The Crowd Roars

This sensational boxing film introduced a rougher and tougher Robert Taylor to 1938 audiences, the result of a well-publicized body building regimen under the personal supervision of Max Baer. Taylor plays Tommy McCoy, a handsome boxer who has to contend with the mob, his drunken father, and the prospect of having his perfect pan punched to a pulp.

This version is 10X the quality of the later (1947) Mickey Rooney version. Even though Rooney makes some "cute" comments, the lack of "feel" for the story is apparent. Watch both and you'll agree. This version is EXCELLENT. Much better fighting scenes, too. And a definitely better love angle...

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.

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.

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.