Complete credited cast: | |||
Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins | ... | 'Butch' Taylor | |
James Craig | ... | Dan Walker | |
Skip Homeier | ... | 'Knuckles' Dolam (as Skippy Homeier) | |
Dorothy Patrick | ... | Susan Walker | |
Ray Collins | ... | David Banton | |
Darryl Hickman | ... | Hank | |
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Sharon McManus | ... | Mary Walker |
Minor Watson | ... | Mr. Harper | |
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Geraldine Wall | ... | Mrs. Harper |
Arthur Space | ... | Mr. O'Neill | |
Robert Emmett O'Connor | ... | Druggist (as Robert Emmet O'Connor) | |
Moroni Olsen | ... | Judge Henderson |
Baseball player Dan Walker being benched doesn't bother him as it allows him to make the easy decision to be a full time Texas rancher - his goal to own his own ranch - and be at home with his wife and daughter, Susan and Mary. The one thing Dan will miss about not being a ball player is the casual friendship he has with a bunch of disadvantaged boys at his team's ballpark. Without knowing their full stories, Dan could always manage to get a few of them into the ballpark to watch games for free. When Dan learns that two of them, Skippy and Hank, will be sent to reform school, with the probable outcome being they growing up to be adult criminals due to that experience, Dan feels he has no choice but to take the two with him to Texas to try to get them jobs on ranches. Dan learns both that city boys being thrown into the deep end in ranching duties doesn't sit well with the locals, and that there are just as many disadvantaged boys in the country as there are in the city, they who just ... Written by Huggo
MGM, the same studio that bought you the more critically acclaimed Boystown, produced this film about a ballplayer, James Craig, who takes a job as superintendent of a ranch where boys in legal trouble go to get straightened out before reaching the age of majority.
Of course James Craig is hardly Spencer Tracy, but he shouldn't be blamed for that. He turns in a nice easy to take performance as the secular Father Flanagan of the film.
Of course the irredeemable bad kid, the role Mickey Rooney had, is played with a little more menace by Skip Homeier. Homeier had made a great screen debut as the little boy Nazi in Tomorrow the World. In fact, he's quite an operator here, so much so that the situation that does redeem him in the end does not quite ring true.
Still it's a nice family picture and with Boys Ranch still operating, surprising it's not shown more often.