The complicated and sometimes confusing history of the East Side Kids has its roots in Dead End, Sidney Kingsley's play about wisecracking young toughs in a New York slum, which was filmed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1937. Repeating their roles from the Broadway production were a group of young actors who would become known as the Dead End Kids -- Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Gabe Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsly and Bobby Jordan. They went on to perform in a series of Warner Bros. dramas that included Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), They Made Me a Criminal (1939) and Hell's Kitchen(1939).

While a splinter group from the original gang was called the Little Tough Guys, low-budget Monogram studios set up the East Side Kids in 1940 as a challenge to the Dead Enders. The original East Siders were Hally Chester, Harris Berger, Frankie Burke, Donald Haines, Eddie Brian and Sam Edwards. They were later joined by some of the Dead End gang -- notably Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and Bobby Jordan. Within a few years elements of the rival gangs merged to form the Bowery Boys. Somewhere along the line, the serious intent of the early films had evolved into slapstick comedy.

East Side Kids (1940) introduced the Monogram version of the gang and retains some of the darkness of the earlier films. In fact, it was the only film of this group in which a gang member is killed. Producer Sam Katzman saw to it that the movie had all the vigor that a good "B" film demands, and it became a hit that spawned a long-running series (1940-1945) -- eventually giving way to the Bowery Boys and their even longer run (1946-1958).

Highlights of the TCM marathon include Boys of the City (1940), a comedy murder mystery in which the East Side Kids get mixed up with gangsters and a blackmail scheme; Spooks Run Wild (1941), a haunted-house caper in which the Kids suspect Bela Lugosi of being a notorious murderer; Clancy Street Boys (1943) in which Muggs (Leo Gorcey) enlists fellow Kids to pose as his siblings to fool a rich uncle; Kid Dynamite (1943), a boxing story that's surprisingly complex for the wisecracking gang; Ghosts on the Loose (1943), in which Lugosi returns to play a Nazi spy and a young Ava Gardner also puts in an appearance; and Million Dollar Kid (1944), in which the Kids set out to reform a member of another gang.

by Roger Fristoe