JUNIOR COGHLAN – The Leather Strop Is Applied To The Rear
It is early 20th Century America, two boys are causing trouble in a department store and are pursued by a floorwalker. Tom (Junior Coghlan aka Frank Coghlan Jr.) and his shorter friend, Matt (Frankie Darro), make their escape using an up escalator, only to encounter a policeman, so they slide back down again. Unfortunately for Tom, his father (Purnell Pratt) is also policeman and knows of the earlier mischief, so when the boy returns home, dad is waiting to mete out punishment using a leather strop (a strop is a sturdy piece of leather used to sharpen cut-throat razors). Tom may be defiant but he still feels the pain of the thick leather on his backside.
Frank Coghlan Jr. was born in 1916 and at the age of three appeared in his first film which premiered in early 1920. The freckle-faced kid soon became a very popular 1920s silent movie star under the name Junior Coghlan, transitioning to the “talkies” by the end of the decade but in increasingly smaller supporting (and often uncredited) parts as he grew into his teens. A lucky break came in 1941 when he was cast as Billy Batson in the very successful big screen serial, “The Adventures Of Captain Marvel”. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy to fight in the Second World War and stayed on for 23 years, retiring with the impressive rank of Lieutenant Commander, after which he kept busy in Los Angeles working in Public Relations, as well as taking small roles in movies and on TV. He died in 2003 aged 93, having led a busy and varied life.
This is an edit from a 1930s movie, the name of which is self-evident from the information given. None of the characters identified above receive a name credit, and they only appear at the start of the film, but the mother you briefly see is credited, Beryl Mercer. The grown-up Tom is played by James Cagney (not seen here), it is the role which established him as a screen gangster.
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