La foule hurle

As suggested in another review there was probably stuff left on the cutting room floor that would have filled in some holes in the plot. Still I disagree that we don't get the gist of this gripping melodrama or that the racing scenes aren't great. Cagney is a hard-boiled champion Indy driver, who goes a little psycho when his younger brother wants to follow in his footsteps. Suddenly, the girlfriend who loves him isn't good enough and her friend is a tramp. Before you can say "You dirty rat!", the two brothers are alienated and the girl is broken-hearted. This sets up a great rivalry on the track and some heated racing scenes.

I beg to differ with the fussy earlier reviewer who lamented that the racing scenes were over edited. I found these scenes riveting and brilliant. Moreover, they convey a strong taste of a brand of racing long past where death was not so rare. They also show us film of some of the great cars of bygone days in action. Nowadays we are jaded with television cameras on board most high level events. But this footage rivals the modern one for pace and context with the advantage of placing us in a wilder sport. The track is more dangerous, the cars more primitive and of course modern racing is much more civilized.

However, the character Cagney plays is remarkably like many modern day racing greats living and dead due to their daring ways. maybe in their childhood they saw Cagney in this flick.

Jimmy Cagney plays a race car driver who's at the top of his game. When he returns home to visit family, he's shocked to find that his much younger brother has also taken up racing. Despite Jimmy loving his work, he knows it's dangerous and wants better for his kid brother. This sets the stage for a major falling out between them and eventually the young whippersnapper actually surpasses Cagney--leading to a dandy conclusion.

This is a very good, though not especially great film by Jimmy Cagney towards the beginning of his career. The acting, writing and direction are competent. However, just seven years later, the studio remade this movie--practically word-for-word in places and even using some of the same auto racing footage!!! Considering that the remake wasn't quite as good, lacked originality and lacked Cagney, I say it's best to stick with the original.

By the way, remaking movies--often using pretty much the original script--was a common practice in the 1930s--especially at Warner Brothers. Again and again, films were recycled--sometimes only a couple years later!

Race car driver Joe Greer (James Cagney) deals with personal problems while trying to train his brother to be a driver.

The Crowd Roars is probably only of interest to racing buffs and Jimmy Cagney fans. Being one of the latter, it does feature a very good performance from Cagney as the cocksure driver who laters becomes a disillusioned bum.

Despite being second billed, Joan Blondell is given little to do as the girlfriend of Cagney's brother. Ann Dvorak gets a showy part as Cagney's long-suffering girlfriend, and, being an early 30s Warner Brothers film, Frank McHugh and Guy Kibbee have bit parts. Eric Linden is a tad annoying as Cagney's brothers.

The racing sequences are well staged by Howard Hawks, and there's a particularly nasty sequence where Frank McHugh's character is killed. Overall, it's entertaining, and doesn't overstay it's welcome.

THE CROWD ROARS (Warner Brothers, 1932), directed by Howard Hawks, is a fast-pace drama revolving around auto racing at the Indianapolis speedway as indicated prior to the opening credits with racing cars speeding down the track as one goes out of control, causing the crowd at the grand stand to rise from their seats and, hence the title, the crowd roars! Starring James Cagney, whose gangster/tough guy image emerged with his ground breaking title role as THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), continues to play a tough guy, this time from behind the wheel aiming for the finish line.

The story, written by its director, with screen adaptation by Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Seton I. Miller and Niven Bush, finds Joe Greer (James Cagney), a three time Indianapolis driving champion, returning to his home town by train to meet with his kid brother, Eddie (Eric Linden) and Pop (Guy Kibbee), whom he hasn't seen in four years. Although loved by his mistress, Lee Merrick (Ann Dvorak - in her Warner Brothers debut), and much to her resentment, Joe intends on keeping their relationship a secret. However, Eddie, who hero worships Joe, wants to be a race car driver just like him. At first Joe tries to discourage him, but eventually paves the way for him in the racing game. Their relationship as brothers falters when Eddie encounters Lee's best friend, Ann Scott (Joan Blondell), a woman with a reputation. Going against Joe's orders, Ann goes after Eddie in spite, but instead, falls in love and marries him. During one of their races, Spud Connors (Frank McHugh), Joe's relief driver and best friend, tries to prevent the feuding brothers from going against each other on the track by driving between them, but is killed in the process, causing Joe to hit the skids while Eddie takes Joe's former title as championship racer. Regardless of how he put her aside, Lee makes every effort to locate Joe, who has disappeared from view.

Also appearing in the cast are Charlotte Merriam (Ruth Connors); Ronnie Cosbey (Mike Connors); and Edward McWade (Tom Beal), whose roles go without credit. Guy Kibbee, who seems to have appeared in every Warner Brothers production at that time, is seen only during the film's initial 10 minutes, by which then his Pop Greer character drifts out of the story and never seen or mentioned again.

