The Harder They Fall,
Indeed-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Harder They Fall” (1956)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By “Sports Columnist”
Fritz Taylor
The Harder They Fall,
starring Humphrey Bogart, Rod Stieger, based on a story of the same name by Budd Schulberg,
Columbia Pictures, 1956
[The film under review
Humphrey Bogart’s The Harder They Fall
is one DVD in a five DVD package of his lesser films from his Columbia Pictures
days mostly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not all of the films do credit
to Bogie’s major talent and drawing power despite what one female character in Sirocco, another film in this Columbia
collection, and I quote, being the ugliest man in town and the most handsome.
That estimation seems about right.
I drafted Frank Jackman,
the political reporter in this space (and at the on-line Progressive America site) to do the review of Bogie’s Sirocco since it marginally had to do
with the results of World War I and the division of the spoils by the victors a
subject Frank has been writing on for a couple of years now as we commemorate
the 100th anniversary years of that bloody fruitless conflict. I
have drafted Fritz Taylor, normally a guy who writes about music, veterans’
affairs, and culture to review the film under review here The Harder They Fail a fascinating look at the seamy side of the professional
boxing game, circa the “golden age” in the 1950s when the sport hooked up with
television to create a mass audience among the plebeians. A look that aside
from details about money and the nature of the presentation is probably not far
off the mark today as well.
As I have mentioned
earlier this year when Si Lannon talked me into letting him do a couple of
pieces on an amateur golf tournament at his golf course in which his friends
were competing the American Left History
site very seldom treads on the major media of sports reporting or commentary so
I had to “draft” Fritz Taylor to do this piece. His “credentials”? Well Fritz,
a pretty tough guy in his youth down in Georgia from what I have heard and he
has told us, while he was in Vietnam in the late 1960s before he got what he
called “religion” on the question of war and peace had been a regimental boxing
champion in his 4th Division. His reason for getting involved in
this business was strictly to get out of guard duty, KP, endless patrols and
the like for what proved to be little effort on his part. It also however did
not save him from a couple of purple heart wounds during his tour of duty. Pete
Markin]
***********
Although I never pursued
the manly art of boxing, you know pugilism, hell, fighting and beating a guy’s
brains out with your fists beyond teenage Golden Gloves work down in home
country Georgia and a purely opportunistic time in the Army in Vietnam as
regimental champ in the 4th Division to get out of bullshit duty I
think I know what makes a guy, makes certain guys jump at the change to get out
from under. That “getting out from under,” a process still going on in the
professional boxing ranks is something guys, tough guys mostly, have been doing
in one way or another since Roman gladiator times if not before. You can trace
in this country an almost perfect trail of what recent ethnic/racial group is
down at the bottom of the heap by who is fighting other guys for a living to
grab the brass ring, to avoid having to go down in the factories and sweatshops
to earn their livelihood.
But enough of the
amateur sociology and on to the film here which gives a pretty good view of
what the sport was like in the 1950s “golden age” of boxing in America. A time
when with the advent of television guys like my father, Hugh Taylor, fresh from
World War II service in the Pacific and bogged down in a job he did not like in
a textile mill that had moved from Nashua, New Hampshire to Athens, Georgia for
the cheaper labor costs they say, was able to sit at home on a Friday night and
watch, beer in hand, maybe better beers in hand, and see serious fights from
places like New York’s Madison Square Garden. I think he may have gone, with
his work buddies, a few times to Atlanta to see the fights in person as well
but don’t hold me to that. The main thing is that working class guys mainly,
although there was a certain celebrity tinge as well when guys like Ernest
Hemingway or Norman Mailer would attend such fisticuffs, formed the audience
for these bouts.
As the old-time film
critic in this space, now emeritus, Sam Lowell, was fond of saying when he
wanted to give a summary of a film here is the “skinny” on this one. Humphrey
Bogart, Bogie, last seen in this space according to what Frank Jackman said in
his review of another film in this Columbia Pictures package Sirocco as the leading character in Zack
James’s commemoration series of the 75th anniversary of the opening
of the classic film Casablanca ,
plays Eddie Willis a has-been sports writer thrown on the scrap heap from a
newspaper that had gone under in the shrinking newspaper wars world who “from
hunger” takes a job as publicist from the long-pursuing shady boxing promoter
and fixer man Nick Benko, played a
little over the top but with some credible flair by Rod Steiger. (Bogie seems
to have alternated in his career between serious shoot ‘em up and ask questions
later bad guys like Duke Mantee in Petrified
Forest to tough nut Phillip Marlowe trying to save an old man’s dignity and
keep his wild side daughters in check in The
Big Sleep to under the rug rat Eddie here working for his dally wages
anyway he could.)
