 When Samuel Goldwyn turned the play into a 1937 film, he recruited the original "kids" from the play—Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, and Bernard Punsly—to appear in the same roles in the film.This led to the making of six other films that shared the collective title "The Dead End Kids".In 1938, Universal launched its own tough-kid series, "Little Tough Guys."