Little Tough Guys

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The Little Tough Guys was a series of B-movies and serials released by Universal Studios and featuring most of the Dead End Kids (aka the East Side Kids) and the Bowery Boys.

The first film in the series was Universal's Little Tough Guy, (1938), which featured Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Gabe Dell and Bernard Punsly from the original Dead End Kids, who had recently been brought to Hollywood by Sam Goldwyn to film his version of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End. The kids proved so troublesome that they were dismissed after the film was completed, the above-mentioned four going to Universal while Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were retained by Warners and other studios.

Following the release of Little Tough Guy and Dead End, someone realized that there was box-office gold in these New York hooligans, and Warner Brothers starred them in a series of films of varying quality between 1938 and 1939. In the meantime, Universal sought to launch their own entry in the genre, utilizing the talents of several "young toughs" whom they called the Little Tough Guys.

David Gorcey (Leo's brother) and Hally Chester had appeared in the first film alongside the four original Dead End Kids. They were then featured in several more films, along with two actors who had also appeared in the stage version of Dead End, Charles Duncan (the original 'Spit') and Harris Berger (who replaced Huntz Hall as 'Dippy'.) William Benedict rounded out the group.

Their first official film, Little Tough Guys in Society (1938) had them joined (and led by) Frankie Thomas, imported from Warners. Though this film was a fairly light-weight comedy, the next couple Newsboys' Home and Code of the Streets (1939), were straight-forward thug dramas. Jackie Cooper replaced Thomas in Newsboys, but Thomas returned in Code.

As of the end of 1939, the Little Tough Guys became adjuncts of the Universal Studios version of the Dead End Kids (minus Gorcey and Jordan), and ended up filling out the gang roster more or less in the background. In 1940, however, several of them were featured in Monogram Studios' East Side Kids (1940), although when they returned for the remainder of the series, they all played background to Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, and finally Gabriel Dell, who were signed by Monogram and eventually took over the East Side Kids series.