Crime School
1938 film by Lewis Seiler
Crime School is a 1938 American crime drama film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring the Dead End Kids, Humphrey Bogart and Gale Page. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Plot
A junk dealer does business with the Dead End Kids: Frankie, Squirt, Spike, Goofy, Fats, and Bugs. When the boys ask for a $20 payoff, he counters with an offer of only $5. Spike flies into a rage and bludgeons him in the head, knocking him unconscious. The kids are arrested and brought trial, where the judge sentences all of them to reform school after they refuse to confirm which one struck the blow.
The harsh warden of the reformatory, Morgan, inflicts discipline at the school and flogs Frankie after he tries to escape. The superintendent of the state reformatories, Mark Braden, visits the school and finds evidence of Morgan's subtle cruelty, as in feeding his new inmates poor-quality food. He then visits Frankie in the hospital ward, finding him untreated and the doctor inebriated.
The public source identifies “Crime School” as 1938 film by Lewis Seiler. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Crime, School and film.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5185218. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crime School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.