By Richard Roat, 2009
I bet no one involved in the making of the 90+ films in the Dead End Kids/Little Tough Guys/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys series figured that people would still be enjoying these films 50-70 years after they were made... let alone writing books about them!
The two previous books written on the subject "The Films Of The Bowery Boys" by David Hayes and Brent Walker (1984) and "From Broadway To The Bowery" by Leonard Getz (2006) both kept the films front-and-center. They gave detailed info on the 90+ films and some criticism. Tacked on at the end, were a few biographies of the actors who made those roles famous.
Author Richard Roat turns the table on that format and features the biographies up-front. Since he became a fan in the 1960s, he ran the Bowery Boys fan club and sought out many of those actors and formed friendships with them via letters, phone calls and in-person meetings.
Who better to present them as people rather than as film characters?
From all six original Dead End Kids to guys who played an East Side Kid just once... everyone is given a space and their life story is told.
Instead of his opinion on each film, Roat obtained permission from Variety Magazine, to use their reviews. It's an interesting (and often humorously unkind!) look back at how the films were viewed by critics of their day.
The book is amply illustrated with photos from Mr. Roat's collection. Most I'd never even seen before.
My only criticism is the book features several grammatical and spelling errors that a good editor should have noticed. A few minor (insignificant) factual errors are also present.
This book helped me to understand these actors more as people, which is what the two previous books lacked... and it is exactly what I was left wanting after reading those books.
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