The Dead End Kids

Consisting of various teams of young actors, "The Dead End Kids" made 89 films and three serials for four different studios during their 21-year-long film career. Its most prominent members were Billy Halop, Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey.

One notable aspect of the group's history is their transition from stark drama to comedy. When they began, in Dead End and their other early films, their characters were serious, gritty, genuinely menacing young hoodlums. But, by the height of their career, their movies were comedies, with the Kids depicted as low-class but basically harmless, likable teens - comic caricatures of their former selves.