Bernard Punsly, 80; Last of the Movies’ ‘Dead End Kids’

Bernard Punsly, the last surviving member of the “Dead End Kids,” the on-screen hooligans featured in numerous films in the 1930s and ‘40s, has died. He was 80.

Punsly, who left Hollywood after acting in 19 movies, later became a doctor and practiced for almost 50 years in the South Bay. He died Tuesday of cancer at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, where he formerly served as chief of medicine.

Punsly was born July 11, 1923, in New York City, the son of a tailor. He began his professional acting career at age 8 in “I Love an Actress,” a Broadway play that folded after a week.

In 1935, at the age of 12, Punsly was cast as Milty in Sidney Kingsley’s “Dead End,” a play that took a critical look at New York tenement life. It ran for two years on Broadway.

“Though Kingsley never intended to glorify hoodlums, these young actors made a tremendous impact on audiences, much as gangster antiheroes had earlier in the decade, and before long the ‘Dead End Kids’ were stars,” film critic Leonard Maltin wrote in his movie and video guide.

When Sam Goldwyn decided to make “Dead End” into a film in 1937, he hired the Broadway actors to re-create their parts, starring alongside Humphrey Bogart and Joel McCrea. The movie, directed by William Wyler, was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture.

Among Punsly’s other films were “Hell’s Kitchen” (1939), “Angels With Dirty Faces” (1938) and “Little Tough Guy” (1938). He also played W.C. Fields’ caddy in “The Big Broadcast of 1938.”

Punsly often played the innocent youth who got hooked up with the gang. Off the set, he was considered the good kid in the group of half a dozen young actors. He did, however, join in a “free for all” that broke out during filming of “Crime School” on March 3, 1938. The fracas was described the next day in the Los Angeles Times.

“Humphrey Bogart, who is being starred in the picture with the lads ... jumped into the middle,” the account by Read Kendall said. “He finally separated them and they shook hands.” A dentist was called to repair the tooth of one of the young actors and the makeup department covered another actor’s black eye, “and the boys went back to work.”

While a number of the other Dead End Kids went on to become the “Bowery Boys,” Punsly joined the Army in 1943 and later graduated from the Medical College of Georgia at the University of Georgia.

A doctor of internal medicine, Punsly was chief of staff at South Bay Hospital in Redondo Beach and ran a private practice. He had retired in 2002.

“I think he was not only a gifted medical diagnostician, but retained a wonderful sense of humor throughout his medical practice,” said Dr. James Roberts, former director of laboratories at Little Company of Mary and a longtime friend of Punsly’s.

In February 1994, Punsly appeared with fellow Dead End Kid Huntz Hall at a ceremony in which the group got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hall died in 1999.

Punsly, who lived in Palos Verdes Estates for 46 years, is survived by his wife of 53 years, Lynne; a son, Brian; two grandchildren; and a sister, Joan Silver.

Memorial services are pending. Donations instead of flowers may be made to Little Company of Mary Hospital.