Boys Town

Boys Town is a drama about Father Edward Flanagan, a priest who believes no child is inherently bad. Moved by the story of a condemned young man who says he turned to crime because he never had a friend, Flanagan opens a home for troubled and orphaned boys in Nebraska. Rather than treating them as young criminals, he lets the residents govern themselves, make their own rules, and decide their own punishments. The project survives on donations and faces opposition from those who doubt it can work. Its hardest test arrives in the form of Whitey Marsh, a stubborn petty thief and pool hustler whose older brother is a gang leader serving time for murder. Whitey resists Flanagan's approach and his presence threatens the home's survival.

Norman Taurog directed the film, the fifth of the fourteen features he made in chronological order, following Reunion and preceding The Beginning or the End. Spencer Tracy plays Father Flanagan, with Mickey Rooney as Whitey Marsh; Henry Hull, Leslie Fenton, Gene Reynolds and Edward Norris appear in supporting roles. Dore Schary and John Meehan wrote the screenplay, and John W. Considine Jr. produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly 6,900 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 from about 109 votes. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from 22 reviews places it slightly above the audience score on TMDB, though it runs close to the IMDb figure.