Leo Bernard Gorcey

Background

Gorcey was born on June 3, 1917, in New York City, the son of Bernard Gorcey, an actor, and Josephine Gorcey.

Education

Gorcey left school to become an apprentice in his uncle's plumbing shop in Manhattan.

Career

In 1935, Gorcey's father encouraged him to try out for a part in Sidney Kingsley's play Dead End. Gorcey got the part. He began with a couple of lines and wound up as Spit. He played the same role in the film version of Dead End (1937), which featured Humphrey Bogart in a story about the slums and the youngsters who fight for survival there. This film, directed by William Wyler, introduced the Dead End Kids, a group that included Gorcey and Huntz Hall. In 1937, Samuel Goldwyn made the popular play into a movie of the same name and transported the six rowdy boys to Hollywood. Gorcey became one of the busiest actors in Hollywood for the next 20 years. In 1938 the Kids appeared in Angels with Dirty Faces. By this time, Gorcey and his companions had turned to comedy, and the second film with Reagan and Ann Sheridan was to be their last with recognized movie stars. In the mid-1940's, Gorcey and Hall formed a new group, the Bowery Boys, which included Gorcey's brother, David, and his father. In the next ten years they made close to fifty low-budget features that became increasingly comical. These movies usually played in second-class, run-down theaters and included Bowery Bombshell (1946), Spook Busters (1946), Lucky Losers (1950), The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954), and Bowery to Bagdad (1955). Gorcey's first films had focused upon social injustice and efforts to defeat crime and expose crooked politicians. By 1940, only his acting style remained as his films became largely slapstick. In some ways, the later Gorcey seemed to be re-creating a kind of backstreet "Our Gang. " If his first roles suggested a modern-day Artful Dodger, plagued by social rot, his character quickly degenerated into a slouching, good-hearted roughneck. But he and his partners lacked the comic ability of the Three Stooges. Also in 1944, Gorcey had a recurring role in the Pabst Blue Ribbon Town radio show, starring Groucho Marx. In 1948, Gorcey played a small role in the sophisticated movie comedy So This Is New York starring acerbic radio and television comedian Henry Morgan and featuring Arnold Stang. In 1955, after his father was killed in an automobile accident, Leo turned to the bottle for solace and lost a great deal of weight. When he trashed a movie set in an intoxicated rage, the studio refused to give him the pay raise he demanded, so he quit the Bowery Boys and was replaced in the last seven movies by Stanley Clements. During the 1960s, Leo did very little acting. He did appear in the epic 1963 comedy, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, sharing the screen with Sid Caesar and Edie Adams in a bit part as their first cab driver, their second being Peter Falk. Gorcey then made two final appearances on film with Huntz Hall in a pair of low budget productions: Second Fiddle To A Steel Guitar (1966) and The Phynx (1970). Years of alcoholism eventually caught up with Gorcey. He died of liver failure on June 2, 1969 at the age of 51, just one day short of his birthday. He is buried at Molinos Cemetery in Los Molinos, California.

Achievements

• Gorcey became famous for portraying the leader of the group of young hooligans known variously as the Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids, and as an adult, The Bowery Boys. Always the most pugnacious member of the gangs in which he participated, young Leo was the filmic prototype of the young punk.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Bowery Boys: Volume One

    (From Dead Ends to the East Side and finally landing in Lo...)

  • Pride Of The Bowery
  • Million Dollar Kid (1944)
  • Ghosts On The Loose
  • Let's Get Tough (1942)
  • Boys of the City (1942)
  • Neath Brooklyn Bridge
  • Let's Get Tough!
  • Spooks Run Wild
  • Bowery Blitzkreig

Connections

Gorcey married and divorced Catherine Marvis, Evalene Bankston, and Amalita Ward, with whom he had two children. He then married his children's governess, Brandy; they had one child before their divorce in 1962. In 1968 he married Mary Gannon.

Father:

Bernard Gorcey

Mother:

Josephine Condon

Spouse:

Amelita Ward

She was an American film actress.

Spouse:

Mary Gannon

Spouse:

Kay Marvis

Spouse:

Brandy Gorcey

Spouse:

Evalene Bankston

Brother:

David Gorcey

He was an American actor best known for portraying "Pee Wee" in Monogram Pictures' East Side Kids series, and "Chuck" in its offshoot The Bowery Boys.

Son:

Leo Gorcey, Jr.

References

• Me And The Dead End Kid
• An original Dead End Kid presents: dead end yells, wedding bells, cockle shells, and dizzy spells
• Leo Gorcey's Fractured World
• From Broadway to the Bowery: A History and Filmography of the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids and Bowery Boys Films, with Cast Biographies
• Beyond Dead End: The Solo Careers of The Dead End Kids