The Crowd Roars

THE CROWD ROARS is a sensational boxing drama with a terrific cast at their best. Robert Taylor stars as Tommy McCoy, raised in poverty thanks to his drunken failed vaudevillian of a father, Frank Morgan. Tommy is both a choir boy and a scrapper as a child and starts to earn a little coin singing at public events like a boxing match. When he sings at an event which has kids his own age boxing, his father bets the champion's father Tommy can beat him. He does so quite impressively and becomes a little brother figure to the adult champion William Gargan, a local guy. Gargan trains Tommy who as the years go by continues to climb the ladder while Gargan has peaked and at one point is no longer active. Ultimately, Gargan returns to the ring desperate for money and has to fight his own protégé.

Tommy's skills in the ring attract the attention of gambling king Edward Arnold, to whom Tommy's father owes $600. Ultimately the shady Arnold becomes Tommy's manager and Tommy accidentally stumbles upon Arnold's secret life, with a débutante daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) and society circles thinking Arnold is a Wall Street executive, including daughter Maureen.

This movie is terrific! There's some really good laughs in it, quite a bit of poignancy, and action non-stop. Robert Taylor is perfectly cast as a fairly gentle soul who is in the boxing racket strictly for the money and the escape from poverty. Taylor may be the most gorgeous man in pictures in his era but he's extremely believable as a boxer, with some of the best punches thrown in the ring that you will see from a bona fide movie star. Did I mention he was gorgeous? Well I had to do it again because this film revels in his masculine handsomeness, with his superb physical shape shown frequently clad only in boxing shorts and a stunning mop of thick black hair in a style remarkably contemporary. Taylor's performance is tops too, always one of the screen's greatest "honorable" guys, this is one of his very best roles and he is wonderful in it.

Excellent support comes from Edward Arnold and Frank Morgan (the latter as a character so exasperating though it takes a long time for the audience to like him). Maureen O'Sullivan is lovely in the slender role of the girl Taylor loves. The movie is also notable for no less than four against-type casting bits that work extremely well. Nat Pendleton is best known for his lovable big goon parts in scores of MGM films from the era, here he's a scary mobster Arnold attempts to double-cross. Lionel Stander, on the other hand, often played mean characters but here he's Taylor's great pal of an assistant although as sardonic as ever. Isabel Jewell, so often cast as bimbos, is effective in a small part as a grieving wife while the very young Jane Wyman scores as a dizzy southern débutante who is Maureen's best pal and has quite a crush on Taylor herself.

THE CROWD ROARS curiously has little reputation among film buffs, that's a shame because it's one of the very best films made in 1938 and has everything a classic movie lover could want, a perfect MGM picture.

"The Crowd Roars" is 1938 black and white boxing film starring Robert Taylor as "Killer" McCoy. It was remade (less successfully) in 1947 with Mickey Rooney.

Good looking Robert Taylor (1911-69) plays a boxer in an attempt by MGM to move him away from his "pretty boy" image in films like "Magnificent Obsession" (1935) and "Camille" (1936). He followed this one with two of his most memorable - "Ivanhoe" (1952), and "Knights of the Round Table" (1953). If you're a Taylor fan, you'll enjoy his role as a tough guy.

Maureen O'Sullivan (1911-1998) plays Taylor's love interest. She teamed with Taylor the same year in "A Yank in Oxford" (1938). She's most famous for playing Jane 6 times in the Tarzan films (1932-1942) but unlike Weissmuller, she played many other roles during that time, including "Tugboat Annie" (1933), "The Thin Man" (1934), "A Day at the Races" (1937), and "Pride and Prejudice" (1940). She slowed down in the 40s to devote time to her husband and 7 children, one of whom is the actress Mia Farrow.

Edward Arnold (1890 – 1956) plays the crime boss. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1916 to 1956. He's best known for playing Daniel Webster in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1941) and Diamond Jim Brady in "Diamond Jim". He's one of the few hefty men who were ever able to achieve leading man status, but staying "hefty" (and not going to fat) was such a problem for him that he ultimately decided to let his girth expand while his stardom faded. This earned him many meaty character roles.

Frank Morgan (1890-1949) plays Taylors' father. Morgan will forever be remembered as the "Wizard of Oz" (1939) but this was only 1 of nearly 100 film performances between 1916 and 1950, including Oscar nominations for "The Affairs of Cellini" (1934) and "Tortilla Flat" (1942).

