The Joe Louis Story

If you want to see a movie about Joe Louis, at least up to the point where his career peaks, i recommend that you make a double bill of "The Joe Louis Story" and "Spirit of Youth," the latter STARRING Joe Louis as a young man from a poor family in Alabama who goes on to become the heavyweight champion. That's right -- Joe Louis (and, no actor he, but what does it matter -- it's JOE LOUIS!) made a better *fictional* film about his own life than his memorializers did in this ostensibly non-fiction film. All the insights into Louis' personal life that were missing in the bio-pic -- the Alabama beginnings, the smug over-confidence and breaking of training that led to the loss of the first Schmeling fight, the wife troubles, the emotional reliance on his mother and on his trainer -- all that and more is in "Spirit of Youth" -- PLUS the latter gives us a comic side-kick in the form of none other than the great comedian Mantan Moreland. Yes, "Spirit of Youth" is a fiction, and a light-hearted one for much of the way, and, yes, Joe Louis was not a professional actor in any way, shape, manner, or form, but the fiction in "Spirit of Youth" is in some ways based more closely on fact -- and certainly bears more emotional truth about Joe Louis -- than "The Joe Louis Story" does. Also, it features some great fight scenes with Louis playing the role of a fighter -- that is, staged fights that show him up close and personal the way the old newsreel footage in "The Joe Louis Story" cannot do. My advice is to rent or buy them both (they are both available for a low public-domain price) and watch them back-to-back, "Spiit of Youth" first, followed by "The Joe Louis Story." You'll be glad you did.