Front Line Kids (1942)

I abandoned this after 20 minutes, but then retrieved it to see it to the bitter end - clearly cheaply made with a load of actors who never went anywhere in their careers, especially the young boys in the gang ranging in age from 5 to about 15 - with some of them this was the only film they made it seems, which doesn't surprise me.

Think East Side Kids/Bowery Boys, but set in say a London inner city area who get involved with a hotel porter who bails them out with food etc. and along the way they chance upon a gang of jewel thieves staying at the hotel who have stolen some foreign royalty's crown jewels.

Looking at the East Side Kids now (I used to see them on Saturday morning pictures) I wonder what I saw in them at the time as now they look toe-curlingly embarrassing and with this lot you can multiply that by a factor of 2.
Laboured jokes, wooden acting, the cut glass accents of the hotel guests contrasting with the boys vocabulary, you could predict the end by a mile................I could go on at length - just glad it was a short film.