Himself (archive footage)
Out-takes (mostly from Warner Bros.), promotional shorts, movie premieres, public service pleas, wardrobe tests, documentary material, and archival footage make up this star-studded voyeuristic look at the Golden age of Hollywood during the 30s, 40, and 50.
Ape
Steve Bell, Tommy, Pig, Ape, and String are run of town. Steve, while hopping a freight card and trying to avoid the brakeman, is killed. The boys meet Steve's mother, Alice Bell and Tommy is given a job in the storage garage which she owns jointly with Mack Steward. Steve's brother Don Bell is working with some gangsters by tipping them off on valuable merchandise that can be hijacked. Pig, Ape and String overhear Don's plans to use Tommy as the fall guy in the next hijacking.
"Greaseball" Plankett
The Dead End Kids join the war effort in this feature-length version of the Universal serial Junior G-Men of the Air. The fiendish Black Dragon Society, led by the sinister Baron (perennial B-movie villain Lionel Atwill) plots to pave the way for an Axis invasion of the U.S.A. by destroying America's defenses. When their plans are discovered by the Dead End Kids, the gang is too suspicious of "the coppers" to ask for help. The FBI send in their Junior G-Men to stop the spies, but when one of the Dead Enders is kidnapped, the two groups must work together to smash the Black Dragons once and for all!
Creaseball Plunkett
A group of street kids battle a terrorist gang led by a Japanese spy.
Ape
The 'Dead End Kids & Little Tough Guys' are working as collectors for a finance company, when they discover the company's illegal activities and try to stop them.
Butch
A bunch of waterfront youths pursue the Sea Raiders, a gang of saboteurs.
Ape
Wayward youths get out of trouble thanks to a policeman.
Ape
Kids look to get revenge when their fathers are all killed in a mob war.
Ape
Dead End Kids epic. The boys want desperately to fly, and get mixed up with crooked crop dusters, whose planes are flying deathtraps.
Lug
A gang of urban street kids and a club of suburban would-be federal agents, at first rivals, join forces to rescue the father of one of the kids, the inventor of a super-explosive and its remote detonator, from the clutches of a band of foreign subversives call the "Flaming Torch Gang". A 12-episode movie serial with the chapters: •1. Enemies Within •2. The Blast of Doom •3. Human Dynamite •4. Blazing Danger •5. Trapped By Traitors •6. Traitors' Treachery •7. Flaming Death •8. Hurled Through Space •9. The Plunge of Peril •10.The Toll of Treason •11.Descending Doom •12.The Power of Patriotism
Lug
The Dead End Kids smash a spy ring in this feature-length version of the Universal serial Junior G-Men. Billy, the leader of the Dead End Kids, learns that his scientist father has been captured by the "Order of the Flaming Torch." This group of fifth columnists plans to use America's biggest brains to destroy the country from within. When the saboteurs outwit the gang's street smarts, the kids have no choice but to ask the FBI for help. The feds send in their own teenage contingent -- The Junior G-Men! Now the two groups must form an uneasy alliance, before the Order of the Flaming Torch can turn the U.S.A. into Amerika, the Evil Empire!
Ape
The Dead End Kids are out of the slums of New York's East Side and running around the sunny valleys of California looking for a way to make a quick buck. The idea of working never enters their minds until Halop is egged on by Grey to show his capabilities. Before long, he and Hall are working on the ranch of Galli, an elderly Italian woman who treats her workers like human beings instead of animals. Galli's son disappeared as an infant, and Halop tries to convince her that he is that long lost son, thus possibly sharing in her wealth. Galli is such a good person that Halop is soon motivated by respect instead of greed, so he devises a plan to help her when truckers and a labor organization band together to keep her crops from making it to market.
Dutch (as Bernard Punsley)
The final feature in the "Dead End Kids" film series finds a youth trying to adjust to life at a military school.
Luke "Sleepy" Arkelian (as Bernard Punsley)
Um jovem recém-libertado de um reformatório se muda para um novo bairro com sua irmã, com a intenção de começar uma nova vida. No entanto, ele se envolve com o chefe da máfia local e políticos corruptos e logo se vê sendo enquadrado por um incêndio criminoso e assassinato que ele não cometeu.
Ouch
A paroled convict's efforts to improve conditions at a boys' reform school alarm the school's corrupt warden, who has been embezzling funds from the institution. He hatches a plan to derail the reformed convict's efforts and have him sent back to prison, and part of that scheme involves cracking down hard on the reform school's inmates.
Milt
A boxer flees, believing he has committed a murder while he was drunk.
Hunky
Rocky (James Cagney) e Jerry (Pat O'Brien) são dois amigos de infância que viviam em um bairro barra-pesada de Nova York. Depois de crescidos, eles tomam rumos bem diferentes: Rocky se torna um famoso gângster e Jerry um padre engajado. As crianças da vizinhança idolatram o criminoso, mas perdem um pouco de respeito depois que ele cede aos pedidos de Jerry para não fazer uma execução. O caminho dos dois vai se cruzar, assim como seus interesses diversos.
Ape
The son of a man sentenced to death for a murder he didn't commit vows to become a criminal himself. He starts his own street gang, and their crime spree is financed by a mysterious young man--who turns out to be the son of the District Attorney who sent the boy's father to the electric chair.
George "Fats" Papadopolous
In the slums, teenager Frankie Warren hangs out with a rowdy gang who one day knock him out in a fight. In court, the boys refuse to reveal who struck the knockout blow, and all are subsequently sentenced to a reformatory, cruelly run by two corrupt guards. New deputy commissioner Mark Braden arrives determined to change things, but despite the help of Frankie's sister, Mark's reform plans -- and Frankie's future -- may be sabotaged from within.
Milty
O mafioso "Baby Face" Martin volta para casa para visitar o bairro de Nova York onde cresceu, encontrando sua mãe, que o rejeita por causa de seu estilo de vida de gângster, e sua antiga namorada, Francey, agora uma prostituta sifilítica. Martin também cruza o caminho de Dave, um amigo de infância que luta para se tornar um arquiteto, e os Dead End Kids, uma gangue de garotos vagando pelas ruas das favelas do East Side da cidade.