried out." At any rate, Tracy's initial hesitation to play a priest proved ironic, since he eventually won a Best Actor Academy Award© for his role, one which proved a sterling example of his naturalistic acting style.

Tracy was also one of the few actors to ever win an Oscar in the same category for consecutive years (Tracy had won the year before for Captains Courageous, 1937). Tracy donated his Oscar to Father Flanagan with the inscription "To Father Edward J. Flanagan, whose great human qualities, kindly simplicity and inspiring courage were strong enough to shine through my humble efforts." Earlier, when MGM had asked Flanagan who he would most want to play him he had said Spencer Tracy, "without any question."

Co-star Henry Hull recalled working with Tracy on the film in the biography, Spencer Tracy: Tragic Idol (E.P. Dutton) by Bill Davidson: "We had a technical adviser on the set, a young Catholic priest, name of Father John O'Donnell, and Spence spent a lot of time with him talking about a lot of church stuff...I remember one argument they had about who was who at the Last Supper, and Spence was using baseball lingo to describe the Apostles - like "Andrew was a singles hitter but Pete was a guy who could play clean-up and knock the ball out of the park." I don't remember Spence getting particularly close to any of the boys, including [Mickey] Rooney, but he put on the boxing gloves with the bigger kids one day, just fooling around, and one kid jabbed Spence's head off, and Spence got mad. Rooney was a lot like Spence. He kept to himself and they didn't have much truck with each other off-camera."

Despite Tracy's often gruff behavior, many of the child actors on the set recalled the actor's kindness. Bobs Watson, who played Pee Wee, the Boys Town mascot in the film, was as enamored with Tracy off-camera as he was on. He remembered, "often, after a scene, he'd reach over and hug me and take me on his lap. I felt like a little puppy. I would follow along and stand close, hoping he'd call me over, and often he would. He'd say, 'How're you doing?' and put his arm around me."

Watson later became a minister and attributed that decision in part to Tracy's inspirational performance, and his kind treatment of the boys on the set of Boys' Town. "I've heard that Tracy drank a lot, that he was a loner. I understand that he could be quite nasty, quite belligerent, but from my perspective, he was always a very kind man."

Next to Tracy, director Norman Taurog reaped a great deal of the acclaim for Boys' Town. He had made a name for himself directing child actors like Jackie Cooper (Taurog's nephew by marriage) and Deanna Durbin in films such as Skippy (1931), Sooky (1931), Mad About Music (1938) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938).

Boys' Town was an unqualified hit for MGM, with audiences flocking to this hopeful tale. The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and won an Oscar© not only for Tracy, but one for Eleanore Griffin and Dore Schary for Best Original Story. Mickey Rooney also won a special award at that year's Academy Awards©, along with another child actor Deanna Durbin, a five inch high Oscar© for "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth."

MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer called the film his favorite in the vast MGM library. Rooney boasted in Life that "it grossed $4,133,000. And now, in videocassette, it will keep on generating profits forever (for Ted Turner, who bought the MGM film library in 1986)." The film was especially popular with young audiences and even changed the modification of a Canadian law which prohibited the admittance of children under sixteen to movie theaters.

Tracy's reputation was also greatly enhanced by the film, and in polls of the time he was listed next to Clark Gable as America's favorite actor. Tracy is noble and saintly in his kindness to these lost boys, though Rooney gives fire and spunk to all the atmosphere of do-gooding piety. His hep cat lingo and often hilariously jaded view of the goody-goody Boys Home (before his quite moving turnaround) unquestionably helps move the story forward. The film also inspired a sequel, Men of Boys' Town (1941), though it was only moderately successful compared to the original.

Director: Norman Taurog
Producer: John W. Considine, Jr.
Screenplay: John Meehan, Dore Schary (based on a story by Schary and Eleanore Griffin)
Cinematography: Sidney Wagner
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons
Music: Edward Ward Cast: Spencer Tracy (Father Edward Flanagan), Mickey Rooney (Whitey Marsh), Henry Hull (Dave Morris), Leslie Fenton (Dan Farrow), Addison Richards (The Judge), Edward Norris (Joe Marsh), Gene Reynolds (Tony Ponessa), Minor Watson (The Bishop), Jonathan Hale (John Hargraves), Bobs Watson (Pee Wee).
BW-93m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

by Felicia Feaster

Boys Town was big news in 1938, an Oscar-winning emotional favorite that did excellent business. It's an energetic film that served as a useful rallying point to raise interest in organized charities. No doubt the picture's popularization of Father Flanagan's Omaha home for boys helped inspire many another community to improve their outmoded orphanage institutions.

