ST. JAMES THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 7

ST. JAMES THEATRE

"BOY OF THE STREETS"

The problem of the slum child has seldom been better depicted than in the new Monogram release at the bt ; James Theatre, "Boy of the Streets/ Brought up in a teeming tenement, with a shiftless father and a mother whom harsh circumstances have converted into a drudge, young Jackie Cooper is shown as the leader of a band of street hoodlums whose playground is the alley and whose school is the ceaseless struggle for existence against poverty. In this role, Jackie Cooper gives a first-rate representation of a hard-boiled young larrikin, well on the way to developing into a ruffian. The battle of the boy's environment against the temptations of back streets and alleys is very skilfully developed until, finally, after a quarrel at home, he falls into the clutches of a gangster leader who proposes to use the lad to further his own unscrupulous ends. The climax, in which Jackie finds that his new-found "friends" are nothing more or less than a gang of cut-throats prepared to shoot down his policeman friend from ambush and to sacrifice him at a moment's notice for their own purposes, is particularly well done. There is, of course, the happy ending showing the erstwhile adolescent gang leader, very spick and span in a gob's uniform, going away to join the navy and see the world while his youthful sweetheart—extremely well played by Maureen O'Connor, 14-year-old radio star —waves good-bye from the wharf. But the slight banality of a happy ending in a picture of this sort strengthens rather than dissipates its realism. Very fine acting on the part of every one of the principals in the story enables the producer to present very tellingly to his audiences the difficulties and temptations which beset young people in a slum environment. One of the best-played parts in an excellent picture is that of Jackie's mother, portrayed by Marjorie Main, who made such an impression in "Dead End." As one of the few civilising influences in the strenuous life of her street brawling son, she is particularly convincing. An interlude in the rather sombre theme of the picture is the singing of Maureen O'Connor, whose voice is as delightfully Irish as her name.