Dead End (1937) on Netflix
In a New York slum, luxury apartments face crowded tenements. Tommy Gordon leads a gang of street kids, Drina dreams of a rich stranger, and gangster Hugh "Baby Face" Martin comes home.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.2/109,730 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
On the East River below the Queensboro Bridge, a New York street ends at a dock. Luxury apartments with river views stand on one side, crowded tenements on the other. Tommy Gordon leads the Dead End Kids, a gang of street urchins already drifting toward petty crime, and a new boy, Milty, wants to join. Tommy's sister Drina hopes a dashing rich stranger will marry her and carry her and Tommy out of poverty. Dave Connell, who grew up on the same street and works odd jobs though he trained as an architect, is her childhood friend and is involved with Kay Burton, the mistress of a wealthy man. Gangster Hugh "Baby Face" Martin, raised on that street, arrives with his partner Hunk to see his mother and an old girlfriend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead End (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During the rooftop scene with guns drawn, Joel McCrea kept flinching and forced director William Wyler into extra takes; McCrea finally admitted Humphrey Bogart was spitting in his face as he spoke.
- Goldwyn wanted George Raft to play the gangster, but Raft turned the part down, saying the hoodlum was too unsympathetic a character.
- The group of stage actors Goldwyn brought from New York to Hollywood proved so popular as the Dead End Kids that they made more than 60 movies under names such as the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, over 20 years until 1958.
- The actual Dead End was the corner of East 53rd Street and the East River, and the River House there closely resembles the Griswalds' house in the play and film.
