Dead End

Dead End is a crime drama set in a New York City slum where poverty and wealth sit side by side. A notorious gangster known as Baby Face Martin returns to the neighborhood where he grew up, hoping to see his mother and an old girlfriend. Neither welcome is what he hoped for: his mother rejects him because of the life he has led, and the woman he once loved has fallen on hard times. A young woman named Drina is determined to keep her brother Tommy from following the same criminal path, and she turns for help to Dave, a childhood friend with ambitions of becoming an architect. The return of Martin and his associate Hunk threatens to pull Tommy into their world, and the street kids of the neighborhood drift dangerously close to the gangsters.

William Wyler directed the film, the third of the twenty-two features he made, following Dodsworth in 1936 and preceding Jezebel in 1938. Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay, adapted from Sidney Kingsley's 1935 play, and Samuel Goldwyn produced it for United Artists. Sylvia Sidney plays Drina, Joel McCrea plays Dave, and Humphrey Bogart plays Baby Face Martin, with Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor and Allen Jenkins among the credited cast of fifty-three. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from 158 votes, while critics gave it 7.2 out of 10 from 12 reviews, a close agreement between the two groups.