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Bernard Punsly (sometimes misspelled Punsley) was 13 years old when he landed his very first acting job in the Broadway play Dead End. Young Punsly played Milty, the gormless new inductee into the street gang which figures so prominently in the play's proceedings. When Dead End was filmed by Sam Goldwyn in 1937, Punsly was brought to Hollywood to repeat his role, along with his fellow Dead End Kids Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, and Bobby Jordan. Unlike the others, who strived to uphold their tough-guy images in real life, Punsly was of a gentler nature, insisting that he was a "punk" only when the cameras were rolling. He also wasn't all that interested in pursuing a show-business career; outside of his work in the Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys spin-off films, he made only one other movie appearance, playing a caddy in The Big Broadcast of 1938. His last film was the Little Tough Guys entry Mug Town. Punsly left movies behind permanently when he joined the Army medical corps in WWII. Completing his internal-medicine studies at the University of Georgia, he became Bernard Punsly, M.D., which he remained until his retirement in the late '80s.