OVP: Boys Town (1938)

Film: Boys Town (1938)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Full, Leslie Fenton, Bobs Watson

Director: Norman Taurog

Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy*, Adapted Screenplay, Original Story*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In the 1930's & 40's, it was quite popular (particularly with the Academy) to honor films that featured devout religious figures in major roles.  This isn't something entirely out-of-the-ordinary for Oscar, who has throughout the decades showered biblical epics like The Robe and The Ten Commandments and (most notably) Ben-Hur with nominations, but the films of this kind in the early Classical Hollywood period weren't plucked from the Old Testament-they were simply about religious men & women and the mundane (or not so mundane) aspects of their own lives.  The peak of this was arguably 1944/1945's one-two punch of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, both of which were nominated for Best Picture (the former won) & made mountains of cash at the box office.  Less-than-a-decade earlier, though, was 1938's Boys Town, also cited for Best Picture and winning Spencer Tracy his second (and last) Oscar for Best Actor.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Father Flanagan (Tracy), a real-life figure who believes "there's no such thing as a bad boy," and is intent on proving it by starting a sanctuary for troubled youth called Boys Town, where the young men who live there have their own government & judicial system, where they disperse their own punishments.  This seems to work, but Father Flanagan encounters considerable trouble when Whitey Marsh (Rooney) joins the school; his brother is in prison for murder, and Whitey is sent there against his will.  When he stays, he decides to prove Father Flanagan wrong, running for "Mayor of Boys Town" under a rebellious campaign, trying to wheel-and-deal his way to power to show up Father Flanagan, but it doesn't work & he leaves.  As he's departing, though, the little boy named Pee Wee (Watson) who has been following Rooney around for the whole movie, is struck by a car.  Whitey is horrified, thinking Pee Wee might die, and he runs back to see his brother, who accidentally shoots him & swears him to secrecy on a robbery he's witnessed, a secrecy that could doom Boys Town.  As one would expect, Whitey doesn't keep the secret & instead saves Boys Town, and becomes its mayor.

The film, as I mentioned above, is reminiscent of later films like Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, which...isn't a compliment coming from me.  Those two films are striking not just because they were so commercially & critically popular, but because they're essentially about nothing.  Each film is just a series of vignettes with no character growth & a minimal amount of strife enjoyed by the main characters. Boys Town isn't that, though it does threaten to become that in the first half hour focused on Father Flanagan.  Whitey is a lot of things, but consistent is not one of them, and when he comes in, it's clear we'll get a cliched arc, but the film itself is going to be about Whitey's story, making it an easier film to sit through than the Bing Crosby pictures.

That being said, Boys Town isn't particularly good.  Filled with cliches, a lot of it is going to be dependent on how allergic you are to the shoot-for-the-rafters appeal of Mickey Rooney.  Rooney is not an actor that I can really subscribe to.  If you want to use the parlance of current meme culture he "understood the assignment," but only because most films required him to be Mickey Rooney.  There's no part of the film where he isn't playing Rooney, which doesn't really work for Boys Town's street tough.  You won't really buy that Rooney, America's boy next door (and at this point in his career, pretty much exclusively Andy Hardy) is the younger brother of a small-time crook, or that someone so easily bamboozled has an ounce of street smarts.  Rooney gives the film some oxygen, but it's mostly hot air.

That being said, he's considerably more watchable than Spencer Tracy.  I've talked on this blog about my aversion to Tracy before, but I wouldn't really put Rooney & Tracy in the same category of actor.  Rooney always played himself, and I have yet to find the role that feels like he's genuinely stretching himself or adding a new dimension to the part he's playing.  But Spencer Tracy can act, he just usually plays the same version of the same curmudgeon.  Father Flanagan is a kindlier, gentler role for Tracy, but it's also one of the dullest parts I've seen him bring to the screen.  Spencer Tracy is a lot of things, but he's definitely not an actor who lacks stature in his role (I often use the word "sturdy" to describe him), but here Father Flanagan feels flat beyond words.  Tracy has a wry twinkle he can give him, but that's hardly great acting, and it's weird to think a man who would play such a specific type onscreen (and be nominated for nine Oscars in the process) won his second Academy Award for such a nothing performance.