BAD BOY

Johnny Downs

BAD BOY (1939). Director: Herbert Meyer.

"I don't care if your business is shipping fat missionaries to cannibal island, I want a job!"

John Fraser (Johnny Downs) kisses his sweet mother (Helen MacKellar) goodbye and heads for the big city full of hope and promise. Although he lands a good job and impresses his boss, McNeil (Holmes Herbert of The Curtain Falls), he falls in with a co-worker, Steve (Archie Robbins), who introduces him to gambling and a singer named Madelon (Rosalind Keith). Although Madelon is about as sexy as a hat rack, John falls hard for her and spends all of his money on her instead of sending it to his mother. Then he decides to "borrow" a couple of hundred dollars in petty cash so he can pay off his gambling debts, and things get worse from there. Bad Boy presents boyishly handsome Johnny Downs [Adventures of the Flying Cadets]  in an atypical role of a supposedly "nice guy" who becomes a gangster in a stereotypical boy-goes-wrong storyline. He is hardly perfect casting for the latter half of the film but he still manages to acquit himself nicely. MacKellar is excellent as his devoted mother, and the pic is nearly stolen by Spencer Williams as Terry, the black super in Mrs. Fraser's apartment who becomes a good friend to both mother and son and winds up working for John -- Terry has a much better head on his shoulders than John does. Saddled with a hairdo that has to be seen to be believed, Rosalind Keith is okay as a miserable bitch but is simply too homely to be that believable as a femme fatale. She retired after one more film.

Verdict: Entertaining minor melodrama with good performances. **1/2.