Seen today, this MGM picture seems to encapsulate everything wrong about the way Hollywood looked at reality and social problems. Writer Dore Schary would later become associated with socially conscious filmmaking as the instigator behind liberal-oriented pictures like Crossfire. Boys Town now seems painfully dated, wrong-headed and, worst of all, smugly insincere.

Synopsis: Omaha priest Father Edward J. Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) resists a parish of his own, preferring to find ways to shelter stray boys that get into trouble on the streets. Through the charity of merchant Dave Morris (Henry Hull) he first buys a small house and then swings a huge deal to set up an autonomous little community called Boys Town, to become home to 500 orphans and would-be delinquents. As he's getting started, small-time hood (but good Catholic) Joe Marsh (Edward Norris) charges Flanagan with the responsibility for his wayward younger brother, a punk named Whitey (Mickey Rooney); Whitey sneers at his new surroundings but slowly becomes attached to Boys Town and its sense of family. But Whitey's lack of self-control brings on pressure from local scoffers to have Boys Town shut down for good!

In general terms, Warner Bros. was the home of socially conscious films during the years of the Depression. Warners pictures were often set in lower-class situations of near-poverty and frequently addressed issues of injustice and political extremism, in fare like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Black Legion. Boys Town was made at MGM, the glamour mill that specialized in dramas and light comedies divorced from a social context, set among the wealthy or a fantasy middle-class world of economic stability and positive family values. When Louis B. Mayer made a film with a social agenda, more often than not it was an extremist criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal (Gabriel over the White House) or vaguely opposed to labor unions (Riffraff, Mannequin).

Boys Town twists Father Flanagan's initially modest and sensible boy's community into a grotesque dramatic tear-jerker with little or no relation to reality. Whereas the real Flanagan clearly built a solid foundation of sponsors and donors for his experiment, Spencer Tracy is pictured as a dreamer who can't be bothered with details and continually cons retailer Dave Morris (who does not appear to be a man of great means) into bankrolling his inspirations. When a banker has the nerve to say he doesn't subscribe to Flanagan's theory that "There is no such thing as a bad boy," the priest accuses him of the crime of obstructing an unquestionably correct vision. Boys Town seems to be founded and nurtured through spiritual extortion - whatever Father Flanagan prays for, nobody better stand in his way. His preferred method of building a needed cafeteria is to just start construction, run up a pile of unpaid bills, and then demand that others step up to the plate and bail him out.

The movie posits a truly bizarre conception of what children are and how they behave. Flanagan starts like Old Mother Hubbard with a pack of unruly and unsupervised rug rats. Their first miserable Christmas is about to become a lesson in values, when jolly old Dave Morris shows up with a pile of perfectly-wrapped gifts to insure that Flanagan's every move will be a success. At the new Boys Town the little brats have suddenly transformed into miniature men, wearing neat clothes and neckties and acting like happy cogs in a new Utopia. A Slavko Vorkapich montage of the construction of an impressive brick administration building implies that it was built by the little kids themselves. It's obvious that hundreds of thousands of dollars are going into the model Boy's community, but all we see is Flanagan sitting back while Dave Morris volunteers to plan, administer and supervise construction for the whole shebang - apparently all out of the goodness of his heart. Did he suddenly move from a dry goods store to being a millionaire philanthropist?

By the time Mickey Rooney’s Whitey Marsh shows up, doing his standard look-at-me show-biz dynamo character, Boys Town is a going concern. A lunchroom scene establishes town policy as Catholic, but with a pan-denominational cross section of boys. Mo Kahn (Sidney Miller) says his mealtime prayer in Hebrew...quietly. Another kid stares silently during the saying of grace, but we aren't told if he's an agnostic, a Buddhist or just preoccupied. Mirroring grown-up society, the kids are regimented along pre-ordained lines. Mo Kahn is a barber while other more WASPish young men take up the reins of leadership. There are no African-American boys in sight and Whitey becomes the butt of a joke when Kahn covers his face in bootblack, an innocent gag that now serves mainly to point up racist ideas as commonplace in 1938.

