Winner Take All

Resting in the country, lightweight boxer James Cagney (as Jim "Jimmy" Kane) meets sweet widow Marian Nixon (as Peggy Harmon) and her adorable six-year-old son Dickie Moore (as Dickie). You can almost hear the wedding bells warming up when Mr. Cagney gives Ms. Nixon his winnings to save the ranch. But, when manager Guy Kibbee (as Pop Slavin) helps Cagney to the top of the boxing circuit, the champ is lured away from his new sweetheart by shapely New York socialite Virginia Bruce (as Joan Gibson)...

Cagney tries to fit in with the upscale crowd by getting his broken nose and cauliflower ear fixed, but learns looks aren't everything. This variation on the routine boxing picture was unofficially re-made as "Kid Monk Baroni" (1952), an unintentionally amusing drama starring Leonard Nimoy. "Winner Take All" owes its limited success to Cagney's deliberate comedy, although it recalled as his first appearance in a boxing movie. For some reason, Cagney is always funny with a "dresser" and his timing is perfect herein.

****** Winner Take All (7/16/32) Roy Del Ruth ~ James Cagney, Marian Nixon, Virginia Bruce, Guy Kibbee

This begins slowly: James Cagney is boxer who needs some rest. He gets sent to a rural area by his manager, Guy Kibbee. There he meets Marian Nixon and her son, the (ostensibly) adorable Dickie Moore. He falls for her.

He goes back to New York and falls for high-class Virginia Bruce. And here it picks up. The early scenes are a little soppy. Back on familiar turf, Cagney can strut his stuff.

Without giving anything away, Bruce humiliates him. He makes himself over for her. There's lots more to come; so I have not given away the plot.

The cast is excellent, including the great actor Clarence Muse as a trainer named Rosebud. Nixon's role calls for her to be a little saccharine. But Bruce is excellent.

This is a change from the early Cagney movies in which he is a cocksure guy who knows the score. He knows the score, but loses track of it for a while.

There are some effeminate stereotypes, including a character played by the always entertaining Alan Mowbry. I can't hold these against the movie, though. They were of its time.

It's not Cagney at his best but it's by no means his worst, either.

This pre code, Cagney, boxing flic is kind of like a lightweight match between standardization in one corner versus originality in the opposite, with the former winning by a decision. In other words, the fight scenes are merely ok, one tires of Cagney's ersatz Joe Palooka accent, the great Guy Kibbee is wasted, and Marian Nixon and that too adorable kid of hers are insufferably dull. But then, almost saving the picture, you've got some nice, cynical, edgy pre code dialogue courtesy of Wilson Mizener and Robert Lord, and Virginia Bruce's Daisy to Cagney's pug Gatsby is almost worth the price of admission. Give it a C plus.

PS...Bad call on the fighting abilities of the Japanese, wouldn't you say?

Winner Take All is an early Cagney punch and rudie, in which he plays Jimmy Kane, a fighter with an ambiguous relationship to the ring. Although a top contender, he's taking off for a rest to a dude spa out west. He says his goodbyes at the Garden and even allows the fight fans to throw money into the ring to speed him on his way. A pre-Gabby George Hayes welcomes him to the Rancho. He meets s single mother with a small child, the always terrific Dickie Moore. Cagney is sporting a bulbous nose and puffy ears and talks through lower eastside mush, but he's always the man. Soon he's back in the ring in a grueling bout in Mexico to raise money for his new sweetheart. The character of Kane is interesting because he seems to have no ties to anyone and is a loner of an extreme even Cagney didn't play much. Cagney, of course excels. There is a nifty little scene with Ralfe Harold who sells hot jewelry, and Virginia Bruce, who should have been a much bigger star, scorches the furniture in every scene she's in. I'll take V.B. any day over most of the other '30s fire-eaters . This picture was new to me and deserves a place in the pantheon of Warner Bros. fast and snappys, if only for the scene where Cagney delays Bruce's ship sailing.

Definitely one of the oddest boxing movies ever made, and the first time in James Cagney's early career where his performance is obvious: As punchy Jimmy Kane, he speaks in a forced, dumb-guy dialect that shouldn't have gotten past the rehearsal stage...

Introduced as a total has-been, with crowds throwing money in the ring before a newer, more relevant fighter's bout, he's sent to a strange and remote New Mexico health farm (taking up the first act in a lonesome, flickering black & white that feels like another movie altogether) where he meets the good girl with a sick son, whose hopeful/helpful input pales to the gorgeous but shallow, conceited and suffocating dame who, back in New York, owns poor Jimmy right down to his flat nose and cauliflower ear: hence surgically altered to fit with her stuffy, pseudo-intellectual crowd...

So to protect his facial investment, he dances around the ring instead of fighting, turning off fans and especially Virginia Bruce's sexy society gal Joan Gibson as the entire second half's ruled by her impatient, fickle attitude...

But then, finally aware of the deplorable situation known to everyone but his hypnotized, duped self, Cagney's limited performance expands into a familiar street savvy edge. Along with fists flying in the right direction (with a jumping-bean style only Cagney could or would pull off), it's a comeback/turnaround that's long overdue.