The Devil Is a Sissy
deserves an historical footnote as the only film to team three of the biggest child stars of the 1930s: Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. Bartholomew is a wealthy young English boy attending a New York "magnet" school, whose students are drawn from all walks of life. He is befriended by slum kid Rooney, son of a recently executed gangster, who in his own roughneck fashion helps Bartholomew to "assimilate" (Translation: He helps him to steal and evade the cops). Cooper is a middle-class gang leader with whom Rooney frequently clashes. Freddie attempts to fit in with his new chums by masterminding a break-in at a Park Avenue townhouse. None too soon, all three boys end up in juvenile court.