Angels Wash Their Faces

Billy, Huntz, Leo and other scrappy kids of slum-ridden Beale Street have gone and done it. They've won the Boys Week competition and the right to hold honorary offices as mayor, police chief and the like. With the help of an earnest deputy D.A., the gang aims to use their symbolic powers to free a wrongly jailed pal and bring down an arson racket that's blighting the neighborhood. The Dead End Kids return in a comedy-drama that revisits the cinematic neighborhood of Angels with Dirty Faces, although it is not strictly a sequel. Twenty-eight-year-old Ronald Reagan portrays the idealistic junior D.A., joining Ann Sheridan in the third of five feature pairings that would conclude with their landmark Kings Row.

• crime
• drama