Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

Fay Fetick

First National Pictures’ Wild Boys of the Road starts out in slapstick mode, as two couples attend the sophomore dance at the local high school. They’re making out in the back seat, stealing gas for an appropriately rundown teenage car, and their biggest worry is how to sneak Tommy into the dance because he can’t afford the entrance fee. A short time later, Tommy and Eddie are members of America’s poor youth, traveling across the country illegally on freight trains and living in tent cities while they attempt to find work.

The movie presents an individual story of a very real historical situation; thousands of children ran away to ease the burden on their struggling families during the Great Depression. The frightening reality of this movie is that the economy could force any middle-class family into financial turmoil in a relatively brief amount of time. Death of a parent, the closing of a local factory, and accumulating bills were realistic problems which Tommy’s and Eddie’s families faced. Once the boys run away, the dangers of this lifestyle—rape of young women, train accidents, legal trouble, sickness, and starvation—contrast with the relatively carefree introduction of the film. Given the early 1930s time frame, it is also interesting that the youth do not seem to discriminate based on gender or race for membership in their forsaken group. There are black and white teens living side by side in these sewer tunnels and city dumps, and Eddie and Tommy’s trio is rounded out by a female traveler, Sally.

This movie attempts to evoke pity for an undesirable, forgotten, and misunderstood segment of the population by emphasizing their commonplace backgrounds and desire to find upstanding work. As Eddie says, “there are thousands like us.” In the end, a juvenile court judge shows that a little sympathy and generosity goes a long way towards making a difference, providing the teens with a long absent emotion—hope. Though the slight upturn at the end of the film is nice for the viewer, it seems overly hopeful, as one cannot simply forget the plight of these homeless youth after a few kind words in the last scene.