Low-budget "Boys Town" gets points for effort

Wrigley Field - 42nd Place & Avalon Blvd., Los Angeles, California, USA

Richard Carlson, Frank Morgan, and Jean Rogers in A Stranger in Town (1943)

James Craig, Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins, and Dorothy Patrick in Boys' Ranch (1946)

James Craig, Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins, Sharon McManus, and Dorothy Patrick in Boys' Ranch (1946)

Ray Collins, James Craig, and Minor Watson in Boys' Ranch (1946)

Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins in Boys' Ranch (1946)

Jackie &apos;Butch&apos; Jenkins

James Craig

Skip Homeier

William Ludwig

Baseball player Dan Walker being benched doesn&apos;t bother him as it allows him to make the easy decision to be a full time Texas rancher - his goal to own his own ranch - and be at home with his wife and daughter, Susan and Mary. Th...

Roy Rowland

Boys&apos; Ranch

Low-budget &quot;Boys Town&quot; gets points for effort

The parallels between &apos;Boys&apos; Ranch&apos; and &apos;Boys Town&apos; are certainly far more than coincidental. Both the Ranch and the Town start out as a new way to take care of the flotsam and jetsam of boys who need guidance and a place to live. Both are riding on the success of the place to secure funding for their continued existence. Both have a strong male authority figure who cares about kids, a bad kid who nearly spoils everything for everyone else, a cute little kid who is supposed to tug at our heartstrings, and in both films the bad kid redeems himself at the end for a happy conclusion to the story.

TCM showed this film and the on-screen rating (with Dish network) gave it only one star out of four. Okay, this is not a great movie, but really - I think &apos;one star&apos; should be reserved for badly dubbed low budget import films, or the worst of the last of the Bowery Boys, trash like that. This film while far from a masterpiece at least deserves two stars for making an honest effort of it. The parts are played in earnest, the scenes are decently set; it is better than a one-star film. 

A few of the young actors stand out for one reason or another. The youngest of these, Butch Jenkins, was a fairly popular child star. Well he sure didn&apos;t get that way from his performance in &apos;Boys Ranch&apos;... you can almost see him reading his lines, his performance is so wooden. Far from &apos;cute&apos;, here he is annoying and nothing else. Darryl Hickman as one of the better boys gave his usual workmanlike performance. The real standout of the cast is Skippy Homeier who went on to a long career playing supporting characters, mostly as bad guys in Westerns. Here he&apos;s a rather nasty and cynical kid, the approximate equivalent of Mickey Rooney&apos;s &quot;Whitey Marsh&quot; in &apos;Boys Town&apos;. Near the end of the movie he has a change of heart and soon all ends well. With as large a role in the film as anyone, Homeier takes the prize for best actor. His best moment may be another take on Whitey Marsh, when Skippy (and that is also his name in the film) breaks down and cries when it seems his actions are going to spell an end to the Boys Ranch. He does a good job of that scene and quite to the opposite end of the scale from the &quot;Butch Jenkins&quot; I-am-reading-my-lines performance given by the younger boy who got higher billing. Homeier was the star of this film - period. Was that ad line about a &quot;lovable, thrillable star&quot; referring to Butch Jenkins? They had to be kidding!

In all, this is a wholesome late-40&apos;s family movie, admittedly a little duller than it could have been, but still worthy of more than just one star. You could do a hundred times worse by leaving on Sponge Bob.

The parallels between 'Boys' Ranch' and 'Boys Town' are certainly far more than coincidental. Both the Ranch and the Town start out as a new way to take care of the flotsam and jetsam of boys who need guidance and a place to live. Both are riding on the success of the place to secure funding for their continued existence. Both have a strong male authority figure who cares about kids, a bad kid who nearly spoils everything for everyone else, a cute little kid who is supposed to tug at our heartstrings, and in both films the bad kid redeems himself at the end for a happy conclusion to the story.

TCM showed this film and the on-screen rating (with Dish network) gave it only one star out of four. Okay, this is not a great movie, but really - I think 'one star' should be reserved for badly dubbed low budget import films, or the worst of the last of the Bowery Boys, trash like that. This film while far from a masterpiece at least deserves two stars for making an honest effort of it. The parts are played in earnest, the scenes are decently set; it is better than a one-star film. 

A few of the young actors stand out for one reason or another. The youngest of these, Butch Jenkins, was a fairly popular child star. Well he sure didn't get that way from his performance in 'Boys Ranch'... you can almost see him reading his lines, his performance is so wooden. Far from 'cute', here he is annoying and nothing else. Darryl Hickman as one of the better boys gave his usual workmanlike performance. The real standout of the cast is Skippy Homeier who went on to a long career playing supporting characters, mostly as bad guys in Westerns. Here he's a rather nasty and cynical kid, the approximate equivalent of Mickey Rooney's "Whitey Marsh" in 'Boys Town'. Near the end of the movie he has a change of heart and soon all ends well. With as large a role in the film as anyone, Homeier takes the prize for best actor. His best moment may be another take on Whitey Marsh, when Skippy (and that is also his name in the film) breaks down and cries when it seems his actions are going to spell an end to the Boys Ranch. He does a good job of that scene and quite to the opposite end of the scale from the "Butch Jenkins" I-am-reading-my-lines performance given by the younger boy who got higher billing. Homeier was the star of this film - period. Was that ad line about a "lovable, thrillable star" referring to Butch Jenkins? They had to be kidding!

In all, this is a wholesome late-40's family movie, admittedly a little duller than it could have been, but still worthy of more than just one star. You could do a hundred times worse by leaving on Sponge Bob.

Baseball player Dan Walker being benched doesn't bother him as it allows him to make the easy decision to be a full time Texas rancher - his goal to own his own ranch - and be at home with his wife and daughter, Susan and Mary. The one thing Dan will miss about not being a ball player is the casual friendship he has with a bunch of disadvantaged boys at his team's ballpark. Without knowing their full stories, Dan could always manage to get a few of them into the ballpark to watch games for free. When Dan learns that two of them, Skippy and Hank, will be sent to reform school, with the probable outcome being they growing up to be adult criminals due to that experience, Dan feels he has no choice but to take the two with him to Texas to try to get them jobs on ranches. Dan learns both that city boys being thrown into the deep end in ranching duties doesn't sit well with the locals, and that there are just as many disadvantaged boys in the country as there are in the city, they who just want three square meals they can call their own. Dan is able to convince his initially reluctant fellow ranchers to donate property and seed funds for a pilot project for a boys' ranch where they can raise their own food, have a roof over their heads, have some proper, caring adult guidance, and get a decent education in the process, the ranchers who only agree on the condition that Dan manage the ranch. With the ranch up, running and thriving, Susan worries most about a younger boy named Butch Taylor who doesn't seem to have ever learned how to be a real boy, while Dan has to worry about Skippy, who doesn't respond to authority, who just wants to live on his own rules, and who only understands what money can do in whatever manner he can get it. As such, Skippy may threaten the pilot moving into a permanent situation, one where all the other boys are responding in this supportive environment.

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