Iron Man

IRON MAN (Universal, 1931), produced and directed by Tod Browning, stars Lew Ayres, a recent success at the time for his breakthrough performance as a German youth in the battleground of war in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Universal, 1930). While IRON Man pales in comparison from the Academy Award winning anti-war drama, it's interesting on its own merits due to its supporting players headed by the platinum blonde bombshell, Jean Harlow (in her only film for Universal), who's HELL'S ANGELS (United Artists, 1930), stirred quite attention to her bad girl personality, and Robert Armstrong, for many known for his role of Carl Denham in the iconic classic, KING KONG (RKO 1933). While Armstrong recently played a prizefighter in BE YOURSELF (United Artists, 1930) opposite Fanny Brice, this time he does better taking secondary role as prizefighter manager.

Following the unscored boxing glove punching bag image super-imposed through the title credits, the story introduces "Kid" Mason (Lew Ayres), a young boxer who just lost his championship prizefight. George Regan (Robert Armstrong), his best friend from his childhood days as well as his boxing manager, quits on him because he refused to fight the way he tells him. Mason's biggest problem is his wife, Rose (Jean Harlow), whom he deeply loves, but her affections are hardly the same especially after his most recent downfall. Rose soon walks out on him and sets for Hollywood to accomplish herself as an actress in the movies. With her out the way, Mason reunites himself with Regan, and becomes a new "Wonder Boy" of the boxing ring, fighting better than he's ever done before. All goes well until Rose, pretending to be seriously ill with the flu, connives her way back into Mason's life again. Living in a luxurious apartment surrounded by liquor bottles and Rose's rowdy friends, Mason's career as a boxer declines once more. Rose becomes responsible for breaking up her husband's friendship with Regan, and acquires a new boxing manager in Paul H. Lewis (John Miljan) for Mason, a man Rose met in Hollywood, with intentions on getting her into the movies. In the meantime as Mason gets a championship boxing match with Rattler O'Keefe (Morrie Cohen) at Madison Square Garden, Rose and Lewis go on their cheating ways, in more ways than one. Others in the cast include: Ned Sparks (Gus Riley, a gambler); Claire Whitney (Louise Lewis); Mary Doran (A show girl after Mason); Eddie Dillon (Jeff); Mildred Van Dorn (Gladys DeVere); Mike Conlon (McNeil); and Tom Kennedy (The Bartender).

Surprisingly directed by Tod Browning, best known for unique melodramas as Lon Chaney in THE UNKNOWN (1927) and Bela Lugosi as DRACULA (1931), IRON MAN is quite ordinary, with little of his ideal structures carried onto this production. Aside from notable camera tracking over a gathering of people seated at a long dinner table, the duration of the story relies more by the acting by its performers. The boxing sequences, which usually are highlights, are mostly brief with camera capture usually in long shots. Although credited at 73 minutes, the available print runs at 68, indicating some tightening through its jump cuts. Aside from Harlow's unfaithful wife portrayal as she did in HELL'S ANGELS, Armstrong gets his running gag line several times whenever he sees Ayres' Mason half-naked by telling him, "Put your clothes on ... you want to get pneumonia?"

While IRON MAN s typical boxing-ring story taken from novel by W.R. Burnett, IRON MAN was remade again, first as SOME BLONDES ARE DANGEROUS (1937) with William Gargan, and again as IRON MAN (1951) starring Jeff Chandler. The IRON MAN title would later be used for an entirely different story in a 2008 motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr. playing a Marvel comic action figure rather than a boxer.

Unseen on commercial television for decades, especially when last broadcast on New York City's WOR, Channel 9 in 1965, IRON MAN was never distributed to home video nor (to date) presented on cable TV. This, along with GOLDIE (Fox, 1931), are thus far to be the most rarely shown/revived Jean Harlow feature productions from her pre-MGM days (1932-1937). This original IRON MAN gets by on its own merits more for its casting than for its golden glove punches. (**1/2 boxing gloves)

I know that this Tod Browning's picture will be remade twenty years later starring Jeff Chandler, but this movie is not the best about prize fighting, it's not THE SET UP or THE CHAMPION, or REQUIEM FOR A HEAVY WEIGHT or RAGING BULL.... It must be seen as a sport drama, a character study in the sport domain. Lew Ayres was here at his peak, just one year after ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. So, yes, from Tod Browning in a no Lon Chaney Sr like film, without any monster or twisted, weird plot, it is a worth watching item. It belongs to the best sports dramas, at least for the pre code era, I have ever seen, better than some Warner movies, which were too fast paced for my taste and above all for this kind of story.

