La jungle des hommes

Tony Curtis becomes the middleweight champion and puts his opponent, John Daheim, at death's door.

This was the period when Curtis was Universal's beefcake star, so there are several shots of him stripped to the waist. George Robinson's camerawork offers a lot of close-ups during the fight sequences. The effect is to disguise what is going on, so the audience can't see exactly what is going on, yet make them look even more brutal. Curtis shows himself an effective movie actor, performing with his body, often more convincingly than with his face or his words.

With Ernest Borginine, Jim Backus, Pat Crowley, Paul Kelly, David Jannsen, and a brief appearance by Joe Louis.

This is a very overlooked but very good early movie by the great Tony Curtis. He plays a down and out young man whose dad is a horrible alcoholic, so he turns to boxing as a way to try to pick himself up. It is a pretty straight forward story where you'll see every turn coming but for its era it is a very decent film with some great acting by Curtis who of course went on to become a big star.

This movie's plot was all-too-familiar even in 1955. It is basically a reworking of Golden Boy with a bit of Body And Soul and two or three others mixed in. Some of the dialog is similarly recycled, but there are a few intriguing new lines providing some food for thought. Mostly though, if you are a fan of boxing movies, the two lead performances and the brisk pacing makes this one worth passing time with. Tony Curtis wouldn't have been my first choice for the lead in a boxing movie, but he brings surprising grit and ambition to the role. Borgnine is dead-on perfect as the tough-but...make that just plain tough manager who has to overcome his disappointment for the flaws in Curtis' character to take him back under his wing. John Marley is a standout as a referee vulnerable to intimidation.

Tony Curtis played a deaf mute twice and a boxer twice. The advantage of him playing a boxer, of course, is that he can go shirtless much of the time.

In The Square Jungle - that being the boxing ring - he's at it again as Eddie Quaid, an amateur fighter with great potential to go pro. He works in a grocery store, and is told by his girlfriend Julie's (Patricia Crowley) father that he's a loser and will never amount to anything. That's it for him and Julie.

When he gets the opportunity to go pro, he makes his alcoholic father (Jim Backus) promise to lay off the booze. He begins working with a trainer (Ernest Borgnine). He wins the world championship against Gorski (John Daheim).

Eddie loses the next fight to Gorski and blames the ref (John Marley) for stopping the fight due to Eddie being one punch short of being pummeled. He asks the ref to "think twice" before stopping another fight.

On his next fight with Gorski, the ref thinks twice, and Eddie nearly kills Gorski. Gorski lives but his fighting days are over. It nearly destroys Eddie.

Good movie, with Curtis doing an excellent job in a dramatic role. I actually worked for Tony. He was a great guy, very charming, funny, and hard-working.

The film shows the dark side of boxing, certainly not in the way Requiem for a Heavyweight does, but the message is clear.

The gorgeous Leigh Snowden plays a girlfriend of Eddie's before Julie is back in the picture. She was hired by Universal as a Monroe type, and there is a resemblance. Few women can say they walked across a stage while entertaining the troops and won a seven-year contract as a result!

A very touching ending, with an appearance by Joe Louis.

The Square Jungle finds Tony Curtis as an eager young man with limited prospects and an alcoholic father on his hands in the person of Jim Backus on his hand. A fact brutally pointed out by Clancy Cooper who is the father of Pat Crowley whom Tony is going out with. With the help of a friendly police captain Paul Kelly, Tony decides to become a boxer and Kelly even gets him former fighter Ernest Borgnine to train him.

Curtis is well cast in the part of the eager young middleweight who rises to the championship, but loses sight of some values along the way. That's Borgnine's other function besides training, but even he can't help Curtis when he starts casting eyes at curvaceous Leigh Snowden.

The film has some elements of Champion, The Crowd Roars, Kid Galahad and a few other boxing films. It's all a good mix for Tony Curtis who was in his salad days when he was making this for Universal Pictures.

In his memoirs he had nothing to say about this film, but I recall him on a television series where he spoke on the long past scandal of Paul Kelly committing a homicide in which he did some time. He said that Kelly was a first class gentleman and very helpful and gracious to a young actor on the way up. In his memoirs he did mention however David Janssen who plays a sports writer here and who was also part of Universal's stable of contract players then, that Janssen was convinced that he was the illegitimate son of Clark Gable. Looking at their ears I could see why he would think that.

The Square Jungle was definitely a boost for the career of Tony Curtis.