During the course of the second manifestation for Leo Gorcey's mini-mob players, the East Side Kids, who followed the Dead End Kids, while preceding the Bowery Boys, producer Sam Katzman hired veteran director William Beaudine for the East Side series due to his established success at leading movie youngsters and this quite effective Monogram release is the initial effort with Beaudine at the helm. The mother of young Muggs McGinnis (Gorcey) shares with him a letter received from his late father's close friend, "Uncle" Pete, a wealthy Texan, in which Pete tells of an impending visit by him and his daughter Judy to the McGinnis home in New York where the rancher expects to meet for the first time the five brothers and the sister Annabelle of Muggs, non-existent siblings invented by the widow McGinnis in order to receive Pete's financial support over many years. Muggs conscripts his East Side roustabout cohorts as his family, with Glimpy (Huntz Hall) dressed as Annabelle, and when Uncle Pete and Judy arrive in New York, confused jollity ensues, until a local thug plots to expose the impersonation as a means of obtaining some of Pete's wealth for himself. The film, produced with a virtually non-existent budget, has a virtually non-existent script, as well, with ad libbing contributed by most of the cast, notably Gorcey with his rather fascinating employment of malapropisms, all very compatible to Beaudine's loose-reined directorial mode. His relaxed methods must also take responsibility for some ragged performing, and there is need for more efficient editing, but this comedic affair eschews the wonted wartime jingoism that marks the series, and Hall is enormously and unexpectedly hilarious in his gender bending role, joining the other members of the cast in patent enjoyment of playing in this entry.
Review of Clancy Street Boys