THE CROWD ROARS has the great distinction for having its racing scenes filmed on location at Indianapolis at Ventura and Ascot race tracks rather than rear projection from inside of the studio, as well as having actual auto drivers, William Arnold, Ralph Hepburn, Leo Nomis, Stubby Stubblefield and Shorty Cantlon, appearing briefly as themselves, some whose scenes are handicapped by their weak acting. As much as the leading actors work well together, particularly the conceded Cagney along with the weakling kid brother-type, Linden. it seems a pity that the individual dramatic scenes enacted by Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell were not handled on a more natural or convincing level. Their emotional screeching outbursts (Blondell's repeated lines to Cagney, "Tell him!") weakens what what might emerged as one of the film's strong points. This sort of "over-the-top" acting might have been common practice at the time, considering how director Hawks worked the same method on Dvorak's emotions opposite Paul Muni in the crime drama, SCARFACE (United Artists, 1932). Later in 1932, Dvorak appeared in possibly her finest performance captured on film in THREE ON A MATCH opposite Joan Blondell, while Blondell and Linden would re-team again in the rarely seen BIG CITY BLUES, where Linden was the central character.

In 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced a film titled THE CROWD ROARS starring Robert Taylor and Maureen O'Sullivan, which was not a remake but another well made sports theme revolving around professional boxing. However, Warners did remake its own CROWD ROARS as INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY (1939) starring Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gale Page, John Payne in the Cagney, Blondell, Dvorak and Linden roles, with Frank McHugh playing "Spud" Connors once again. Comparing both films, whenever presented on Turner Classic Movies, the remake, being 15 minutes longer than the original's 70 minute length, plays better acting wise by its actresses, though the earlier version is better served due to the charisma of Cagney, which explains why the original played longer on commercial television in the New York City area up to the mid 1980s than INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY, which ceased TV circulation around the late 1960s. Besides some good racing sequences and cast of familiar Warner Brothers stock players, THE CROWD ROARS is rather ordinary material made good by Cagney's dynamic appeal. (***)

The seven is for the racing footage; I'd have to give the film as a whole something lower; this looks like a standard "programmer" from the period. I've seen "TCR" several times, and this time decided to watch it to try to determine where the racing footage was shot and what kind of cars these are.

I have to (somewhat educatedly) guess that we're looking at the old Jeffrey's Ranch Speedway in Burbank in the first racing sequence. It was pretty close to the Warner back lot, and (according to racing historian Harold Osmer) in operation from '31 to '35.

The stands are covered, and there are a lot of large trees close by, as well as equestrian facilities, all three items definitely not the case at Legion Ascot or Huntington Beach. I've been told that Culver City's half mile of that period did not have any equestrian facilities, either, which deals with all the tracks in the region in '31 and '32.

The cars in these shots are largely Ford-Model-A-block / any-odd-freer-breathing-head, rear-drive, backyard/filling-station bombs on Ford rails rather than anything from Harry Miller's shop in nearby Vernon, though there might be an early Miller 200, 220 or 255 (the basis of the famed Leo-Goosen-designed, "Offy" 255/270 built by Offenhauser & Brisko and, later, Meyer & Drake).

This is doubtful, however, as those engines and complete (usually two- or three-year-old) Miller chassis rarely ran anywhere but Legion Ascot in the LA area at that time.

The second (nighttime) sequence is at Legion Ascot, and its 20,000 seats look to be pretty full, which, even when they weren't shooting a feature film, were pretty full even in the nadir of the Great Depression. Veteran dirt track fans will note that Ascot's oiled surface runs pretty much dust-free compared to the old horse track in Burbank.

The third group of action sequences shot at the Brickyard feature top-of-the-line Miller and Deusey rails, as well as several of the very best drivers of the period including Fred Frame and Billy Arnold, both Indy winners (1930 and 1932, respectively; Lou Schneider won the '31 race in the Bowes Seal Fast Special seen momentarily here). Careful listeners will hear the unmistakable snarl of the early "Offy" fours in the background.

Sadly, the sound era was just getting underway as the legendary Miller 91s and the incredible board tracks they ran on were phased out in '29. Open-wheel racing in the '30s was -good-, but OW racing in the previous decade (at tracks like Beverly Hills and Culver City) was as big -- and spectacular, and fast -- then as NASCAR is now on mile ovals.

The Indy scenes feature the (more nearly "stock car") two-seaters and "poor man's" engines that were mandated at the time to reduce costs and break the high-tech/high-buck, Miller stranglehold of the late '20s. There were Deusies, Fords and even Studebakers running the big tracks in those days, but Harry Miller's cars and engines continued to dominate.