And the skies are not cloudy

The Little Fugitive

(1953)

What an odd, sweet little film--how the heck did it get in my Netflix queue? Joey is 7, Lennie is just 10, and they live on Woodson Avenue in Brooklyn with their widowed mother, who has to go tend to her sick mother. Lennie and his friends play the sort of dumb, cruel trick on Joey that older siblings and their pals play on younger ones, and Joey becomes the titular runaway, taking $6 and lamming to Coney Island, where just about everything that can be ridden, thrown at, or eaten goes for a dime. (And yet the deposit on soda pop bottles--which no buyers bother to return, leaving them to an entrepreneurial kid Joey studies under--is a nickel, just like today.)

Most of Joey's adventures are thrilling, and all are benign (though nowadays that weirdly friendly man at the pony ride would strike a much scarier note), and the only source of anxiety is whether Lennie will find him and get them both back to the apartment before Mom's train gets her there. Don't worry: I won't spoil it for you.