The Bowery Boys -
Clipped Wings
Director: Edward Bernds
Year: 1953
Rating: 5.0
By 1953 The Bowery Boys were far from being boys. No boy band is this. Leo
Gorcey was only 36 but with his paunch and jowls he easily looked 50 and
Huntz Hall at 34 strikes you as ageless in a really juvenile never grow up
bug-eyed manner. It is hard to imagine that the American public found these
films amusing back then and was subjected to 48 Bowery Boys films. But they
did. All those Kid films are a bit confusing - first you had the Dead End
Kids - then The Little Tough Guys who morphed into The East Side Kids who
became the Bowery Boys in 1945. Over the years the actors in these various
series came and went but Gorcey and Hall are the best known and by the time
this film was made the rest of the Bowery Boys are only bit players. Some
of the films in the other series were dramas such as Dead End and a couple
others that had Bogart in them. But now they were straight goofball comedies
for children and pretty headache inducing. Just as a note of interest, the
owner of the candy store is Gorcey's father who appeared in a bunch of the
films in the series.
