Boys Town (1938) | There Is No Bad Boy

Ven. Fr. Flanagan's optimistic vision of human nature and servant leadership lovingly put to screen

This Monday, March 23, 2026, Pope Leo gave the United States of America a new Venerable: Fr. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan dedicated his life to serving at-risk boys, founding an institution outside of Omaha, Nebraska, which he named “Boys Town”. Here boys whom society at the time treated as unreformable would be treated as citizens, given the necessities of life but also given an elite education, training in the trades, spiritual formation, and a chance to prove themselves to be more than juvenile delinquents or reform school candidates. Fr. Flanagan encouraged them to be accountable to each other rather than enforcing strict punishments, setting up a city government with a mayor elected by the boys and even getting a branch of the United States Post Office run by the boys themselves. Fr. Flanagan’s philosophy was that boys respond to the way that they are treated: if you treat them as potential criminals, they will become criminals. If you treat them as young men and American citizens, they will prove themselves to be so. He lived by the motto “there’s no such thing as a bad boy”, and changed the lives of many American boys by treating them in that way.

His school was such a remarkable success that it attracted the attention of Hollywood. In 1938 Louis B. Mayer, MGM’s legendary studio head, launched into production what he would eventually describe as the favorite film he ever made: Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. Boys Town is an excellent film, a true 1930s classic. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won Spencer Tracy his second Oscar in a row for Best Actor. It feels very much like a Frank Capra picture: optimistic, patriotic, and brimming with a positive attitude toward human nature. These sorts of films were in vogue in the late 1930s: indeed, Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You defeated Boys Town in the Best Picture race in 1938 with a similar outlook on humanity. In our more cynical age, some might feel this type of movie is saccharine or naive, but I absolutely love them. I believe they capture a distinctly Catholic ethos about life, redemption, human nature, and the abiding power of selfless love. Boys Town is an excellent example of this type of picture, and now that Pope Leo has raised Fr. Flanagan to the rank of Venerable, it also counts as one of the best saint movies of all time.

The film opens with Fr. Flanagan (Tracy) meeting with a convict just about to go to the electric chair. He gives the man words of comfort, but the warden confronts him with his “debt to the state”. The man flies into a frenzy, asking what he owes the state when the state did nothing for him after his mother died but leave him on the street, starving and desperate. From his perspective, the state turned him into a criminal and then executed him for it, and this process began when he was a very young boy. Fr. Flanagan is deeply troubled by this speech, ruminating on it all the way home. As he returns to his neighborhood, he observes a large brawl between unruly boys on the streets of Omaha. Punches are thrown, food is trampled, and ultimately a window is broken, sending the crowd scattering. Fr. Flanagan is deeply affected by this scene, and remembers the words of the convict earlier: “one friend when I’m 12 years old and I don’t stand here like this!” He decides to be that one friend to these lost boys, to give them a chance to get out of their hard life and become upstanding citizens. He will let boys be boys, in a good way, by bringing them out into the country and letting them play baseball and learn and make friends. He earns the undying love of his boys because he extended that love to them, perhaps the first adult in their entire life who had done so. There were money troubles, to be sure, but at the end of the first act Fr. Flanagan seems to have triumphed without much difficulty at all.

And then he meets Whitey. Whitey (Rooney) stretches Fr. Flanagan’s faith in his maxim that “there is no bad boy”. He’s pompous, self-centered, loves a joke at the expense of others but can’t stand one at his own expense, and is already hardened by several years of living in the criminal underworld. When he gets to Boys Town he scoffs at its impressive features and immediately tries to leave, drawn back only by the lunch bell. He tries to bully his way to the top of the mayor’s race, and after losing foolishly challenges an older boy to a boxing match which he loses as well. He has charisma, for sure, but is using that talent for the wrong reasons. Fr. Flanagan is sure he can be reformed, but after Whitey flees Boys Town and is shot as a bystander in a bank robbery, Fr. Flanagan’s faith is shaken. Whitey refuses to rat out the bank robbers (one of whom is his brother), and the consequence is sure to be the closure of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan breaks a little and seems to give up on Whitey: “it was a bad, sad day when I brought you here”. But even through Fr. Flanagan’s dark night of the soul, he still welcomes a new boy to Boys Town, one who has hitch hiked for days to get to this place of promise. Until the doors are forcibly closed on him, Fr. Flanagan will complete his mission.

Of course, this story is destined to have a happy ending and vindicate it’s optimistic premise: “there is no bad boy”. In a thrilling climax the robbers are caught, Whitey is proven innocent and learns his lesson, and Boys Town remains as strong a force for good as ever. Fr. Flanagan’s optimism is vindicated, as is his refusal to let a bad beginning determine a bad end. None of these boys are predestined to sin; through his sacrifice and love, Fr. Flanagan is able to draw them into virtue and (as we see implicitly throughout) closer to Christ. There’s no force, no coercion, no harshness at Boys Town; Fr. Flanagan merely shows Christlike love to his boys and they respond in kind. Spencer Tracy is magnificent in showing these different sides of Fr. Flanagan: the stubborn, determined, hard edges that he shows when pursuing his mission, and the jolly, kindly love he gives to each one of his boys. His performance shows Fr. Flanagan as saintly, but human; prone to doubt, anger, pigheadishness and even despair, but still pushing through anyway, completing his mission with grace, charm, and love. Films like Boys Town and the films of Frank Capra push us to be better, more optimistic, more loving people ourselves, to imitate the joyous service of Fr. Flanagan and to look for the best in those around us as we seek to call them to be better. We, like Fr. Flanagan, are called to love our neighbor at all times; after all, in God’s eyes, there is no bad boy.

For more on Fr. Flanagan, check out our review of Heart of a Servant: The Fr. Flanagan Story