Hell’s House [Juvenile Court] ** (1932, Bette Davis, Pat O’Brien, Junior Durkin) – Classic Movie Review 11,472

Director Howard Higgin’s 1932 American Pre-Code drama Hell’s House [Juvenile Court] stars young Bette Davis (aged 24) and Pat O’Brien (aged 33), who are worth a look in this decent little low-budget programmer about a simple orphaned boy, Jimmy Mason (Junior Durkin), who is sent to taste the evils of a reformatory when he is convicted of bootlegging.

Jimmy is taken in by his Aunt Emma (Emma Dunn) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin), and meets their boarder Matt Kelly (Pat O’Brien), a bootlegger. Jimmy becomes one of Kelly’s hired hands, and when he refuses to identify Kelly in a police raid, he is sentenced to three years’ hard labour in reform school, where he befriends the sickly boy Shorty (Frank Coghlan Jr).

Davis is good but alas doesn’t have too much to do as Kelly’s girlfriend, Peggy Gardner, who contacts newspaper columnist Frank Gebhardt (Morgan Wallace), keen to expose conditions at the state industrial school. And the 17-year-old Durkin is good too, a keen young actor, full of promise.

Hell’s House (1932, Bette Davis, Pat O’Brien).

A Los Angeles distributor sued when he booked the film under both of its titles as a double bill.

Also in the cast are Frank Coghlan Jr, Emma Dunn, Charley Grapewin, Morgan Wallace, Hooper Atchley, Wallis Clark, James A Marcus, Mary Alden, and Dick Curtis.

The screenplay by Paul Gangelin and B Harrison Orkow is based on a story by Higgin, set during the waning days of the Prohibition era, attacking the evils of reform schools.

The film was shot in 13 days, and is made by B F Zeidman Productions Ltd and released by Capitol Film Exchange.

It originally was entitled Juvenile Court.

Pat O’Brien, Bette Davis and Junior Durkin in Hell’s House (1932).

It came at a low point in Bette Davis’s career. She was loaned out to B F Zeidman Productions Ltd by her studio Universal Pictures, but, after the film was finished, film studio head Carl Laemmle Jr allowed her contract to end. But help was at hand. She was about to quit Hollywood and return to New York City when George Arliss offered her the ingenue role in The Man Who Played God (1932).

The cast are Bette Davis as Peggy Gardner, Pat O’Brien as Matt Kelly, Junior Durkin as Jimmy Mason, Frank Coghlan Jr as Shorty, Emma Dunn as Aunt Emma Clark, Charley Grapewin as Uncle Henry Clark, Morgan Wallace as Frank Gebhardt, Hooper Atchley as Captain of the Guard, Wallis Clark as Judge Robinson, James A Marcus as Superintendent Charles Thompson, Mary Alden, and Dick Curtis.

Trent ‘Junior’ Durkin (July 2, 1915 – May 4, 1935) was killed in a road accident, aged 19. He starred as Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931), both with Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer. Coogan was the only survivor of the five-person car crash that killed Durkin and Coogan’s father.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,472

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Junior Durkin in Hell’s House (1932).