---
title: "Boys Town"
year: 1938
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/boys-town"
fi1m_score: 65
critics_reviews: 3
published: "2026-09-19T23:46:03.038582+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-19T23:46:03.336892+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Boys Town (1938)

Directed by Norman Taurog · 1h 36m · MPA NR · Drama

**Fi1m score: 65** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Spencer Tracy runs a town where every boy is good, apart from Mickey Rooney, who is working on it

> Spencer Tracy plays Father Flanagan with a patience that never tips into piety, and he is the reason to watch. Around him, Norman Taurog’s film about the real home for wayward boys is so eager to admire its subject that it forgets to doubt it.

## Synopsis

Nebraska. A condemned man, Dan Farrow (Leslie Fenton), tells the priest who has come to his cell that one friend at the right age would have kept him out of it. Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) takes him at his word. He borrows from the pawnbroker Dave Morris (Henry Hull), rents a house and fills it with boys nobody else wants, and when the house is not enough he buys a farm outside Omaha and builds a town on it, with a school, a chapel, a post office and a mayor elected by the boys. Into this arrives Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney), kid brother of a convicted gangster, Joe Marsh (Edward Norris), with a cigar, a sneer and no intention of staying. The smallest boy, Pee Wee (Bobs Watson), attaches himself to him anyway.

## Review

Boys Town was a real place when this film was made and it still is, and that is the first thing to know about Norman Taurog’s film. It is a portrait of Father Flanagan’s home for homeless and delinquent boys outside Omaha, and it takes the founder’s creed, that no boy is bad if given a chance, as something to be demonstrated rather than tested. It demonstrates it in 96 minutes and never once lets a boy fail. Spencer Tracy is so good that for long stretches this does not matter. When he leaves the screen, it does.

Tracy plays the priest by doing less than anyone around him. In the opening scene he sits in a cell with a condemned man, Dan Farrow (Leslie Fenton), and Farrow tells him that one friend at the right age would have kept him out of there. Sidney Wagner keeps the camera close on both men, and the speech lands not on Fenton, who is working hard, but on Tracy, who is not. We were caught off guard by it. We had settled in for a sermon and got a man deciding something in silence, and the film’s whole case is made in that minute.

Dore Schary and John Meehan’s screenplay, from a story by Schary and Eleanore Griffin, then hurries. Flanagan begs money from Dave Morris (Henry Hull), a pawnbroker who complains about every dollar and hands it over anyway, and Hull’s grumbling is the film’s best running joke. Elmo Veron runs the years past in a montage of foundations and doorways, and soon there is a town, with a chapel, a school, dormitories and a mayor elected by the boys. Wagner shoots the finished place in wide, bright, tidy frames, every lawn mown, every shirt tucked in. It looks like the brochure.

Mickey Rooney arrives around the halfway mark as Whitey Marsh, kid brother of a convicted gangster, Joe Marsh (Edward Norris), and the film changes gear. Rooney plays him with a cigar in his teeth, a hat pushed back and a line of patter that never stops, and for twenty minutes it is funny to watch him try to sneer at people who will not be sneered at. Then it goes on. Rooney has one setting, and Taurog lets him keep it long after the boy underneath should have started to show. When Whitey does change, the script hands him a crisis so large that nobody could stay hard through it, and asks us to take the rest on trust.

Bobs Watson’s Pee Wee, the smallest boy, adores Whitey on sight and is placed in front of the camera whenever the film wants us to cry. Edward Ward’s score joins in, with the boys’ choir swelling under the chapel scenes and strings under everything else. We will admit that we sniffed once, and were slightly cross with ourselves, because the film had not earned it; it had pointed a small child at us and waited. Tracy, in the same scenes, does nothing at all, and is the reason the sniff came.

