***SPOILERS*** After his mom, Mary Alden,is killed in a hit and run 15 year old orphan Jimmy Mason, Junior Durkin, is taken in by his aunt and uncle Emma Dunn & Henry Clark, Emma Clark & Charley Grapewin, in their home in the big city as their new tenant. It's there that Johnny meets local wise guy and know it all Matt Kelly, Pat O'Brian, who fills Jimmy's head with all kinds of BS about what a big as well as connected men about town he is.
The very young and impressionable Jimmy falls for Matt's bragging about himself and as a favor Matt gives Jimmy a job at his illegal booze distillery. Jimmy as Matt's personal secretary has no idea in what's going on in the place! Knowing and seeing nothing Jimmy is the perfect pasty who soon ends up getting busted in a police raid when Matt just happened to take off. It was a concerned neighbor that dropped a dime or, in the depths of the depression, nickle and tipped off the cops telling them that there's something screwy is going on in the neighborhood where Matt's distillery was located!
Caught and busted by the police and the court in refusing to snitch out Matt Jimmy ends up in a brutal reform school while Matt continues his charmed life as a bootlegger as well as him looking forward to hitch up with his girlfriend pretty Peggey Gardner, Bette Davis. While this is happening Jimmy is going through hell at the joint, the reform school, waiting for his "good friend" that he took the rap for Matt Kelly to bail him out like he promised to do.
Desperate to get in touch with Matt Jimmy writes him a letter that his friend and fellow inmate the sickly with a serious heart condition Shorty,Frank Coghlan Jr, takes on himself to smuggle out of the prison. Caught red handed with Jimmy's letter Shorty,like the good friend that he is,refuses to implicate Jimmy as the person he's trying to smuggle the letter out for and gets six days in the hole, solitary confinement, for doing it. It's in the hole that Jimmy who's now promoted as a monitor by the warden finds a barley alive Shorty who's weak heart is slowly giving out on him! Jimmy realizes, besides what he did for him, that if Shorty doesn't get help immediately he'll die from acute heart failure!
Beaking out of the reform school by hiding in a a garbage truck Jimmy makes it back home and tries to get a startled Matt, who by now completely forget about him,to get in touch with one of the big-wigs he always talks about in him getting Shorty immediate medical help before he expires which in fact he soon did! Matt the rat that he is at first tries to fake or con his way out of the situation but it's Peggy,in finally knowing what a rat fink he is, who gets him to do the right thing by having him look at himself in the mirror! And what Matt saw wasn't at all that pretty!
***SPOILERS*** Peggy finally getting Matt to call crusading newspaper editor Frank Gebhartd, Morgan Wallace, Matt is now put in the unenviable position in turning over Jimmy to the cops who are hot on his tail of fessing up and telling the truth about what a heel he is and how he sold his good friend Jimmy Mason down the river after he took the fall for him! With both Peggy and Gebhardt knocking some sense into Matt's thick skull he in the end becomes the big man as well as hero that Jimmy always thought he was. And as for Matt he finds out the hard way that he in fact does have a conscience which in the end will make a far better and kinder person, instead of the rotten lying slime-ball that he was, out of him.
The very young and impressionable Jimmy falls for Matt's bragging about himself and as a favor Matt gives Jimmy a job at his illegal booze distillery. Jimmy as Matt's personal secretary has no idea in what's going on in the place! Knowing and seeing nothing Jimmy is the perfect pasty who soon ends up getting busted in a police raid when Matt just happened to take off. It was a concerned neighbor that dropped a dime or, in the depths of the depression, nickle and tipped off the cops telling them that there's something screwy is going on in the neighborhood where Matt's distillery was located!
Caught and busted by the police and the court in refusing to snitch out Matt Jimmy ends up in a brutal reform school while Matt continues his charmed life as a bootlegger as well as him looking forward to hitch up with his girlfriend pretty Peggey Gardner, Bette Davis. While this is happening Jimmy is going through hell at the joint, the reform school, waiting for his "good friend" that he took the rap for Matt Kelly to bail him out like he promised to do.
Desperate to get in touch with Matt Jimmy writes him a letter that his friend and fellow inmate the sickly with a serious heart condition Shorty,Frank Coghlan Jr, takes on himself to smuggle out of the prison. Caught red handed with Jimmy's letter Shorty,like the good friend that he is,refuses to implicate Jimmy as the person he's trying to smuggle the letter out for and gets six days in the hole, solitary confinement, for doing it. It's in the hole that Jimmy who's now promoted as a monitor by the warden finds a barley alive Shorty who's weak heart is slowly giving out on him! Jimmy realizes, besides what he did for him, that if Shorty doesn't get help immediately he'll die from acute heart failure!
Beaking out of the reform school by hiding in a a garbage truck Jimmy makes it back home and tries to get a startled Matt, who by now completely forget about him,to get in touch with one of the big-wigs he always talks about in him getting Shorty immediate medical help before he expires which in fact he soon did! Matt the rat that he is at first tries to fake or con his way out of the situation but it's Peggy,in finally knowing what a rat fink he is, who gets him to do the right thing by having him look at himself in the mirror! And what Matt saw wasn't at all that pretty!
***SPOILERS*** Peggy finally getting Matt to call crusading newspaper editor Frank Gebhartd, Morgan Wallace, Matt is now put in the unenviable position in turning over Jimmy to the cops who are hot on his tail of fessing up and telling the truth about what a heel he is and how he sold his good friend Jimmy Mason down the river after he took the fall for him! With both Peggy and Gebhardt knocking some sense into Matt's thick skull he in the end becomes the big man as well as hero that Jimmy always thought he was. And as for Matt he finds out the hard way that he in fact does have a conscience which in the end will make a far better and kinder person, instead of the rotten lying slime-ball that he was, out of him.