While its age is showing, "Iron Man" may be worth spending just over a hour of your time mainly because of the participation of 2 major names in film history: Jean Harlow (in a very early role) and Tod Browning (who directed "Dracula"). Just don't expect anything special. View the "Iron Man" as a relic of Hollywood's early years when sound was new and (mercifully) running times were short.

IRON MAN originally ran 73 minutes but most prints today are in the 66 minute range but even at that abbreviated length, it's a chore to sit through. One of the worst examples of a stiff early talkie, it's films like this that unjustly give that era a bad reputation when there were actually many fine films from the period that were done with finesse and hold up superbly today. IRON MAN, alas, is an awkward, boring mess.

Lew Ayres stars as a lightweight boxer whose marriage to money-loving blonde Jean Harlow may be the root of his less than spectacular career. When Jean leaves him, manager Robert Armstrong molds him into the champ he always had the potential to be. When his career is on the upswing, a seemingly changed Harlow returns much to Armstrong's displeasure and their mutual hostility ultimately leads to a threat in the Armstrong/Ayres friendship and professional ties and Ayres' status as champ, with Armstrong mentoring a rival boxer.

IRON MAN is easily the worst film of Jean Harlow's career. She is wasted in a cardboard role that only gives her a few scenes and she is handled most unsympathetically by director Tod Browning, who apparently was scarcely less hostile to her than Armstrong's character. Browning may have been a master of horror, but he's a disaster here in the world of boxing and metropolitan life. Lew Ayres is badly miscast as the fighter and walks through the film with a sullen pout to perhaps suggest toughness although for the most part he's a milquetoast, passive both to wife Harlow and manager Armstrong.

Armstrong's manager is more control freak than the devoted pal he is supposed to be and there is a undercurrent of homosexuality in his possessiveness of Ayres which may have escaped the actor but certainly not director Browning (Armstrong and Ayres private talks frequently take place in bedrooms!) Ayres is (naturally) frequently shirtless but while handsome he is pretty dull here. Fans of the cast or director might want to check IRON MAN out just to see another one of their films but will most likely rank it at the bottom of their works.

When you enter into a film, you are accepting a world. You are accepting whatever God and physics and mythology that the filmmaker has created. Within that world, wheels turn and things happen.

All too often we think the movie is about those happenings. We focus on characters and the emotions they convey. But the deeper influence of a film is in how the world works.

Over time, movie watchers develop a sensitivity to this and make choices about which worlds resonate or not.

I have decided to boycott Glazier/Howard films because they are convinced that we like a world where some bad things happen as if they were rainstorms, but the entire cosmos is infused with a happy sweetness.

If you watch film deeply, this can ruin your whole day, with great expenditures of psychic energy in buying back your individuality. So instead of seeing "Cinderella Man" which is in the theaters now, I sought another boxing movie instead.

Sure, we have "Raging Bull" which is an exercise in visualizing a brutal personality. And we have "Rocky" which is sort of cold war ode to nationalism. But I chose this because it is by a director whose world I respect.

Tod Browning's world is a complex one, not catagorizable in terms of a single type of God or fate, depending on how you think. He himself comes from a circus world with some elements of risk, some of heavy fate, and others of practiced comedy tied to honor.

I credit Browning with laying the groundwork that allowed noir to take hold in the 30s, probably the strongest influence in film. So this film is about a contender, several actually. And it IS a contender, but unlike Howard's cardboard guy, this fellow has a wife that destroys the first layer of his world in order to expose and reinforce the larger world.

In the story, that's the world of honor and striving and self assurance. In the world of film, it is the world of self awareness and the link of fate to the game.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.