Dead End (1937)

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Don’t Go Home Again
Dead End (1937)
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn • 92 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 27 Aug 1937
Re-release: MGM (Mar 2005)
Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Wendy Barrie, Billy Halop
Dir: William Wyler

Dead End, although nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, won nothing. It’s a fine picture, and stands up remarkably well for its time; yet this was hardly an example of “Oscar getting it wrong”: Claire Trevor, as Best Supporting Actress nominee, has little more than a walk-on; Marjorie Main, not nominated, in a role of similar size, completely outclasses her. This is not a film about the small parts, really: it’s memorable as a break-through role for Humphrey Bogart, third in billing, as the gangster “Baby Face” Martin.

It’s the mid-30s, the east side of New York, and cheek-by-jowl, the very well-healed have discovered harbourfront property is desirable; but New York’s harbourside is currently dominated by aging tenement slums. Due to construction, the ritzy are forced to use the “back entrance” for a time which empties into the squalor of the neighbours, and a dead end overlooking Queensboro Bridge; in doing so, two classes interact, and clash, temporarily. Dave Connell (Joel McCrea) is a budding architect who grew up in these very slums and, poisoned by them, landed in reform school; though he made good — six years in college! — the economy is rough and he’s reduced to taking odd jobs waiting for his big break. He’s sweet on Kay Burton (Wendy Barrie), who lives in the fancy digs with a wealthy lover she loves for his money alone; her heart is with Dave, but her desire to avoid poverty is too strong and Dave, alas, is broke.

Drina Gordon (Sylvia Sidney) is the nice girl subsisting in the tenements, devoting her life to raising her teenage kid brother now that their parents are dead; Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop) is a nice kid, but also the local boys’ gang leader, and on the brink of turning from pranks to crime. Dave likes Drina but is blinded by Kay; Drina thinks she has no chance, and she herself is slipping deeper into poverty striking (literally) against the wealthy barons of industry for a measly $3.50/wk more that would save her, and Tommy, from this terrible life. At one moment, with defiant pride, she shows a bruise on her forehead given to her in a strike line by the police protecting the wealthy business class. And here she is, living next door to the robber barons, whilst her Prince Charming is smitten by a woman ensnared by that very wealth!

Enter “Baby Face” Martin (Humphrey Bogart) and his side-kick Hunk (Allen Jenkins): Martin has returned to his old neighbourhood to find his mother and his girlfriend, both left behind more than ten years earlier when Marty, as he was then known, graduated from punk, to teen gang boss, to reform school, to notorious criminal and murderer making headlines across the country. Though it was two decades later that James Agee famously made the autobiographical observation “You can never go home again”, Marty experiences that during a stark encounter with his mother (Marjorie Main) who utters the painful “you’re no son of mine!” on the stairwell of the tenement she exists in, slapping his face for good measure. Hours later, he tracks down Francey (Claire Trevor), the only woman he’s carried a torch for over the years, only to find she’s a prostitute, suffering from TB (or worse), and happy to take a few dollars from him, even as he hands the money over contemptuously and with a warning, “The money’s hot; be careful where you spend it”.

With these irons in the storyline fire, much more than sparks will erupt during the chance encounter between Dave and Marty, who both lived these streets, as buddies, and took two paths out, neither finding real success nor love. It’s good vs evil (if perhaps damaged goods vs evil), and wealth vs poverty; and the power of the state vs the working man, in one dirty snowball about to impact the lives of so many in one short night at the edge of the river of this particular dead end. Or is there hope, for some, for a better tomorrow?

Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay based upon a successful Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley; Kingsley won a Pulitzer for his very first play, Men in White, produced just a year before Dead End, and employing the morality of abortion as its theme. If there is flaw in the movie Dead End, it is its stageiness — although that also contributes to the claustrophobia in which all of the characters carry out their lives. Gregg Toland’s cinematography emphasizes that theme, in shadowy cramped quarters inside the tenements, ominous back alleys and the palpable filth of the river and the wharf. Toland, of course, a few years later, shot Citizen Kane.

Sylvia Sidney fully inhabits the character of “good sister-mother figure-worker against the oppressors-lover in waiting” without ever quite raising the barre. Arguably, this was the last important film in what was a short Hollywood career, and a very busy two years in front of the camera: opposite Spencer Tracey in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936); starring in one of Alfred Hitchock’s last UK films, Sabotage (1936); opposite Henry Fonda in Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937); and finally (no pun intended) Dead End. Likewise, Joel McCrea’s career was at a cross-roads — his enduring fame would not be for this film, but for musicals and westerns in his very near future (his next, released on New Year’s Eve, was Wells Fargo). Here he’s a good leading man, and a hero by chance; but neither he, nor Sidney, nor Wendy Barrie as his prospective wealthy lover Kay, particularly light up the screen.

Humphrey Bogart does. Here is a fully formed gangster, vicious, but realistic, sporting a vulnerable, tender side (admitedly a slim side) to inform his disappointments upon rejection by his mother, and destruction of the image of his left-behind lover. His screen time is relatively brief, with just enough time to put in the details of his life, brood a little, and come face-to-face with Good in the form of Dave and his pistol. There is no redeeming grain in Marty’s soul, as emphasized by the plot to kidnap a wealthy teenager in the apartments looking down (in every sense) on his childhood’s world; yet Bogart’s portrayal never slips into mere gesture. His mastery as an actor lay ahead: but here he’s already fully achieved art.

Quick words of praise should be awarded to Marjorie Main as Marty’s mother. Main, of course, is most remembered as “Ma Kettle” and in countless character actor roles; there is nothing funny about her star turn here. Similiarly, Billy Halop, as Tommy the teenager in trouble, shines above the other “dead end kids” (who would later return as the comic ensemble The Bowery Boys). Dead End has several sub-plots; Tommy’s story is arguably the most important. Finally, Claire Trevor, otherwise an accomplished actress, is awarded second tier billing (same as Bogart and Barrie) but really has little to do, and does it quite forgettably; how she came to Oscar nominee status for the role is a mystery.

Director William Wyler, at 70 films spread over 40+ years, hit his stride in 1935 with The Good Fairy, followed by a string of memorable films annually: Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Jezebel (1938), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs Miniver (1942) … not to mention later iconic films such as The Heiress, Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, The Collector and Funny Girl. A strong film, and deservedly memorable, Dead End is the sum of its parts: no more, no less.

Though this MGM re-release is a “bargain” edition — no extras other than the (murky) trailer are included — what a fine print and sound is revealed. Admirers of Bogart, Wyler and the generally under-rated Sidney will not be disappointed. Though now 72 years since its release, Dead End is remarkably contemporary in dealing with the tensions of wealth and power, and the corrupting influence of grinding poverty.