As always, Flanagan is able to stand back and allow his inspirational leadership to guide the hands of others. He spends his time doling out preferential candy goodies to the insufferably cute Pee Wee (Bobs Watson), an arrangement that unfortunately conjures associations unflattering to the good memory of Father Flanagan. The rebellious Whitey Marsh is first put off by the community's rigid little system, but is brought to heel by a combination of challenges and a couple of completely false and insulting plot turns. An innocent difference of opinion is solved in a boxing match supervised by Flanagan. A big deal is made of town elections, yet Flanagan allows them to be subverted by popular appeal when everyone spontaneously decides that a handicapped fellow deserves to be Mayor. He told Father Flanagan that he really wanted the office, you see; in Boys Town that is the same as having an "in" with Santa Claus, or God.

When it comes time for the Whitey Marsh character to undergo an instantaneous conversion, Boys Town pulls its lowest punch by contriving to have Pee Wee run down on the highway. Little Bobs Watson has already done his specialty 'fountain of tears' blubbering act (he's a real gusher as 'Pud' in the 1939 tear-jerker On Borrowed Time), and to upstage him Mickey Rooney has to contort his face into a mask of agonizing misery. Whitey goes A.W.O.L. and by sheer coincidence is immediately shot as a bystander in his own brother's bank robbery. Flanagan's noble boys form up to rescue him in what looks uncomfortably like a vigilante mob. Father Flanagan joins them to right wrongs in a two-fisted finale.

Boys Town is an acceptable fantasy only if one turns a blind eye to all of these manipulative shenanigans. Mayer clearly decided that condescending sentimentality was the key to reaching the heart of America. He kept it up for another decade before losing the leadership of MGM to an executive who championed socially-conscious issue films and tough films noir: Boys Town's Dore Schary.

Spencer Tracy earned his Oscar® by sleepwalking through his role and posing to pray in reverent silhouettes; chronic over-actor Henry Hull is uncharacteristically subdued, perhaps influenced by Tracy's example. Mickey Rooney's undeniable talents are too big for the movie. His juvenile punk is half silly schtick and half silent-movie hysteria, but as always, he's fun to watch. Leslie Fenton, a notable James Cagney victim in Public Enemy, kicks off the movie as a convicted killer on the way to the gas chamber who lectures some newsmen about his miserable upbringing, thus stoking Father Flanagan's conviction to help young street kids. Typical for the film's notion of churchly virtue, Fenton is about to take a last swig of liquor when deterred by a quick "Uh-uh" from Flanagan. The script puts a bright halo on the Flanagan character, but doesn't do him justice.

Warners' DVD of <Boys Town is a perfect transfer of a film shot with standard MGM high-gloss production values; even the dirt on the faces of Flanagan's moppets looks clean. The sound is also clear and deceptively well mixed, something for which classic MGM pictures rarely get credit.

Included as extras are a welcome short subject about the real Boys Town, followed by a new promo for the modern day "Girls and Boys Town" that Flanagan's original work became. A radio show excerpt has Louis B. Mayer making a pompous speech before introducing Tracy and Rooney at the microphone.

The opposite side of this flipper disc contains a complete extra feature, the lamentable sequel Men of Boys Town. It's a highly forgettable reunion of Tracy and Rooney, with a young Lee. J. Cobb picking up the Dave Morris character where Henry Hull left off - still having apoplexy over Father Flanagan's fiscal irresponsibility. Following a less-compelling script by James Kevin McGuinness, Whitey gets involved with a handicapped kid and his adopted dog, is unjustly sent to reform school and tangles with serious criminals before the righteous hand of Boys Town intercedes to set things straight. It's tough sledding all the way, even though Mickey Rooney gives himself a major acting workout to hold the tale together. All in all, the Boys Town films are better fit for a sociology class than as modern day family entertainment.

For more information about Boys Town, visit Warner Video. To order Boys Town, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson