Editing Little Fugitive (1953 film) (section)

==Plot==
[[Image:Little Fugitive screenshot.jpg|left|thumb|Richie Andrusco in ''Little Fugitive'']]
Seven-year-old Joey Norton lives in an apartment in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of [[Brooklyn]]. During the summer, his older brother Lennie has to watch him when their widowed mother is at work, which Lennie resents somewhat. Joey loves horses and likes playing with Lennie and his friends, though they often pick on him.

On Lennie's twelfth birthday, he gets a harmonica and some money to spend at [[Coney Island]], where he is excited to go the next day with his friends Harry and Charlie. When he and Joey get home for lunch, however, they learn their grandmother has fallen ill and their mother is leaving for a day to care for her, which means Lennie will have to postpone his trip to Coney Island so he can stay home and babysit Joey. Frustrated, Lennie finds his friends and tells them the news, and they imagine various outlandish and macabre ways of dispatching Joey before deciding to play a prank.

Harry steals his father's rifle, and Lennie brings Joey to an empty lot to see it. The older boys only pantomime firing, but when it is Joey's turn, Harry puts a bullet in the chamber. Joey closes his eyes when he fires, and Lennie puts ketchup on his shirt and acts as though he has been shot. Charley and Harry tell Joey to run and hide, saying they will give him an hour's head start before notifying the police. Joey takes the six dollars his mother left for Lennie to buy groceries and heads out.

Spooked by police officers in the street, Joey winds up on a train to Coney Island. He goes on rides, has his picture taken, plays carnival games, and buys a lot of food. By the time he happens upon the pony ride, he does not have enough money left to pay for it, leaving him crestfallen.

After making his way down to the crowded beach, Joey sees a boy collecting empty glass bottles. Although he is not sure what the boy is doing, Joey begins to help, and the boy explains that the five-cent [[Container-deposit legislation|deposit]] for each bottle can be redeemed at a stand under the boardwalk. The boy's older brother does not let the boy share the money from the modest initial haul with Joey, so Joey sets out on his own to earn money for the pony ride. He alternates between collecting bottles and riding ponies until Jay, the nice man who works at the pony ride, asks who is watching Joey, which causes him to get frightened and run away.

Joey wanders aimlessly around Coney Island for the rest of the evening and, after sleeping under the boardwalk, the next morning, as well. He is at the pony ride when Jay arrives for work, and this time Jay is able to get Joey's address under the guise of offering Joey a job. Jay looks up Joey's phone number and lets Lennie know where Joey is, but Joey sees Jay greeting a police officer on the way back from the phone and runs off again.

When Lennie gets to the pony ride and learns Joey is gone, he begins to search for his little brother. At one point, he sees Joey from the parachute ride, only to lose him in the crowd on the beach. Eventually, a rainstorm clears the beach, and Lennie sees the lone figure of Joey collecting bottles.

The brothers head home, arriving minutes before their mother returns. Thinking they have just been sitting inside watching television since she left, she says that, the following weekend, she is going to take them to get some fresh air at Coney Island.