Obituaries : Gabe Dell; Dead End Kid Who Continued Film Career as Adult

Actor Gabe Dell--one of the movies’ original Dead End Kids who successfully graduated into adult roles in film and on the stage during a career that spanned half a century--has died of leukemia, it was learned Tuesday.

Dell, whose real name was Gabriel del Vecchio, was 68 when he died in North Hollywood on Sunday evening.

“That leaves two of us,” Dr. Bernard Punsley--a Torrance physician and former child actor who is one of the two surviving Dead End Kids--said Tuesday.

The other surviving ex-Kid, actor Huntz Hall, “is not taking any calls,” a spokesman said. “He is in mourning.”

The Brooklyn-born Dell and his fellow thespian gang members first jumped to prominence in Sidney Kingsley’s “Dead End,” a Broadway smash of 1935-36 that explored the connection between slums and crime.

The Dead End Kids were then brought West to star in the film of the same name with Humphrey Bogart. Not completely unlike the boisterous characters they portrayed, the young actors pulled tricks on the porters and played ball in the aisles on their train trip to Hollywood. Later, they were involved in a series of minor mishaps involving automobiles.

Despite the off-screen antics, “Dead End” was nominated for four Academy Awards and the youths went on to make such major films as “Angels With Dirty Faces,” “Crime School,” and several low-budget productions as the Bowery Boys and the Eastside Kids.

Other Dead End Kids, such as Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan and Leo Gorcey, never were able to shed their “bad-boy” screen images.

But Dell, who became a writer, director and teacher, starred as an adult in such Broadway plays as “Luv” and “The Goodbye People” and had character parts in such movies as “Earthquake” and “Who Is Harry Kellerman . . . “

“I love the freedom that acting gives me,” Dell, a student of Zen, once said. “I don’t care if a show I’m in is a hit or not.”

“Gabe was one of the most genuinely funny people I’ve ever known,” Punsley said.

Dell is survived by a sister, Ethel Dell, and two sons, Gabriel Jr. and Michael, both actors.

Funeral services will be private.