User Reviews

Audie stars as the bad boy of the title, a youngster who has a history of crime and violence. His salvation is Lloyd Nolan, who runs a Variety Club Ranch for boys who are in trouble with the law. Nolan's goal is to help all the young men by teaching them a trade and giving them an opportunity to earn an education. Audie proves to be a hard nut to crack and he remains aloof and withdrawn.

The boys at the ranch make Audie an outcast, but Nolan tries to dig into his past to find a reason for his bad behaviour. As Nolan digs, Audie continues on with his criminal ways, stealing a gun and robbing a local store. Ultimately Nolan uncovers Audie's secret, the boy believes he accidentally murdered his mother. Nolan's probe reveals that Audie is mistaken and his mother died from natural causes. However, by this time, Audie finds himself in another terrible jam with the police. Can Nolan reach Audie before the police end his criminal ways for good.

The film takes a sober, no punches pulled approach. This works rather well as the viewer is never sure if Audie will be rehabilitated or if he will be shot down in a blaze of bullets. Bad Boy is certainly not a masterpiece, but it is a well made, entertaining B' crime film. On a final note, the cast is quite good, especially Nolan as the serious but caring ranch owner, who the boys call "Coach".

What makes this true story so good was that Lloyd Nolan never gave up on the Audie Murphy character in this 1949 film. He kept seeking why he was unable to make headway with Murphy at the camp for wayward youth.

He comes upon an unusual story where Murphy thought that the medicine he gave his mother had actually caused her demise.

By the age of 17, the Murphy character, was a career criminal on his way to at least 20 years in jail, and on the route to a killing.

Jane Wyatt plays the sympathetic wife of Nolan and James Gleason is absolutely wonderful as Nolan's assistant who is ready to kick Murphy in the rear end.

This story of ultimate redemption was quite good. Sociologists would have a field day with it.

In his initial narration about the character played by Audie Murphy, good deed doer Lloyd Nolan insists that Murphy ain't no typical Bowery boy. Indeed, he seems to have come from a good family, but for some reason, his sister and father have written him off when he becomes involved in the robbery of gamblers in a nightclub backroom. Murphy is admonished by judge Selena Royle who doesn't believe he can be reformed, and is sentenced to six months in a reform school to be turned over for the remainder of his 20 year sentence to an adult prison. But noble Nolan (who runs a farm for teen boys gone wrong) feels that he can help rehabilitate Murphy and convinces the cynical judge to let him try. Murphy instantly hits it off with Nolan's kind hearted wife (Jane Wyatt) but doesn't get along with Nolan, assistant James Gleason or any of the other boys whom he attempts to bully. It's only with Wyatt's patience that they begin to learn the truth (according to the script) of Murphy's past which has him accused of being responsible for his mother's death by his family.

Well intended, this B teen drama tries too hard in showing that there's really no such thing as a bad boy, just a misunderstood one, and if you dig hard enough, you'll find out why he's turned out the way he has. It doesn't have anything to do with their background, whom they hang out with or even anything wrong with them mentally. It's all about the family atmosphere. Murphy is drawn to Wyatt because he seems to have a motherly complex, a ton of guilt for what he believed he did, and a strong resentment to fatherly like authority figures. After a while, it gets a bit too much. Nevertheless, you can see the star quality in Murphy as an actor, even if the writing surround his character is overly cliched and overly sympathetic. Gleason, often the comedy relief, does get some good moments to be funny, but his best moments come when he is standing up as the seemingly weak old man who can really take care of himself and when he makes observations of what he feels about the kids in his charge. In her big scene as the judge, Royle gets delightfully huffy over Murphy's obvious disrespect towards her, screaming at him simply by him constantly stroking his perfectly combed hair. Nolan and Wyatt are appropriately sincere, with Nolan obviously irritated by Murphy's initial disrespect of him, but they are given some of the most unrealistic material in the script. Considering this was made by Allied Artists around the same time they were producing the Bowery Boys series, I consider this the anti-Bowery Boys film where the surface good manners and speaking grammar replace the fun malapropisms of Slip and Sach in that long running series.