Boys Town

“"No boy is bad, if given a chance!"”

Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) runs a Nebraska home that treats its boys as kids to be raised, not criminals to be locked up, and nobody can say yet whether that holds against a boy like Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney). Whitey is a pool shark and petty thief, and his older brother sits in prison for murder. Norman Taurog keeps the camera on the boy's hard stare and the priest's patient, unmoving face.