In Search of . . . Huntz Hall

Huntz Hall is not amused when asked what he’s been up to lately.

“The trouble with this business is that everyone thinks that everything happens in this town,” he says. “Darling, this is not the world. People think if you’re not on TV, you’re not working. I tell you, it’s a big country. There are a lot of dinner-theaters out there.”

The former Bowery Boy and Dead End Kid, now 70, figures he appears in “at least a play a year.” He also appears on the college lecture circuit, and at baseball card/memorabilia shows.

“It’s lucrative--and I also have a good time,” he says. “At the last show, I signed 900 autographs in four hours.”

Just 3 months old when he made his Broadway debut (he can’t recall the play’s title), Hall spent his childhood in vaudeville and radio. Then came the Broadway play “Dead End” and the poignant film version--made in 1937 when Hall was just 16. An indictment of New York slum life, the film introduced the Dead End Kids.

Led by the late Leo Gorcey and the comical Hall, the group appeared in a series of Dead End Kids titles, later evolving into the zany East Side Kids and zanier Bowery Boys. Of Hall’s 120 film credits--which saw him co-star with John Garfield, Humphrey Bogart, Pat O’Brien, James Cagney, Joel McCrea, Ronald Reagan and others--87 involved “the guys.”

(Aside from Hall, the major surviving member of the Bowery Boys is Billy Benedict; Bernard Punsly survives from the Dead End Kids, and Eugene Francis from the East Side Kids.)

Their appeal? “That’s easy: they’re Americana. Then there’s the fact that we were the good guys.

“They were also pretty entertaining. After seeing our pictures, you got rid of your problems. In today’s movies, the problems are on the screen.”

A recovering alcoholic--”going on 15 years without a drink”--Hall and his wife of 25 years have homes in North Hollywood and New York.

Hall, who is currently at work on his autobiography, still does TV and film work, such as the recently wrapped dark comedy “Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies,” starring Karen Black and Pat Morita.

“It’s a cameo,” says Hall. “You can do a cameo and be the best thing in the picture.”