Baddest boys of Hollywood
QUESTION As a child, I loved watching the East Side Kids at the cinema. What became of the actors who played them?
THE concept of New York child gang films had its roots in the Broadway production of Dead End, which ran from 1935 to 1937. Sam Goldwyn, head of MGM, and director William Wyler saw the show and brought six of the actors to Hollywood to make a film of the play starring Humphrey Bogart as hoodlum Baby Face Martin.
The film was an instant success, but the actors’ shenanigans, such as smashing up trucks in the back lot, prompted Goldwyn to sell their contract to Warner Brothers.
Warner Bros had great success with the 1938 features Angels With Dirty Faces, starring James Cagney, and The Dead End Kids and Crime School, both with Bogart.
But again, there were issues with the gang’s high-jinks on set, including throwing water over a sleeping Bogart, hiding his trousers and overturning a studio vehicle.
This resulted in Warner Bros terminating their contract after two years.
The Dead End Kids went on to work for smaller B-movie studios. Gang films were so popular that all the studios were creating their own versions, which gave us Spanky and Our Gang, the Bowery Boys, Little Tough Guys, Gas House Kids and Monogram Pictures’ the East Side Kids.
Some of the original Dead End Kids ended up as East Side Kids, including Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan and Gabriel (anything but an angel) Dell. One, Bernard Punsly, became a doctor.
The East Side Kids made 22 shorts from 1940 to 1945, and their ever-revolving members totalled 29. One familiar face was Sunshine Sammy Morrison, the black boy with the pop-eyed expression from Our Gang.
The East Side Kids were succeeded by the Bowery Boys, whose films ran from 1946 to 1958.
They included four of the original Dead End Kids, plus Leo Gorcey’s brother David, who had given him his role in the Dead End play.
In all, Leo Gorcey starred in seven Dead End Kids films, 21 East Side Kids films and 41 Bowery Boys films.
Most of the boys went on to have long acting careers.
Given the passage of time, they have all passed on and I hope they’re not making a nuisance of themselves if they have regrouped in heaven!
The last to leave us was Johnny Duncan, who also played Robin in the 1949 Batman serial. Until his death at the age of 92 in 2016, he was appearing at conventions signing photos of himself and the East Side Kids and having videos and photos taken with fans.
I had the pleasure of working with the very funny Huntz Hall on the 1977 Valentino film in the UK.
A few years later, on the James Cagney and Pat O’Brien film Ragtime, I was given a straw boater to wear. The name inside was ‘Huntz’ – it was the hat he’d worn in Valentino. It made me feel part of the long history of movies. Danny Darcy, Reading, Berks.
QUESTION Why isn’t there a vaccine to protect us from the cold sore virus?
THERE are several types of herpes virus, but herpes simplex 1 (HSV1), and herpes simplex 2 (HSV-2), are the most common.
The first causes cold sores and fever blisters in the mouth and is thought to be responsible for most cases of genital herpes. HSV-2 is associated with genital herpes alone.
Herpes is widespread: globally, more than 67% of people under 50 are thought to have HSV-1, so the development of an effective vaccine would be lucrative for pharmaceutical companies.
However, many difficulties surround this, including a poor understanding of the virus life cycle and of its DNA, which is complex compared with other viruses, along with its ability to lie dormant within the nervous system.
Most vaccines work by stimulating the immune system, but it is difficult to develop an inoculation for herpes as the precise target has not been identified.
Biologically, herpes is impressive. Once infected, the virus is in your body for life because it hides deep within the central nervous system.
With oral herpes, HSV-1 lies dormant within the trigeminal nerve in the skull. With genital herpes, HSV-1 and HSV-2 wait within the dorsal root ganglion – a cluster of neurons within a spinal nerve.
If the immune system is compromised, it reactivates, causing an outbreak. The immune system can’t recognise this kind of latent infection. If it could, attacking it would mean attacking its own nervous system.
HSV produces a pair of proteins that are adept at keeping the human immune system from producing antibodies – the proteins that recognise and combat an infection.
Experimental vaccines have sought to prevent infection in people without herpes, or suppress viral shedding in people who have it. Several vaccines have reached the clinical trial stage, but none has proved effective.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION When World War II pilot Mary Ellis had flown each plane to an airfield, how did she get back home?
MARY ELLIS, who died earlier this year aged 101, would have taken the train. On the authority of the British Air Ministry, she would either have been issued with a rail warrant before departure, or she would have reported to the adjutant (the military term for administrator) of the airfield where she had delivered the aircraft to be issued with one.
This would entitle her to a free rail ticket to her destination. The railway firm reclaimed the cost of the ticket from the Air Ministry.
When I joined the RAF in 1968, we were entitled to a set number of rail warrants a year for leave travel.
Nowadays military personnel, like their civilian counterparts, pay their own way and then claim the cost back.
The adjutant would also organise road transport for Mary to the nearest railway station, probably alongside airmen going on leave or being posted to other units. Depending on what time she arrived at the airfield, she might have to stay the night, in which case she would have been lodged in the Officers’ Mess.
If ferry pilots were required to bring aircraft in from Canada or the US they would travel across the Atlantic in one of the many ships that crossed the ocean in the wartime convoys or, perhaps, on the fast passenger liners like the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, that crossed the Atlantic independently.
If there happened to be a transport aircraft, usually American, making the journey the ferry pilots might be able to hitch a lift, if there was space available.
As World War II aircraft couldn’t make the journey in a single hop, they flew via Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, with the aircraft to be ferried returning along the reverse route.
Fifteen women lost their lives while ferrying aircraft, including noted airwoman Amy Johnson. Bob Cubitt, Northampton.