Movie review - "Bad Boy" (1949) **

Juvenile delinquents were all the rage in Hollywood in the late 40s and early 50s - Knock on Any Door, Rebel without a Cause. They were liked in Britain too - there was a film called The Boys in Brown about decent reformist juvenile wardens and crusading judges, plus female equivalents in Good Time Girl. This feels heavily influenced by Boys Town, which like that was about a real life reformist institution - here it's the Variety Boys Club of America (which sounds like a pedophiles paradise, but that's just my biased 2012 eyes - I'm sure they do a lot of good work). A young gangster comes into the institution with a massive chip on his shoulder, causes a lot of trouble, but eventually sees the error of his ways, turning down the chance to go off with a real bad egg.

Here the warden is Lloyd Nolan and his most troubled charge is none other than Audie Murphy. Murphy got stuck in Westerns for the majority of his career - from this performance, his first lead, it's a shame he never got the chance to play a gangster, because he was a baby faced psychotic (he could have made a great Pretty Boy Floyd or Clyde Parker). It's a great introduction for him because his dialogue is kept to a minimum (his final speech to the judge is given to Nolan rather than Murphy - he says "isn't that what you wanted to say, son" and Murphy says "yes"), he has a good character (chip on his shoulder juvenile delinquent with a mean step dad), and has to perform several scenes with experienced actors like Nolan, Jane Wyatt and James Gleason. The one thing they might have done better is we don't have much sympathy for Murphy for a long time - we don't find out his "they took my red fire truck away" story until about two thirds of the way in. Murphy is very effective - he didn't progress too much as an actor but he was a lot better than he got credit for.

Nolan is professional as ever - these "decent warden" roles are thankless parts, really, though not as thankless as Wyatt's, who plays his supportive, loving wife. If they remade this for pay TV today she'd be having sex with prisoners and/or having a drug problem, but in 1949 she just makes cups of tea and cooks - she may as well not be in the film. There's also quite a silly story about the root of Murphy's troubles - he only went bad because he thinks he killed his mother accidentally with pills. It gives this some narrative drive, but it's still silly. (They would have been better off using Murphy's gangster mate more, like they did in Boy's Town). So this isn't much of a movie, really, but it is interesting, and Murphy fans will get a lot out of it.