Nick was well known in
New York and elsewhere for having a stable of run of the mill boxers who kept
him and his in clover, kept him and his organization in business by knocking other
guys on the noggin and keeping him in high end suits, swank apartments, and
easy party women on the side. Like a lot of guys who are stuck in the pile he
wanted a champion, wanted to have a shot at the brass ring one of his guys
could bring him. Nick’s play, his proposition to Eddie was simply, simply for
the talented if balky Eddie, play up, Toro, this giant, this glass-jawed and
fragile boxer from down in South America he had discovered to the hilt to draw
crowds and draw a chance at the heavyweight championship of the world. No mean task even for the adroit for Eddie
with an ungainly giant on his hands who couldn’t bat a fly without knocking himself
out. After balking at first Eddie buys into the deal though so he can keep
himself and his fetching wife in clover. That first compromise leads to a
million others and as the film progresses he goes down Nick’s slippery slope
with only a few swallows.
Of course Nick has no
scruples, wouldn’t know what the word meant, didn’t give a fuck about whether
this sunny senor could box or not it is all theater anyway, just entertainment
for the sit on your ass masses and no skin off of his nose. Still to get to the
top you have to get pass step one. That glass jaw and sissy punch would get him
knocked out in minute one of round one except for one little handy trick. Get
the opponent to take a dive, go in the tank, play dead fast for quick dough and
no questions asked. And Eddie was there pushing the bullshit, rolling that
stone up the hill. Making this guy the greatest thing since old Prometheus
started his trek. Not without qualms, not without balking, but still going for
the clover for him and the wife off this gaucho’s back.
A big stretch of the
film is the rise of this holy goof, as Seth Garth would call him reminding him
of some junkie has-been out of Kerouac when he asked me what I was writing
about, from nobody from nowhere to contender all courtesy of Nick the friendly fixer man (and as with all such
schemes with willing tank town managers, where do you think they got the
expression from beyond that railroad watering spot origin, getting their
nowhere boys to take the “tank’ for this monster). Finally as they head East to
Chi town Senor Toro gets a crack at an over the hill, taken one or more too
many punches, ex-champ which will pave the way to the big payoff championship fight
in the Garden. (One too many hits which makes you wonder what their concussion
brains looked like at the end of their careers now that professional football
players have been found to have taken some horrible beatings over the head
during their playing careers and suffered horrible damage and shortened lives
because of it.) Except this ex-champ, this guy who took one too many punches
couldn’t take one more, couldn’t take a Toro tap even while taking the dive.
DOA.
In Nick’s scheming
though this has-been boxer’s death would only made Toro a bigger draw when he
hit the big time in New York against the champ. Nick tried to “negotiate” with
the champ but the champ wouldn’t bite, wouldn’t make the dance of the ring go
round. He wanted to murder this Toro, put him under, let him kiss the canvas
floor for a while. No problem, no problem for Nick just bet against his
glass-jaw sissy punch fighter and clean up. The kid took it on the chin, looked
like holy hell when the champ went into overdrive, got his jaw busted up good
and got less, much less than chump change for his efforts so he could finally get
home and take care of his family.
This bastard Nick though
was a beau, had sold his contract on Toro to some tank town manager who after
the kid proved to have no talent, none, would be fodder for the locals out in
Podunk to begin their own career rises on. This is where Eddie finally balked,
finally gets “religion” about how bad the fight game was just like I did with
fucking war and got the kid the hell out of New York and home with, guess what,
his, Eddie’s, share of the dough that Nick skimmed from the kid’s purses. Ugly.
Of course that sets up Saint Eddie of the dreams for Nick’s hatchet. Or it
seemed so but when as I can tell you a guy gets religion on something nobody
can destroy him. Can’t buy, steal or put him under. Eddie in the last scene is
ready to do battle to get the murderous sport of guys beating guys senseless
for dough for fixers like Nick banned one way or another. Nice work if Eddie survives
some back alley assault.
[Fritz balked at saying
anything about the author of the book The
Harder They Fall by Hollywood “prince” Budd Schulberg (his father ran
Paramount Studios) from which the screenplay of this film was taken but candor
and a rather innocuous short statement in his bio in Wikipedia requires that I say something about this snitch. Snitch before
the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when after he had been “outed”
as an ex-Communist Party member by a fellow screenwriter he sang like a canary
to save his own miserable ass by naming names of others he knew back in the day,
back in the Popular Front and World War II days when such a thing as party membership
was okay but in the dead of night, red scare Cold War 1950s could get you jail
time witness the Hollywood Ten, witness Dashiell Hammett and others who didn’t
know how to sing. Bogie for that matter telling the committee to go to hell. It
must have been old home week when Schulberg, and fellow snitches Lee J. Cobb and
Elia Kazan got together on the On The
Waterfront film. They could have formed a singing trio. Jesus their names
should live in infamy when the word cowards hits the page. Sorry Fritz it had
to be said as an act of elementary hygiene. Frank Jackman]
No comments:
Post a Comment