Samuel Goldwyn's Dead End (1937), directed by William Wyler, introduced the Dead End Kids to the screen and allowed them to repeat their rousing success from Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play of the same name. The original Kids, all of whom originated their roles in the play, were Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell and Bernard Punsley. A wrenching study of New York City slum life, Dead End has a screenplay by Lillian Hellman and an extraordinary cast that includes Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea and Claire Trevor.

The Kids' pugnacious charm quickly made them film-audience favorites. Based on their success in the Goldwyn film, Warner Bros. signed them and featured them in six movies. Later the gang would splinter into various groupings at other studios as the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys.

The Warner Bros. series features some of the studio's leading luminaries mixing it up with the Kids. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) stars James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, with support from Bogart and Ann Sheridan. Bogart makes his third and final appearance in a Dead End Kids drama in Crime School (1938). John Garfield gives one of his striking early performances in They Made Me a Criminal (1939), playing a young man hiding out with the Kids because he thinks he has killed a man. Ronald Reagan, later to ruefully recall the Kids' offscreen shenanigans, appears in two movies with the boys, Hell's Kitchen (1939) and Angels Wash Their Faces (1939).

The movies in TCM's tribute to the Dead End Kids are Dead End (1937), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Crime School (1938), Hell's Kitchen (1939), Angels Wash Their Faces (1939) and Dead End Kids on Dress Parade (1939).