Live Wires (1946)

This initial entry in Monogram's Bowery Boys series is also the second remake of the 1933 film He Couldn't Take It (the original script was by no less than Dore Schary, billed for reasons best known to himself as Jeb Schary). Leo Gorcey stars as Slip Mahoney, a pugnacious type whose volatile temper loses him one job after another. Slip's sister Mary (Pamela Blake), secretary to construction executive Sayers (John Eldredge), persuades her boss to use his influence to get Slip a job as a process server. After successfully repossessing a car belonging to nightclub thrush Jeannette (Claudia Drake), Slip and his fellow "skip tracer" Sach Jones (Huntz Hall) endeavor to serve a subpoena to homicidal gangster Patsy Clark (Mike Mazurki). Though the boys get quite a going over from the "playful" Patsy, they not only successfully complete their mission, but also prove that the supposedly respectable Sayers is a criminal mastermind. Essentially a vehicle for Leo Gorcey, Live Wires pushes the rest of the Bowery Boys (Bobby Jordan, Billy Benedict et. al.) into the background; it wasn't until the second series entry In Fast Company that the former "East Side Kids" truly became a team again. Bernard Gorcey, who later played sweet-shop owner Louie Dumbrowski, is seen herein as a small-time gambler. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi