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Perfect cast and a good story

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I'm probably rating the film higher than I should, but I had fun watching it and it works for me. John Garfield played these kinds of characters, men on the wrong side of the law, so well...and he seems to represent the down-on-his-luck hero better than most actors of his generation. In this picture, he goes on the lam thinking himself responsible for a murder he didn't actually commit. He winds up in Arizona at a ranch owned and operated by May Robson and her granddaughter (Gloria Dickson), which also happens to serve as a place to rehabilitate delinquent teens (played by the Dead End Kids). This gives Garfield a chance to mentor the kids, teaching them about how to be a wiseacre hero and providing them with a few boxing lessons. Sometimes it's hard to figure out in their scenes together if Garfield is the central character, or if the kids are...but their interactions are always entertaining.While Garfield's character is on this journey down in Arizona, he finds greater purpose in life. He also finds love with Dickson, though their romance is not without problems. She doesn't seem to believe in him, especially when he's taken the boys swimming and one of them almost drowns but doesn't thanks to his quick thinking. Of course, Dickson and her grandmother eventually learn what really happened, and he is soon back in their good graces. Probably Garfield's own reformation succeeds because it's defined by his relationship with the kids and the women, and in a way, he's rehabilitating all of them. There are no real surprises in the film, and the story seems to go in a predictable direction. But that's a good thing. All of the characters (and the actors that portray them) are tough and brutally honest with each other, which is refreshing. THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL is a reworking of an earlier Warner Brothers picture called THE LIFE OF JIMMY DOLAN that starred Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta Young. The earlier version had Aline MacMahon in Robson's role and younger kids, and it had a certain charm-- but it didn't have what this version has...and that's grit.

This was John Garfield's second film following hard on the heels of his debut in Four Daughters (in which Claude Rains was much better cast as a father than he is here as Javert with an American accent). Inexplicably Ann Sheridan, a natural foil for Garfield and an actress who revelled in low-key dialog ("you couldn't even afford the headlights" was her come- back to the diner who observed 'some chassis' in They Drive By Night) and would certainly have matched Garfield crack for crack, is written out in the second reel leaving Gloria Dickson - a fine actress but no match for Sheridan in trading dialog - as the love interest. The plot's a tad predictable but this was 1939 and audiences were more than happy with a mixture of cliché and sentiment provided it was pacey and punchy and this delivers on both counts.

It's a Warner Bros. production, in spades—from Garfield to the gritty subject matter to the seedy surroundings. If MGM was the glamour studio, Warner's was the no-nonsense Plain Jane. Here boxing champ Johnnie (Garfield) hobos it to the California desert to escape a New York murder rap. There he hooks up with tough blonde (Dickson) and her juvenile delinquent date pickers (Gorcey, et. al.). Trouble is that Detective Phelin (Rains) won't give up the chase, and now Johnnie's in a pickle he can't fight his way out of.Okay, nothing unusual about the plot, except maybe the setting. Nevertheless, director Busby Berkeley manages to blend the elements into a good gritty little tale. Well, that's except for the fight scenes, which prove Berkeley was better at arranging dancers than boxers. Even so, he makes maybe the best use of that ragamuffin outfit that would become the Bowery Boys that I've seen. Even the usually buffoonish Huntz Hall is under firm control. But maybe the biggest challenge was getting aristocratic Claude Rains to impersonate a street wise New York cop, of all things. Fortunately, that excellent actor pulls it off better than expected. And, of course, there's the great Garfield showing why his brand of feisty urban grit was so perfect for the times. Then there's the one scene that still has me sweating. Johnnie and the boys are cooling off inside a big water-filled irrigation tank. Okay, no problem. Except, farmer somebody decides his date trees need water, and before they know it, the boys are clawing at the bare metal sides, trying to escape the ten feet of water he's left in the bottom. Sure, they're okay, but only so long as they keep swimming and swimming, trapped like flotsam in a fish bowl. It's a sweaty doomsday setup that comes out of nowhere.Anyway, this is the type of film that made me a fan of hardscrabble Warner Bros. of the 1930's. So catch up with it if you can.

Busby Berkeley directs this drama that features an element of crime mixed with drama and some humor. A feel good flick that holds interest. John Garfield plays a young champion prizefighter that is led to believe he murdered a reporter in a drunken brawl; so he high steps it out of town. He heads west and stops in Arizona taking refuge on a ranch run by Ann Sheridan and staffed by the Dead End Kids featuring Leo Gorcey and Billy Halop. The gang convinces the boxer on the run to enter a prizefight to win stakes for a future gasoline station. But spoiling a good thing is detective Claude Rains, who recognizes the champ and is set to take him back. A nice escape back to days gone by.