Kick-Back Friday: #48

With director William Wyler, DP Gregg Toland, screenwriter Lillian Hellman, and Humphrey Bogart, Dead End (1937) is perhaps, astonishingly, a film that is less than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, Wyler—with a fine ensemble cast (including the stage play's original "Dead End" kids)—effectively recreates a highly theatric, claustrophic corner of Manhattan, a place where slum met urban renewal in the early 20th century.

P.S. It took me forever to place a young Ward Bond as the doorman, maybe because Dead End is not a western.