Smart Alecks

Short of funds to buy baseball uniforms, the East Side Kids are forced to go to work for their crooked ex-pal Hank (Gabriel Dell). When Hank's fugitive mentor Butch Brocalli (Max Rosenbloom) shows up to make trouble, gang member Danny (Bobby Jordan) is instrumental in Butch's arrest, earning a big reward in the process. Danny intends to suprise his pals by buying the uniforms himself, but Mugs (Leo Gorcey) wrongly assumes Danny wants to hoard all the money for himself. Mugs and the rest of the gang force Danny to turn over the dough, whereupon they buy a beat-up car. But when Danny is seriously injured by the escaping Brocalli, the kids offer to sell the car to pay for an operation. Kindly brain surgeon Dr. Ornsby (Walter Woolf King) sizes up the situation and straightens things out to the satisfaction of everyone. The East Side Kids are at their most contentious and least appealing in this second-rate entry, while Maxie Rosenbloom, usually a comic actor, is sorely miscast as the villain.