Angels Wash Their Faces (1939)

Thanks for the memories!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

"Angels With Dirty Faces" is one of my favorite films going all the way back to when I was a kid, but today was the first time I ever saw "Angels Wash Their Faces". I've been waiting a long time, so kudos once again to Turner Classics. The picture's title borrows from it's precursor pretty much in name only; it's not a sequel per se, much like "The Curse of the Cat People" capitalized on "Cat People" to draw in movie goers who liked the original. The connecting link here is the presence of The Dead End Kids, the first and most serious portrayal of the street gang that evolved into The East Side Kids, and later the goofy and slapstick Bowery Boys. Funny, but I don't feel compelled to favor one portrayal over another, I like watching them all.The other returnee from "Angels With Dirty Faces" is Ann Sheridan, a completely different character here, moving into a new neighborhood with brother Gabe (Frankie Thomas) who was recently pardoned from reform school. I preferred her Laury Ferguson character in the prior film, where she showed more sass and parried her relationship with Cagney's Rocky Sullivan. Still, she lends good support here, which is kind of ironic because she's actually top billed above the Dead Enders, and romantically cast opposite Ronald Reagan as Assistant District Attorney Pat Remson.There's quite a lot of hi-jinks involved in the picture, particularly in the latter half when Billy Shafter (Billy Halop) wins a Boys Week Contest to become mayor of the city for a week. Swearing in his pals, the gang goes on a tear with a goal of getting their new buddy Gabe out of State's Prison, framed for an arson fire after circumstantial evidence and tainted witnesses produced a guilty verdict. Before the picture gets there however, there's a real grim sequence in which one of the boys (Bernard Punsley as Sleepy) dies in an apartment fire as the rest of the gang watches helplessly. The following scene comes as close to a tear jerker moment as you'll find, with his mother (Marjorie Main) delivering one of the most poignant lines I've ever heard. Trying to console her after the loss of her son, Joy Ryan (Sheridan) tells Mrs. Arkelian that she ought to cry for a measure of release. Her response - "It hurts too much for tears. Crying is for little things". That one put a lump in my throat.Considering that they were known as The Dead End Kids, I was a little surprised to hear the boys call themselves the Termites. The little buggers consisted of Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, and Gabriel Dell, with an assist from Bonita Granville as Gorcey's sister. 'Sleepy' was made an honorary member after his death in the fire, adding another somber note to the story.In their own way, Warner Brothers did an effective job in presenting the character of an era to the big screen. Here they take on city government corruption using the Dead End Kids as foils using laws on the books against spitting in public and bowling on Sunday to bring bad guys to justice. What really got my attention however was the way a particular scene managed to highlight post-Depression poverty in an effective way. The boys were off on another escapade, and Bobby Jordan's character asks permission to opt out. It turns out his father just got back to work at a warehouse job, and having been paid, the family was going to have meat for supper. Think about that one for a while.

Angels Wash Their Faces, The (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The Dead End Kids star in this Warner crime drama, which has the boys trying to clear one of their pals of arson and murder charges. If you've seen one of these dramas then you've pretty much seen them all but this one here has a rather strange, stupid yet original twist at the end. The first half of the film is pretty boring as we sit through the typical story of a troubled kid trying to do good but getting into more trouble. Most of this is deadly dull and boring because we have seen it in previous films but then the twist takes place. In the middle of the movie one of the boys is elected Mayor and of course he appoints his pals into other positions throughout the city. This is how they go about getting their friend cleared but the screenplay is so far fetched that I couldn't help but break down laughing. All of this laughter made the second half of the film fast paced, loose and fun. The Dead End Kids are their typical self but Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan add nice support. Bonita Granville, from Warner's Nancy Drew series, also joins the boys and is an added touch. I'm not sure what it is about her but I've found her very charming and sweet in the five films of her's I've seen.

The film begins with a bunch of kids in reform school and focuses on a kid named 'Gabe', who has apparently worked hard to earn his parole. Gabe and his sister move to a new neighborhood to make a fresh start and soon Gabe meets up with the Dead End Kids. The Kids in this film are little punks, but they are much less antisocial than they'd been in other previous films and down deep, they are well-meaning punks. However, in this neighborhood there are also some criminals who are perpetrating insurance fraud through arson and see Gabe as a convenient scapegoat--after all, he'd been to reform school and no one would believe he was innocent once he was framed. So, when Gabe is about ready to be sent back to "The Big House", it's up to the rest of the gang to save him and expose the real crooks.The "Dead End Kids" appeared in several Warner Brothers films in the late 1930s and the films were generally very good (particularly ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES). However, after the boys' contracts expired, they went on to Monogram Studios and the films, to put it charitably, were very weak and formulaic--with Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey being pretty much the whole show and the group being renamed "The Bowery Boys". Because ANGELS WASH THEIR FACES had the excellent writing and production values AND Hall and Gorcey were not constantly mugging for the camera, it's a pretty good film--and almost earns a score of 7 (it's REAL close). In fact, while this isn't a great film aesthetically, it's sure a lot of fun to watch, so I will give it a 7! Sure, it was a tad hokey-particularly towards the end when the kids take the law into their own hands and Reagan ignores the Bill of Rights--but it was also quite entertaining. The Dead End Kids are doing their best performances and Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan provided excellent support. Sure, this part of the film was illogical and impossible but somehow it was still funny and rather charming--so if you can suspend disbelief, it works well.

Although Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan are the romantic leads here, the film really belongs to the Dead End Kids. Angels Wash Their Faces is NOT a sequel to Angels With Dirty Faces, it doesn't come close to that classic. Still it's an enjoyable film.The Dead End Kids are joined by Frankie Thomas and Bonita Granville who Warner Brothers had been using in their Nancy Drew series. In those films Granville was the lead and poor Thomas was her earnest boyfriend who she got involved in all of her cases. Here Thomas is the lead and Granville his romantic interest and would you believe, Leo Gorcey's sister. That's nothing, in one of the Bowery Boy features Gorcey got a young Ava Gardner as his sister.There's been a rash of fires in the neighborhood, somebody's got a nice little arson racket going. The crooks try to pin this on Frankie Thomas who's a new kid moved into the neighborhood with his sister Ann Sheridan. Ronald Reagan as the Assistant District Attorney reluctantly prosecutes.What happens then is Dead End Kid leader Billy Halop gets himself elected boy mayor of the city and uses the power of office quite creatively to help Thomas and find the arsonists. Some arcane laws which are still on the books turn out to be of real value.Best in the cast is Frankie Thomas who's quite appealing as the kid in trouble and Bernard Nedell as the slick crook who gets quite a comeuppance from the Dead End Kids.Fans of the Kids will like this one.