Little Fugitive is a 1953 American independent drama film co-written and co-directed by Raymond Abrashkin (credited as Ray Ashley), Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin, which tells the story of a child alone on Coney Island.

In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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.

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.

Charley and Harry tell Joey to run and hide, saying they will give him an hour's head start before notifying the police.

Eventually, a rainstorm clears the beach, and Lennie sees the lone figure of Joey collecting bottles.

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.

Actor Jay Williams later co-wrote the "Danny Dunn" series of juvenile science fiction novels with director/writer/producer Raymond Abrashkin.

Over the years, filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard reportedly were eager to borrow this unique camera.

Engel explained, "Designed for me, it was a compact 35mm, hand held, shoulder cradled, [with] double registration pins and twin lens finder and optical system.

"With a simple shoulder belt support," Engel said, "I was armed with a camera which became the heart of the esthetic and mobile approach to the film the Little Fugitive.

Dennis Schwartz called it "A remarkable indy classic, made on a shoestring budget by a group of still photographers.

"[11] When the film was screened in New York after Engel's death in 2005, film critic Joshua Land wrote: "Little Fugitive shines as a beautifully shot document of a bygone Brooklyn—any drama here resides in the grainy black-and-white cinematography, with its careful attention to the changes in light brought on by the inexorably advancing sun [...] Filled with 'Aw, fellas!'

period ambience and the mythic imagery of cowboys and horses, comics and baseball, it's a key proto-vérité slice of urban America.