Another opportunity for Berkeley to flex his non-musical muscles, They Made Me a Criminal brings the director together with cinematographer James Wong Howe and a perfectly cast John Garfield in his first starring role. Based on Archie Mayo’s tragic The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933), Berkeley’s post-Code version adds quite a bit more sentimentality and redemption to the story of a prizewinning New York boxer who gets mixed up in a murder and is forced into hiding. Johnnie’s/Jack’s sanctuary happens to be an Arizona date farm where a lovely Gloria Dickson is attempting to reform a gang of comical Brooklyn delinquents played by the Dead End Kids, who had recently gained popularity after their appearance in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). While juggling the noir, comedy, romance and suspense just as smoothly as his dance numbers, Berkeley also appears to accentuate the dark, personal parallels to his own recent trials by featuring a flawed man wrongly accused of murder whose double-crossers are killed in a car accident caused by a blown-out tire.