Every institution has boys it fails, and this film does not have one. Tony Ponessa (Gene Reynolds), who gets about on a crutch, is there to be brave; Skinny (Martin Spellman) is there to be loyal; the judge (Addison Richards) sends Flanagan his hard cases and is glad to see the back of them; the bishop (Minor Watson) worries about the debts and is reassured. Nobody asks whether a town run by a priest and policed by its own children might have a dark corner. The film is not interested in the question, and after a while we were.

Against the other priest-and-hoodlum films of 1938, this is the gentle one. *Angels with Dirty Faces* (1938) let its boys stay dangerous and made its priest work for them; here the danger is a costume Whitey takes off. It is still worth an evening for Tracy, for Hull, and for those first ten minutes, which are as plain and serious as anything American cinema made that decade. Bring a handkerchief, and know that the film will be watching to see whether you use it.

*Fi1m score 65, published 19 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

With only 3 reviews in so far, the lean is mildly positive. The New York Times and Variety both praise Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney, and Variety in particular singles out Rooney as the film’s chief asset, finding the story balanced between humour and bitterness rather than plain hero-worship of Father Flanagan. The New York Times admires the tribute to the man and his home but warns that it comes close to sentimentality. The New Yorker is cooler, treating it as a piece of social-service drama with some underworld trimmings, and suggests that how much you get from it depends largely on how much you enjoy Rooney.

### Reviews we read (3)

- **The New York Times** (70/100, inferred): The film is a striking tribute to Father Flanagan and the institution, with strong performances by Tracy and Rooney. It is good but perilously close to being overly sentimental or goody-good. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1938/09/11/archives/these-touching-honors-reviews-in-brief.html)
- **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The film realistically portrays Father Flanagan's efforts to help wayward boys rather than offering pure praise. It is a strong tear-jerker with balanced humor and bitterness, highlighted by standout performances from Spencer Tracy and especially Mickey Rooney. [Read](https://variety.com/1937/film/reviews/boys-town-2-1200411687/)
- **The New Yorker** (50/100, inferred): The film describes life at the home founded by Father Flanagan, with the story pivoting on the bad boy's reformation. Interest depends largely on enthusiasm for Mickey Rooney, with Tracy grave as the priest and the whole presented as social service with occasional underworld elements. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1938/09/10/1938-09-10-079-tny-cards-000040335)

## Details

- **Director:** Norman Taurog
- **Director:** Norman Taurog
- **Screenplay:** Dore Schary, John Meehan
- **Story:** Dore Schary, Eleanore Griffin
- **Cinematography:** Sidney Wagner
- **Editor:** Elmo Veron
- **Music:** Edward Ward
- **Producer:** John W. Considine Jr.
- **Cast:** Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan; Mickey Rooney as Whitey Marsh; Henry Hull as Dave Morris; Leslie Fenton as Dan Farrow; Gene Reynolds as Tony Ponessa; Edward Norris as Joe Marsh; Addison Richards as Judge; Minor Watson as Bishop
- **Runtime:** 1h 36m
- **Certificate (MPA):** NR
- **Release (the US):** 9 September 1938
- **Genres:** Drama

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-19.*

Also available in: AU, BE, DK, ES, FR, GB, IT, LT, NO, RO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1939: Best Director (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Actor (won); Best Story (won)

## If you liked this

- *Angels with Dirty Faces* (1938): The same year, the same priest-and-hoodlum setup, with Cagney refusing to be saved politely
- *Captains Courageous* (1937), Fi1m 84: Tracy again, quietly turning a spoilt boy round, with a fishing boat instead of a chapel — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/captains-courageous.md)
- *Los Olvidados* (1950), Fi1m 84: Buñuel’s Mexico City delinquents; the reform school here helps nobody and the film knows it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-young-and-the-damned.md)
- *The 400 Blows* (1959), Fi1m 91: Truffaut’s boy is not bad either, and nobody gives him the chance — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-400-blows.md)
- *Short Term 12* (2013), Fi1m 86: A group home where the staff are as frightened as the children, and it admits it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/short-term-12.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/boys-town