Absolutely the worst movie.

A lot of fun.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

They Made me a Criminal is a film I never heard of until a couple of months ago. I bought the 92-minute Alpha Video print (which is quite good, by the way, except for some minor shaking in the credits) and I watched it today. What a wonderful surprise!I don't go out of my way to collect Dead End Kids movies. I really liked their first one, Dead End, with Humphrey Bogart. The next one I have is the celebrated Angels with Dirty Faces, starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien. That is also a good film, but I actually like They Made Me a Criminal better. Angels with Dirty Faces is well executed, but the moral issue about Cagney's reputation as either tough guy or coward is, to me, handled in a loud way, as if to say, "This is a movie with a message about how to wean kids from involvement in gangs." They Made Me a Criminal is more low-key, less a message movie and more just a warm human story.It has a boxing component, with John Garfield as the boxer. It might seem impossible to find any original variant on a boxing film, since scores of them have been made, but this one has its own twists, and a clever and satisfying plot.Garfield is simply superb in the film. Ann Sheridan and Gloria Dickson are both perfect as his romantic interests. Claude Rains, despite his protests to Warner against doing the part (for which he thought he was unsuited), turns in his usual professional performance, and I quite liked it. Why couldn't an American cop be an immigrant from England and have an English accent? No reason, and Rains is effective. Not at his greatest, perhaps, but the role calls for a low-key performance and he delivers it. The usual excellent supporting and bit-part cast (drawn from Warner and other studios) is on hand to provide a delightful mix of characters: among those deserving mention (too many to list) are May Robson, Robert Gleckler, Barbara Pepper, William B. Davidson, Ward Bond, Robert Strange, and Louis Jean Heydt.The Kids themselves are in fine form, with Billy Halop as the sensitive leader and the others with their usual personalities. However, though they are important to the film and their scenes are all good, this is really Garfield's film.The ending caught me by surprise, but I liked it.The direction by Busby Berkeley is perfect for the story. Berkeley apparently had talent for directing more than musical extravaganzas. The musical score by Max Steiner is good, adding effects here and there and not intrusive. Another great Warner picture.

A compact drama about redemption. John Garfield, always a powerful screen presence, makes a strong impression in the lead as an initially corrupt boxer who sees the error of his ways. The Dead End Kids are well used and the sassy May Robson brightens any movie in which she appeared. Be aware that Ann Sheridan, although prominently billed, is in and out of the movie in about 5 minutes, however Gloria Dickson makes a fine showing. At this point she was considered an actress on the way up but ended up spending most of her brief career in low budget films before her death in a fire at 28. The one small problem is the casting of Claude Rains as a dogged detective. He was always a fantastic actor and gives a professional performance but the part doesn't play to his strengths of urbanity and wit. Berkeley, taking a break from musicals, maintains a brisk pace in the direction making this one of the better programmers to come out of the Warners factory.

It's a Warner Bros. production, in spades—from Garfield to the gritty subject matter to the seedy surroundings. If MGM was the glamour studio, Warner's was the no-nonsense Plain Jane. Here boxing champ Johnnie (Garfield) hobos it to the California desert to escape a New York murder rap. There he hooks up with tough blonde (Dickson) and her juvenile delinquent date pickers (Gorcey, et. al.). Trouble is that Detective Phelin (Rains) won't give up the chase, and now Johnnie's in a pickle he can't fight his way out of.Okay, nothing unusual about the plot, except maybe the setting. Nevertheless, director Busby Berkeley manages to blend the elements into a good gritty little tale. Well, that's except for the fight scenes, which prove Berkeley was better at arranging dancers than boxers. Even so, he makes maybe the best use of that ragamuffin outfit that would become the Bowery Boys that I've seen. Even the usually buffoonish Huntz Hall is under firm control. But maybe the biggest challenge was getting aristocratic Claude Rains to impersonate a street wise New York cop, of all things. Fortunately, that excellent actor pulls it off better than expected. And, of course, there's the great Garfield showing why his brand of feisty urban grit was so perfect for the times. Then there's the one scene that still has me sweating. Johnnie and the boys are cooling off inside a big water-filled irrigation tank. Okay, no problem. Except, farmer somebody decides his date trees need water, and before they know it, the boys are clawing at the bare metal sides, trying to escape the ten feet of water he's left in the bottom. Sure, they're okay, but only so long as they keep swimming and swimming, trapped like flotsam in a fish bowl. It's a sweaty doomsday setup that comes out of nowhere.Anyway, this is the type of film that made me a fan of hardscrabble Warner Bros. of the 1930's. So catch up with it if you can.

John Garfield...The "Dead End" Kids...Claude Rains...and a wrong-man-fingered theme. Not likely ingredients for director Busby Berkeley, the master of the gaudy musical showstopper. Still, this Warner Bros. remake of 1933's "The Life Of Jimmy Dolan" is satisfying on a minor scale, despite the feeling these disparate talents could have certainly come up with something more intriguing than your average "B" programmer. Prize-fighter takes the fall when his weaselly manager accidentally kills a reporter; hiding out on a date farm in Arizona, one doesn't have wait too long before the good guy tips his hand (to a morgue worker playing amateur detective!). There are interesting asides (Garfield and the Kids finding trouble while swimming in a water tank), dumb/funny ones (the Kids bilking a twelve-year-old cadet out of his clothes and movie camera), as well as excruciating scenes (all of which involve Rains' detective with his meathead boss back in New York). The romance subplot between Garfield and rancher Gloria Dickson just squeaks by, and Garfield's wise-guy cadence is tiresome to listen to (probably because it's so artificial). However, the film looks handsome enough, is given a lively pace, and the general overacting is agreeable within this context--the slim plot being so preconceived, all we have left to respond to are the characters. **1/2 from ****