Un coeur, deux poings

The movie's routine plot involving the on-again, off-again romance and marriage between Myrna Loy and Max Baer seemed completely dwarfed by the drama of the final 25 minutes, which pitted Max Baer against Primo Carnera for the world heavyweight championship. As most boxing fans will know, Carnera was the world heavyweight champion and Baer was a contender when this movie was made, and they actually did square off against each other for the heavyweight title the year after this movie was released, when Baer beat Carnera. In a sense, the fight in this this movie is a preview of the real championship fight even though it was staged, and it is much more enjoyable if you keep that in mind. Many of the boxing greats were introduced before the fight just as is done in actual championship fights.

I don't think anyone in Hollywood history did so well at playing himself as Max Baer did in this film until Audie Murphy played himself in To Hell and Back. Though his character name was Steve Morgan, believe me this is the genuine Max.

And this is a lot closer than the portrayal of Baer in that otherwise excellent film Cinderella Man that came out this year. Baer had all the tools necessary to have been the greatest heavyweight champion of all. His power punching killed two people in the ring as was graphically demonstrated in Cinderella Man.

But Max was no killer and no bully as Cinderella Man showed. Those deaths deeply affected him and he pulled his punches in many subsequent matches. In addition he was a colorful playboy who just loved the fast nightclub life as he does in The Prizefighter and the Lady.

Myrna Loy and her chauffeur are saved from an auto wreck by Max and his fight manager Walter Huston. They find out later she's the main squeeze of hoodlum Otto Krueger. I won't say more, but there are some of the same plot elements that are found in Broadway Through a Keyhole and Stars Over Broadway in which this same story has the protagonist a singer.

Today's audience might find it a little silly that fighter Max Baer appears in a Broadway review. But that was definitely Max as he sings with a bunch of chorus girls, Lucky Fellow, Lucky Guy.

Myrna Loy, Walter Huston and Otto Krueger all turn in fine performances in their parts. And Max Baer was a natural born performer. After his ring career he had a nightclub act with fellow pugilist and former Light Heavyweight Champion Maxie Rosenbloom. Baer was no longer the physical specimen he was in 1933, but he had great comic timing and also did several movie roles by himself and with Rosenbloom.

He also did a great dramatic part in The Harder They Fall as a stone cold killer of a heavyweight champion, the image that Cinderella Man tried to convey of him.

Also the Twentieth Century Fox film, Footlight Serenade, uses Max Baer as a model for Victor Mature's character.

And as a special treat for you boxing fans, a whole slew of former ring greats are introduced at the climax of the film before Baer fights for the heavyweight champion.

I found the film thoroughly enjoyable and hope TCM shows it more often so the real Max Baer is seen by today's audiences.

Max Baer is the prizefighter and Myrna Loy is the lady in "The Prizefighter and the Lady," a 1933 film also starring Walter Huston and Otto Kruger. Loy plays a singer who's seeing Otto Kruger and singing in his club - she has a rich mezzo voice (courtesy of Bernice Alstock). She meets handsome Baer, who pursues her until she marries him. It's not all roses once she learns that he plays around.

This is a fascinating as well as entertaining film. Loy is extremely beautiful and lovely in her role, and Huston is his usual excellent self, as is Otto Kruger. The fascinating part is Baer, the champion fighter whose character was unfairly decimated in "Cinderella Man" - I hope his family objected. Baer was an extremely colorful character out of the ring but never got over killing Frank Campbell during a fight - he put Campbell's children through college. Here he plays something closer to himself, an amiable playboy with a mean punch. His appearance in a vaudeville act is almost as impressive as his fighting. In "The Prizefighter and the Lady," as in real life, he fights Primo Carnera, as he would a year later. Carnera refused to appear in the film as originally written, where he would be knocked out. I thought Baer was big until I saw Carnera - WHOA. The screen fight is very effective.

There are several real sports figures in the film besides Carnero - Jack Dempsey, who helped Baer make a comeback later on when he started telegraphing his punches, and also James Jeffries and Frank Moran. If you're a prize fighter historian, this is the movie for you.

Baer went on to make other movies, in fact, he was known as a frustrated performer. His most notable appearance was in Bogart's last film, "The Harder They Fall." By then, of course, his screen persona was a little different. I don't actually agree with one of the comments about the film - I think "The Prizefighter and the Lady," despite the star performances, would have been fairly routine without him. As an added plus for baby boomers - he's Jethro's dad, after all.

Spunky young boxer woos and weds lovely torch singer, snatching her away from under they vigilant eyes of her mobster boyfriend, as it were, but soon, as his boxing star rises he takes to philandering... I wasn't prepared for the impact of this incredibly dynamic early talkie, taut, effective and clearheaded. The way Hawks and Van Dyke tell their story is to the point, the acting by both Loy and real-life boxer Max Baer is vivid and engaging. And yet, nothing will prepare you for the grand finale, the ultimate Madison Sq Garden match, a haven of broken noses and cauliflower ears. The fight itself is wonderfully, imaginatively shot with alternating angles, intermingled with shots of Loy and Walter Huston in the audience, fights breaking out, ladies swooning, desperate last-minute bets taking place, cutting faster and faster, faster and faster. Quite a feat, recommended.

In earlier viewer comments I notice that Max Baer is referred to both as a "lunk" and as a dominating presence. He had every opportunity, since he appears in a majority of the scenes. The script called on him to demonstrate incredibly diverse talents, even as he was surrounded by such seasoned performers as Myrna Loy, Walter Huston and Otto Kruger, all of whom give excellent performances. We see him in semi-comic scenes as a braggart strong man; in love scenes with Myrna Loy in which something seems really to be going on between them, and in flirtations or affairs with other women; in a ten-minute "dance" number embodying fighter training techniques with a line of chorus girls; and finally in an only slightly abridged championship fight with the then heavyweight champ Primo Carnera, anticipating their actual battle a year later. It's amazing that a screen neophyte with no drama training actually brings these off credibly; I agree with the dominating presence comment. If you look at his subsequent filmography, it's clear that he never had another significant opportunity; perhaps it was necessary for a film to be built around him as this one was. As I watched this film last night the thought came to me that he was born fifty years too soon; he could have been successful in the kind of roles recently played by Stallone and Schwarzenegger, neither of whom, in my opinion, has the range for which Baer showed the potential.