Boys Town (1938)

Boys Town
Directed by Norman Taurog
Written by John Meehan and Dore Shary from a story by Shary and Eleanore Griffin
1938/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing

[box] Father Edward J. Flanagan: I know that a mother can take a whip to the toughest boy in the world, and he forgets it because he knows that she loves him.[/box]

More evidence of what a great screen actor Spencer Tracy was.

This is an MGM dramatization of the life and work of Father Flanagan, the priest who founded Boys Town, a community for underprivileged and delinquent boys in Nebraska.

Flanagan (Tracy) receives his calling to help boys when he counsels a convict just before his execution and learns of his childhood as a homeless orphan on the city streets.  The priest proves to be a mastermind at raising money from reluctant donors and goes from a small home for boys in the city to a large farm in the country.  There the boys have their own town government with a youth mayor, council, and court.   These prove to be at least as stringent as the priest would have been.

Flanagan faces his biggest challenge when a convict asks him to take charge of his younger brother, Whitey Moran (Mickey Rooney).  Whitey is cocky in the extreme and resists all efforts to civilize him.  Finally, Whitey’s behavior threatens to ruin Boys Town’s perfect record and turn the public and financiers against it.

The plot sounds a bit maudlin but Tracy invests Flanagan with so much humor and grace that the movie is irresistible.  To see him discourage the condemned man from taking a drink with just the slightest cock of his head was worth the price of admission to me. Tracy’s priest is light years away from Pat O’Brien’s pontificating prelate in Angels with Dirty Faces.  You can see why the boys would follow him anywhere.  This may also be Mickey Rooney’s best work.  It is too bad he did not do more drama in his youth.

One of my very earliest film-watching memories is sobbing near the end of this picture and my mother telling me that if I was going to get so upset I would have to stop watching movies.  Obviously, that didn’t happen!

Spencer Tracy won his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar for Boys Town and Griffin and Shary won an award for their original story.  The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay.

Trailer (spoilers)