Beautiful Jane Wyman (1917-2007) plays O'Sullivan's friend. She is best known for her Oscar winning performance in "Johnny Belinda" and her recurring role as Angela Channing on "Falcon Crest" (1981-90). Other notable roles include "Lost Weekend" (1945), "The Yearling" (1946), "The Glass Menagerie" (1950), and "Magnificent Obsession" (1954). She racked up 4 Oscar nominations, 2 Emmy nominations, and won the Golden Globe 3 times. She was Ronald Reagan's first wife (1940-48).

Well known boxers Maxie Rosenblum, Jim McLarin, and Jack Roper also appear.

Variety called it exciting melodrama with plenty of ring action, some plausible romance and several corking good characterizations."

Richard Thorpe (1896-1991) was a busy director with MGM, with more than 185 films between 1924 and 1967, receiving critical praise for his work on "The Great Caruso" (1951), "Ivanhoe" (1952), and "Knights of the Round Table" (1953).

There are dozens of boxing films. My favorites are "The Champ" (1931), "Champion" (1949), "Cinderella Man" (2005), "The Fighter" (2010), "Raging Bull" (1980), "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1956), and "Rocky" (1976). Not included in this list are several films about fighters but the fight action is secondary (e.g., "On the Waterfront", "The Quiet Man", "The Great White Hope", "Snatch").

MGM had once used ad-lines which proclaimed "Garbo talks!" and "Garbo laughs!" For this movie they might have used "Robert Taylor strips!" Female fans had always swooned over the romantically handsome Taylor but men supposedly found him too much of a "pretty boy" who too often appeared in soapy costume dramas. Anxious to increase his appeal, and with Taylor's enthusiastic consent, MGM decided to toughen up their rising star's image by casting him as a prizefighter with a dark edge in a gritty (by MGM standards) boxing movie. First, the movie teases its audience by an opening twelve-and-a-half minute sequence detailing the childhood of its protagonist. (Gene Reynolds plays the young Robert Taylor). Then, ta-dah!, we see the adult protagonist, introduced with a shot of his bare, sweaty back as he works out in a boxing gym. Wait, there's more! The camera moves position and we now see Taylor's bare chest, also sweaty, complete with an inverted triangle of chest hair beginning at the collarbones and extending down to the sternum. (One imagines a make-up team carefully trimming and combing this hair to give it just the right effect.) For the next seven minutes Taylor appears bare-chested -- working out at a punching bag, retiring to a dressing room, taking a shower, appearing with a towel tied around his waist. Later in the movie he's shown soaking in a bathtub, (while reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"), and then there are various boxing matches full of sweaty, face-punching action. All this "beefcake," showcased in a slick, satisfying, well-cast package, apparently did the trick because Taylor soon emerged as one of MGM's brightest and most durable stars. Curiously, Taylor rarely again took off his shirt, so if you want to see his nipples showcased in all their Hollywood glory, you better watch "The Crowd Roars."

One of the very best boxing films of the 1930's and early 1940's and very definitely much better than the 1947 remake with Mickey Roony as "Killer" McCoy. Robert Ryan looks like a light heavyweight and it looks like he can actually throw a punch. As a boxing fan I look for a sense of reality in the fights, and this film has it.

However, the best part of the film are the performances, especially Frank Morgan (the wizard in the 1939, Judy Garland version of "The Wizard of Oz"). Other notable performances are turned in by a young Lionel Stander as the killer's trainer (TV fans will remember him from Hart to Hart). Young and handsome Eddy Arnold is excellent as the gambler/manager. Maureen O'Sullivan carries off the role of the young, college girl love interest with the same innocence she displayed when she broke into films 9 years and 39 films earlier. It's quite a contrast to the more adult roles she was playing at the time.

Director Richard Thorpe captures the atmosphere of the boxing ring and the gambling world quite convincingly. His attention to detail and experience (this is his 120th film) are quite evident, though necessarily the most imaginative. While the film IS superior to the 1947 remake, the director of that film, Roy Rowland, does a much better job of showing the crowd's blood lust in the 8th round of the final fight.

There is enough plot here for five pictures (all of which were made before this one), probably to compensate for paper-thin characters and a total lack of plausibility. The script tries earnestly to justify the unmarked features of a boxer who looks exactly like the young, very handsome Robert Taylor. Dewy-eyed Maureen O'Sullivan is sent to a finishing school by her unsavory (until the end) father, gambler Edward Arnold, but manages to become involved with the fight game (and Robert Taylor) when his training camp is set up at her country home! Low-key believable performances by Lionel Stander and William Gargan are helpful, but Jane Wyman is something of an embarrassment as a flirty, Southern-drawling cutie pie, and Frank Morgan dithers and chortles his way through yet another characteristic role.