Dead End Kids

The Dead End Kids were brought together to star in Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 play of the same name and stayed together under various names and in various groupings until 1958. They took their name from Kingsley’s play but the name could have described some of their fates as well. It’s important to note that they or their families had backgrounds in show business. They were not just recruited off the street, even though it looked that way due to their excellent performances, although their off-screen antics, (such as driving a car through a sound-stage wall), might have suggested otherwise.

BILLY HALOP, the original leader of the gang, had been an actor on the radio from the age of 6. He was more famous than the others and got more money and perks, which created problems with the other kids. He left the group in the early 40’s for a solo career that never took off. He went into the military service and had to start over again after the war. He alternated acting gigs with work as a salesman and registered nurse. He suffered, as did several of the members of the group, with alcoholism and financial problems made worse by no less than seven marriages. He had a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt in the late 40’s. He died of a heart attack at the age of 56.

LEO GORCEY became the leader of the group after Halop left, (he was actually several years older but was shorter- both his parents were under five feet tall). His parents and brother were actors and he became one after losing a job as a plumber’s assistant. He tried to steal a scene from Jimmy Cagney-once. Cagney slugged him. He seemed to fall apart after his father was killed in an auto accident in 1955 and took to drink. He was fired after trashing a set in a drunken rage and died at age 52 of liver failure. He’d been married five times. His younger brother David, who never made it big in show business, became a minister who founded a program to help people with substance abuse problems.

HUNTZ HALL was a boy soprano who became the most overtly comic of the team. He had some early trouble with the law, (marijuana, DWI, assault- a building manager objected to the loudness of a party and Hall slugged him), But he got his act together and had a long and steady career, making some good investments and winding up wealthy, including a 10% interest in the Bowery Boy’s pictures, (the group’s final name). He died at the age of 79, having appeared in over 100 movies and TV shows.

GABRIEL DELL and his sister had been actors before Dead End. He had also sung in a choir. He also studied mime with Marcel Marceau and had a successful nightclub act with Huntz Hall. He later became part of Steve’s Allen’s comedy team on various shows. He also appeared on Broadway several times. He seems to have avoided the problems of the other kids but died of leukemia at the age of 69.

BOBBY JORDAN, (the one with the long hair), had been a child model and an actor from the age of 6. He left the gang for military service but injured his knee in an elevator accident, losing his right kneecap. He tried the Bowery Boys films but took a backseat to Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall both in terms of screen action and salary and left the group. Acting jobs became scare and he wound up trying his hand at a nightclub act, bartending, a salesman job and an oil drilling roustabout. He also drank too much and went bankrupt and died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 42.

BERNARD PUNSLEY didn’t take part in the high jinks of his colleagues. He liked to read. After military service, he left the group and became a doctor, wining up the head of a hospital in Redondo Beach. He died in 2004 at the age of 80, the last of the Dead End Kids.

He wasn’t a dead end kid but the remarkable young actor who plays Rocky Sullivan in the early scenes, FRANKIE BURKE, also had his problems. He traveled to Hollywood from New York because people had remarked on his resemblance to Jimmy Cagney and his ability to imitate him. He made 17 films from 1938-41, (the last playing a jockey in “Shadow of the Thin Man”), then vanished, turning up in the early 80’s as a “hobo”, who fell sick on a train he’d hopped. He was taken to a hospital and died of lung cancer in 1983.

Then there was FRANKIE DARRO, who had played the young Cagney in “The Public Enemy”, (1931) and the reform school kid Cagney identified with in “The Mayor of Hell”, (1933). Frankie was an acrobat, aided by him diminutive height, which held him back in his attempt to be an acting star. He also played jockeys and did stunt work on the side. He wound up being the guy inside “Robby the Robot”. He also did voice work for cartoons. He was another alcoholic and wound up living- and dying at age 59- in a cheap hotel with a small collection of memorabilia from the films he’d been in.

But, hey! How many pictures you been in?!?

(Information culled from several sources but mostly the IMDB and Wikipedia)