The "Dead End Kids" - T.B. Traditional Cache
The "Dead End Kids" - T.B.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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T.B. Played by Gabriel Marcel Dell Vecchio, changed early in his
career to Gabiel Dell, was one of the original "Dead End Kid"
actors in the stage play and movie "Dead End".
In the filthy slums of New York, wealthy people have built luxury
apartments there because of the view of the picturesque East River.
While they live in opulence, the destitute and dirt poor live
nearby in crowded, filthy tenements.
At the end of the street is a dock on the East River; to the left
are the luxury apartments and to the right are the slums. The Dead
End Kids, led by Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop), are a petty gang of
street urchins who are already well onto a path to a life of crime.
Members of the gang besides Tommy include, Dippy (Huntz Hall),
Angel (Bobby Jordan), Spit (Leo Gorcey), T.B. (Gabriel Dell), and
Milty (Bernard Punsly), the new kid on the block in search of
friends. Spit is a bit malicious with a cruel streak and initially
bullies the newcomer and takes his pocket change. However, Tommy
eventually lets Milty join the gang and turns out to be both a
loyal and generous friend.
By the time he was cast in Dead End, he had changed his last name
to Dell, and after achieving fame with the other youthful thugs,
Dell moved back and forth between Warner Bros., Universal and
Monogram during the guys' heyday, appearing as a member of the Dead
End Kids, East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys before leaving the
series in 1950.
He won a role in Tickets, Please! on Broadway, and also toured with
former gang buddy Huntz Hall in a nightclub partnership that
eventually caused them both to become divorced. Dell spent the next
three years at the Actor's Studio, married and had a son in
1956.
In the late 1950s, Dell joined the stock company of The Steve Allen
Show, along with Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Bill Dana, Pat
Harrington, Dayton Allen and Skitch Henderson. During this period
Dell developed a Bela Lugosi imitation, usually used comedically.
Over the next few years Dell appeared in several productions on and
off Broadway and supplied all of the voices for an LP recording of
Famous Monsters Speak, on which he did his Lugosi impression in a
serious context.
In 1964 Dell won the role the title character in Lorraine
Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. In 1967, he guest
starred in an episode of The Fugitive, "There Goes The Ballgame".
Dell had several other roles, a second son, a third wife, and roles
on several TV series in the fifties and sixties. In the latter part
of his life, Dell also appeared as the proprietor of The Corner Bar
(1972) on ABC, a supporting role in Earthquake, a 1976 pilot,
Risko, and A Year at the Top, in which he played opposite Mickey
Rooney as the Devil's son.
Dell died in North Hollywood of leukemia in 1988 at age 68.
In total the various teams that began life as 'The Dead End Kids'
made 89 films and three serials for four different studios during
their 21 year long film career. The team was awarded a star on
Hollywood's Walk of Fame, which can be found at the corner of La
Brea and Hollywood. One notable aspect of the group's history is
their transition from stark drama to comedy. When they began, in
"Dead End" and their other early films, their characters were
serious, gritty, genuinely menacing young hoodlums. But by the
height of their career, their movies were essentially comedies,
with the Kids depicted as low-class but basically harmless, likable
teens - comic caricatures of their former selves.
As always, be careful and replace the cache as
found!
* * * * Congratulations to Woodland3000 and Rattledbox for
the Co-F-T-F * * * *
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