Gang Boy

One of the movies I watched off the DVR recently was programmed in a longer block that allowed time for a longer short, which is how I got to see Gang Boy.

The premise is that the otherwise nice town of Pomona, CA, has a problem with juvenile delinquency, just like all the Anytowns, USA that can bee seen in the RKO Screenliner Teenagers on Trial that I've mentioned. In Pomona, however, it's reached a crisis point, with rumblings that there's going to be a big rumble between the two main gangs, one white Anglo and one Mexican-American. The police approach the head of the Mexican gang, Danny, and ask him for help, leading him to flash back to how he got into this situation....

A decade earlier, when he was about 10, Danny and the other Mexican kids his age were doing the sorts of things boys that age do, except that they had no direction from any good male role models, so they started taking more risks. It led some of them to form a more serious gang, as also happened with the white kids. Things escalated, and nobody knew a way out. Danny would like to change, but he doesn't know how, and even if he does, the white gang may not give the Mexicans a minute's peace.

Gang Boy is an earnest short that is trying to make points about a serious social issue, although I wonder how closely it resembled reality as it was at the time (the short was made in 1954). The production values are what you'd expect for something made on the cheap, with all the dialog done in post-production and a scene that's very obviously a dummy instead of a real person. The culture is also quite faded. Still, it's interesting and worth a look.

It looks like it's currently on Youtube here; I don't know if it's an extra on DVD anywhere.