The Dead End Kids were a group of young actors from New York City who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End in 1935. In 1937, producer Samuel Goldwyn brought all of them to Hollywood and turned the play into a film. They proved to be so popular that they continued to make movies under various monikers, including the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids, and the Bowery Boys, until 1958.
Though I was raised in Los Angeles, my mother was from New York and had seen many of these films when she was young. Most of them were before her time, but they were still popular in New York because they were about a group of rough kids growing up on the streets of New York City. We used to watch them together and I've seen a number of them. These aren't serious films by any means, and they usually only run about an hour or so. TCM airs them, mostly in the middle of the night. I doubt very many of you have heard of them or watched any of these, but you should, they're silly fun!
