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"A fighter's a machine, not a violin player," and in the same year Golden Boy premieres on Broadway. The boxing promoter (Edward G. Robinson) copes with a perfidious protégé by throwing a massive party, "drinking off a hangover" before starting over, a prime arrangement of tracking shots and mirrors and active backgrounds to exemplify Michael Curtiz's clipped flair. The bellhop (Wayne Morris) is a strapping specimen lost among the revelers, he catches the host's eye after knocking down the current champion for insulting the moll (Bette Davis). Thus "the education of a nice boy," the bumpkin molded into a prizefighter and christened with the eponymous knightly moniker, which the promoter mistakes for a Roman gladiator. ("Swell bill of goods in any language," he shrugs upon correction.) Slick packaging has its own classical beauty, and it is found in spades in this acme of the pugilistic subgenre's Thirties run. The urban-rural schism, the Scarface motif, the naïve lug sent to hide in the country where he meets his boss' younger sister (Jane Bryan), fresh out of the convent and full of adversarial sass. Humphrey Bogart is around to cement the proximity to the gangster alley, and the press has its own part to play. (Seeking a new angle for the story, a newshound plays up the boxer's romantic side to his female fanbase: "That's what the squaws want for breakfast.") Surrounded by walloping montages, Davis gives the movie its emotional center by shading intelligence into a girl-Friday nicknamed "Fluff" and pinpointing her spot in the milieu with a single, weary pronunciation of the word "mugs." "Seems I'm always ringside at the first fight... and the last." Robson's The Harder They Fall two decades later brings Bogart to the other side of the racket. With Harry Carey, William Haade, Soledad Jiménez, Joe Cunningham, Ben Welden, Joseph Crehan, Veda Ann Borg, Frank Faylen, and Joyce Compton. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |