Considerable time is spent in the first part to show just how much on the crooked path the kids in this film are. They steal, run a protection racket, and beat people up in search of extra loot. When caught you get a look at their home lives through their parents when they go to court - largely doormat mothers and either brutal or permanently inebriated fathers. The naive judge thinks that sending them to reform school will therefore be helpful. It is not.
The place is run by a crooked administrator, Thompson (Dudley Digges) who is lining his pockets with the money allocated for food for the kids. As a result the kids get inadequate and substandard nourishment considering the labor they put in each day.
And then HE shows up - Patsy (James Cagney). He's a gangster who manages to keep himself semi legit by delivering blocks of voters to political campaigns. So he gets a political appointment as overseer of the reform school as a reward for his performance in the last election. Thus Patsy doesn't really plan to do any real digging or reforming here except for two things - He rather identifies with the boys at the school, and in particular angry ringleader Jimmy (Frankie Darro), and he is attracted to the reform school's nurse (Madge Evans) who has specific ideas about changing the school that involve self government.
I watched this wondering if this was some kind of test case to see how Cagney would do in a production code role - The suits at Warner HAD to see the stiffening of standards coming down the pike - and Cagney had usually played gangsters and con artists, although they were guys the audience could relate to and sympathize with. This would have to change with the changing standards. However there is a scene towards the end that would not have been allowed under the code, and in fact, that scene is gone in the 1938 remake "Crime School" with Bogart in a role similar to Cagney's in this film.
The place is run by a crooked administrator, Thompson (Dudley Digges) who is lining his pockets with the money allocated for food for the kids. As a result the kids get inadequate and substandard nourishment considering the labor they put in each day.
And then HE shows up - Patsy (James Cagney). He's a gangster who manages to keep himself semi legit by delivering blocks of voters to political campaigns. So he gets a political appointment as overseer of the reform school as a reward for his performance in the last election. Thus Patsy doesn't really plan to do any real digging or reforming here except for two things - He rather identifies with the boys at the school, and in particular angry ringleader Jimmy (Frankie Darro), and he is attracted to the reform school's nurse (Madge Evans) who has specific ideas about changing the school that involve self government.
I watched this wondering if this was some kind of test case to see how Cagney would do in a production code role - The suits at Warner HAD to see the stiffening of standards coming down the pike - and Cagney had usually played gangsters and con artists, although they were guys the audience could relate to and sympathize with. This would have to change with the changing standards. However there is a scene towards the end that would not have been allowed under the code, and in fact, that scene is gone in the 1938 remake "Crime School" with Bogart in a role similar to Cagney's in this film.