When private tutor Thomas Arnold (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) becomes headmaster at Rugby, a boy's preparatory school in England, he puts into place a policy of strict punishment for unruliness and bulying. Arnold finds an ally in Tom Brown (Jimmy Lydon), a new student who is subjected to hazing and abuse by a group of older boys and is pressured by his friends to keep quiet about it. Fed up, he leads his fellow classmates in an underground rebellion against their tormentors. But certain unspoken rules still apply at the school and Brown loses his hero status when he is accussed of breaking the Rugby code of silence.
Cedric Hardwicke
Freddie Bartholomew
Jimmy Lydon
Josephine Hutchinson
Billy Halop
Polly Moran
Hughie Green
Ernest Cossart
Alec Craig
Gale Storm
Antoinette Rotche
Lionel Belmore
Barlowe Borland
Rita Carlyle
Richard Clucas
John 'Uh huh' Collum
Harry Duff
Calvin Ellison
Harold Entwistle
Ian Fulton
Forrester Harvey
Cullen Johnson
Calvin Leslie
Peter Madden
Paul Mathews
Frank Mills
Alexander Pollard
Charles Smith
Walter Tetley
Tommy Thompson
Richard West
Leonard Willey
Dick Chandlee