What project are the bowery boys busy working on?”
The Dead End Kids were five young actors and one ex-plumber’s assistant, from New York who appeared in Sidney Kingsley’s play Dead End in 1935 on Broadway. They were then imported en masse to Hollywood by William Wyler in 1937 when he filmed the play, and proved to be so popular that they remained as a more or less viable entity until their final film (as the Bowery Boys) in 1958. The original kids from the play were Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Charles Duncan, Bernard Punsly and Gabriel Dell. Sometime during the original run, Duncan was replaced in the role of Spit by his understudy, Leo B. Gorcey, who went on to achieve fame as the resident weasel and wise guy. Gorcey later became better known as Muggs in Monogram’s East Side Kids series, and as Slip Mahoney when Monogram Studios (now known as Allied Artists) changed the group to the Bowery Boys. Following the success of Dead End, the kids (who were by nature rambunctious) ended up at Warner Bros. where they made several mo
