Like the mousy secretary in the Movies, the one revealed as a natural beauty once she takes off her glasses, so too Kirk Douglas, transformed from spectacled accountant/snarky suburban intellectual to All-American He-Man by losing the eyeware, permanently altering his career trajectory. (Guess he’d been hiding that CHAMPION physique all along!) It’s a fairly standard boxing number (Stanley Kramer produced, but from a tidy Carl Foreman script, Mark Robson directing, Franz Planer lighting cameraman), quite tasty, hitting all the long established boxing tropes. Kirk enters the ring by happenstance, comes back for the money, grows tougher & meaner by the bout, gains skills/loses humanity with every TKO. Gimpy kid brother Arthur Kennedy tags along even as he becomes repulsed; shot-gun bride Ruth Roman left behind; ambitious blonde Marilyn Maxwell comes & goes; finally lands above his station with society dame Lola Albright. And the big prize? An editing Oscar® for Harry Gerstad. Best in the first half, before heavy dramatics take over, with Kirk still getting by on charm & aptitude before coach Paul Stewart takes a temporary walk. With ring action effective, but kept in its place; solid, no showboating. Even if the rocky dramatics in these things are undeniably frayed.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Story structure here liberally ‘borrowed’ for Vincente Minnelli’s THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL/’52, with Douglas moved off the canvas and onto the Hollywood sound stage as a small-time movie producer who rises too fast not to come down. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-bad-and-beautiful-1952.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Some maintain a soft spot for early nerdy Kirk. (He looked good in glasses.) Go for the film right before this: A LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’49. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/a-letter-to-three-wives-1949.html
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