Winner Take All

Pretty new to the hollywood scene, James Cagney is Jimmy Kane, pro boxer, on a break at health ranch. He meets up with singer Peggy (Marion Nixon), who really needs money for her ill son. co-stars Virginia Bruce and Guy Kibbee, who were in so many films in the 1930s and 1940s. the usual boy-meets-girl story, and just before the film code was too strong. Kibbee is his manager "Pop", but when he lines up a big time fight, Kane isn't sure he wants to do it, because it might ruin his body even more. a really funny scene when Kane and his helper are practicing meeting various people in new york city. gotta pay attention, or you'll miss it. but now the girlfriend is running cold... she and her best friend are total idiots, and Kane is better off without them! but that's just me. watch the adventure unfold. Directed by Roy DelRuth; he didn't win any oscars, but he got his star on the the hollywood walk of fame, and made some biggies in the 1940s !

This begins slowly: James Cagney is boxer who needs some rest. He gets sent to a rural area by his manager, Guy Kibbee. There he meets Marian Nixon and her son, the (ostensibly) adorable Dickie Moore. He falls for her.

He goes back to New York and falls for high-class Virginia Bruce. And here it picks up. The early scenes are a little soppy. Back on familiar turf, Cagney can strut his stuff.

Without giving anything away, Bruce humiliates him. He makes himself over for her. There's lots more to come; so I have not given away the plot.

The cast is excellent, including the great actor Clarence Muse as a trainer named Rosebud. Nixon's role calls for her to be a little saccharine. But Bruce is excellent.

This is a change from the early Cagney movies in which he is a cocksure guy who knows the score. He knows the score, but loses track of it for a while.

There are some effeminate stereotypes, including a character played by the always entertaining Alan Mowbry. I can't hold these against the movie, though. They were of its time.

It's not Cagney at his best but it's by no means his worst, either.

This pre code, Cagney, boxing flic is kind of like a lightweight match between standardization in one corner versus originality in the opposite, with the former winning by a decision. In other words, the fight scenes are merely ok, one tires of Cagney's ersatz Joe Palooka accent, the great Guy Kibbee is wasted, and Marian Nixon and that too adorable kid of hers are insufferably dull. But then, almost saving the picture, you've got some nice, cynical, edgy pre code dialogue courtesy of Wilson Mizener and Robert Lord, and Virginia Bruce's Daisy to Cagney's pug Gatsby is almost worth the price of admission. Give it a C plus.

PS...Bad call on the fighting abilities of the Japanese, wouldn't you say?

If it wasn't for the presence of cocky James Cagney, I'd probably say skip this one. It has a very mediocre plot line involving pride coming before a fall, with Cagney playing the boxer whose story is the object lesson. Cagney plays Jimmy Kane, a boxer who has a heart condition who, for some reason, needs a rest cure out West in the desert for a few months. His trainer is played by Guy Kibbee, who says things that lead you to believe that Kane loved the nightlife and that he is glad he is going somewhere that there isn't any.

But that doesn't mean Kane doesn't find a woman out at the rest cure ranch where he is staying. He runs into widow Peggy Harmon (Marian Nixon) who is at the ranch for her little son's sake (Dickie Moore) and they hit it off. When she can't raise the money to stay the extra three months that her son needs, Kane risks his health for a 2000 dollar fight to help her out. He winds up with a messed up nose and a cauliflower ear as a result.

Kane gets the medical OK to leave before Peggy can, and he pledges fidelity to her. The newly healthy Kane rises to the top of his profession again. And then he meets a society gal - Joan (Virginia Bruce). Joan is fascinated by Kane, but not sexually attracted to him and is also extremely embarrassed by his ignorance whenever they are out with "her set". The thing is, Kane doesn't see this and thinks Joan is as gaga over him like he is over the moon for her. His postcards to Peggy get increasingly infrequent and terse. Complications ensue.

This one does have a few things to recommend it. For one, this is one of Virginia Bruce's earliest credited roles and she does a a good job of playing a bad girl. And she isn't obvious either. You never know EXACTLY where she is taking this thing with Cagney's character. There is also a rather odd conversation when Joan's set is discussing Russia and "the great social experiment going on" over there and "the five year plan".

This film doesn't give the normally colorful and hilarious Guy Kibbee much to do, and that was a bit of a disappointment as was the bland part Marian Nixon got stuck with as Peggy. But, hey, how often do you get to see a plastic surgery angle dragged into a precode boxing film where it is the man trying to pretty up for the woman? Mildly recommended, and mainly for Cagney who never disappoints.

Winner Take All (1932)

*** (out of 4)

A hotshot New York prizefighter (James Cagney) leaves the city for the country so he can get some rest. While in the country he falls for a sweet single mother (Marian Nixon) but once he's back in the city he falls for a rich girl (Virginia Bruce) just using him. A subplot dealing with Cagney getting plastic surgery is rather weird as we get a different looking Cagney as well as one sounding a lot different. That aside, the story is actually pretty good and the moments at the start with Cagney and Nixon are very warm and touching. The film offers a lot of nice laughs and the boxing scenes are really, really good. There's one fight that has an ending, which appears to have been lifted in Rocky 2.