The Play
When the play, Dead End, opened on Broadway on October 28, 1935, it was hailed as proof that despite the Great Depression raging at the time, the theater was not dead and could be a force for good as well as entertainment. The play ran for 687 performances and introduced the world to the Dead End Kids who went on to be featured in almost a hundred Hollywood movies for the next 20 years.
Why the story resonates
At the core of the play is a gang of young boys who make the streets and wharves of Manhattan their home away from home. They spend their day’s playing cards, pitching pennies, roasting potatoes in garbage cans and swimming in the contaminated East River.
Underlying their daily shenanigans is the very real possibility that they will graduate to serious crime, like the notorious public enemy, Baby Face Martin, who grew up in the same neighborhood. The gang is drawn to the “famous” Martin with his custom-tailored suits and rolls of money, who they see as a role model to escape the Dead End.
Within the play, there are several intersecting story lines forming a mosaic of the hard life the lower class endured in 1935 New York City. Their way of life is further threatened by the new luxury apartments next door, whose wealthy tenants’ lifestyles provide a stark contrast to their everyday lives. With the front of the luxury building temporarily obstructed, the affluent residents must use the rear entrance of the building, forcing the worlds of the haves and have-nots to collide. It is a 1935 scene that is mirrored in our contemporary society.
DEAD END - The Concept Album
The inspiration to create a musical based on Sidney Kingsley’s play initially came from a fascination with the golden age of American Theatre. The true to life story lines, the richness of the characters and the long-lost style of American theatrical naturalism contributed to our desire to revive this play in a new musical format. It is our intent to reach an audience of theatre enthusiasts as well as introducing a new audience to this traditional but innovative manner of storytelling.
About the original stage production of Dead End
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife Eleanor came to see the play three times and was responsible for making “Dead End” the first command performance in the White House presented at the request of the president. He subsequently instructed Congress to create a slum study commission.
Senator Robert F. Wagner Sr., Democrat of New York, said that the play had a major impact in speeding slum clearance.
In her essay, “Realism, Censorship and the Social Promise of Dead End,” published in 2013, Amanda Ann Klein writes at length about the dramatic effects of both the play and the film at the time when they appeared.