There's a two-year difference between Mickey Rooney and Jackie Cooper, and another two-year difference between Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew, so in seeing an obvious age difference between the three young actors, I wasn't surprised to discover this fact. Mickey will always be Andy Hardy in film history, Cooper will always be "The Champ's" son, and Bartholomew will always be identified as that spoiled kid who was changed by "Captains Courageous". Their three different personalities make for an interesting pairing, with streetwise Mickey, brooding Jackie and pip-pip cherrio Bartholomew all so different that you wonder if they could be ever be friends. Referring to Freddie as a "Limey" throughout the film, Rooney and Cooper are at first unwelcoming to the intruder in their rough New York neighborhood ("Bowery Boys Meet Britain"), gifting him with a chalk-drawn kick me sign on his back and threatening to box his ears if he passes their way on the street. But Bartholomew, living with divorced father Ian Hunter on the rough streets, is determined to get in good with the gang, which predictably comes faster than the two other boys could ever imagine.
The rough streets of New York aren't quite what viewers of MGM expected. Maybe Warner Brothers or RKO Radio, but not quite MGM which was more comfortable on Park Avenue or a Long Island estate. They do, however, show a realistic grittiness to the crowded streets of the tenement downtown district, and these kids do show an appropriate toughness. Rooney gets the most emotional assignment, dealing with the pending death of his father in the electric chair for a gangland murder. There's a haunting moment when at the assigned time of the execution, Rooney's pent-up emotions come bursting out, and another moment when he comforts his grief-stricken mother that probably had audience members holding back their own tears.
In reality, this is a nice change of pace for the usual MGM gloss, although the photography and production design is certainly a lot slicker than those made in the same location at Warner Brothers and definitely a lot more than the Bowery Boys series that ran an eternity over at Monogram.
The rough streets of New York aren't quite what viewers of MGM expected. Maybe Warner Brothers or RKO Radio, but not quite MGM which was more comfortable on Park Avenue or a Long Island estate. They do, however, show a realistic grittiness to the crowded streets of the tenement downtown district, and these kids do show an appropriate toughness. Rooney gets the most emotional assignment, dealing with the pending death of his father in the electric chair for a gangland murder. There's a haunting moment when at the assigned time of the execution, Rooney's pent-up emotions come bursting out, and another moment when he comforts his grief-stricken mother that probably had audience members holding back their own tears.
In reality, this is a nice change of pace for the usual MGM gloss, although the photography and production design is certainly a lot slicker than those made in the same location at Warner Brothers and definitely a lot more than the Bowery Boys series that ran an eternity over at Monogram.