Actor Darryl Hickman died in 2024 and was one of those people honored in TCM's end of the year night of movies of people who died during the year without getting a more traditional programming tribute. The film they picked for Hickman was one I hadn't seen before, Fighting Father Dunne.
The movie opens up yet again with an establishing scene leading to a flashback. Well, not quite, as even before that there's explanatory information about how good the boys who deliver newspapers today (1948) have it compared to the boys who stood on the street corner hawking papers back in the day. Responsible for that was, in part, Father Dunne. Only then do we go to the settlement house Dunne ran, which is portrayed as having two footprints on the front step, and a man who as a boy had lived in the settlement house wanting that bit of concrete saved as the building is undergoing renovations. Cue the flashback to why this man might want those footprints....
We flash back to St. Louis in 1905. Selling newspapers in those days is portrayed as being like On the Waterfront, where you have to muscle your way to the front to get newspapers to sell, and other people will try to stop you by force if necessary. Worse is that a circulation war is going on, leading to more violence. One cold winter's day, a couple of the boys seek out the help of Fr. Dunne (Pat O'Brien). The two boys and their friend are living in what looks like a cardboard crate in back of the stables. The friend has gotten sick so can't sell newspapers and the other two don't know what to do.
Fr. Dunne visits the sick kid and is unsurprisingly horrified by what he sees. So he takes the three kids back to the rectory and makes certain they get a hot meal and a place to stay for the night, even though he doesn't have much money. You'd think he could trot these kids out at his next Sunday Mass and get his parishioners to fill the collection with money or goods to help look after these kids. But as it is, Dunne has to make do with his sister Kate (Ruth Donnelly) who is the rectory housekeeper and her husband Emmett (Charles Kemper) with what he can bring in.
The kids continue to sell papers when they can, while Fr. Dunne is eventually able to find an empty place for the kids. Not that he can afford the rent on it. But he's got a charismatic personality, so he's able to use that to convince everybody he meets to contribute to his cause in one way or another, most notably wealthy Mr. O'Donnell (Arthur Shields, sounding mighty like Barry Fitzgerald since he was in real life Barry's kid brother) or Miss O'Rourke (Una O'Connor) who lives across the way from the first settlement house and becomes a sort of house mother since she's got time for it.
Hickman comes in later as Matt Davis. Matt is one of a trio of kids who steal a pony and cart from Mr. O'Donnell. The other two get caught by the police while Matt is able to escape. Fr. Dunne brings the other two back to the settlement house, and when Matt sees that they've got a much cushier life now, he decides to break his way into. Part of the point of the house is to try to reform the kids since they have to turn to petty crime just to survive. Matt eventually graduates and acts like he's been reformed and is making a good enough living, but that's just a lie, as he's turned to a life of crime that turns tragic when he shoots a cop.
It's no wonder that I and a bunch of the reviewers I read compare Fighting Father Dunne to Boys Town. The movie isn't terrible, but it certainly feels derivative and predictable since we all know where Boys Town went. Pat O'Brien and the supporting cast all do a professional job with the material they're give. But there's a reason Fighting Father Dunne isn't well remembered today, which is because it doesn't quite stack up to Boys Town.
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