Cinderella Man

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

?Cinderella Man? is a stolid, old-fashioned but moving film directed by Ron 
Howard. It combines elements of ?Rocky? and ?Seabiscuit? as it tells the 
rags-to-riches true story of boxer James J. Braddock, played by Russell Crowe.

In the late 1920s Braddock was a highly ranked light-heavyweight fighter, 
but fractured hands made him unable to compete effectively. After losing a 
string of bouts, he was forced to take a job on the Jersey docks just like 
the kind that Marlin Brando held down in ?On the Waterfront.? Additionally, 
whatever money he had put aside in stocks was lost in the ?29 crash.

So, after a brief introduction showing the up-and-coming Braddock, we find 
him living in a meager basement apartment with his wife Mae (Renée 
Zellweger) and three young children. Whenever Braddock fails to get 
selected by a straw boss in the demeaning morning shape up ritual, he is 
forced to go home without money to pay for food or other necessities. The 
film pulls no punches as it shows Mae Braddock mixing water with milk so 
that it will last longer. Apart from John Ford?s ?Grapes of Wrath,? this is 
the only movie that I can recall showing life as it was in the Great 
Depression. That is no small achievement.

In an article on the making of the film that appeared in the May 8, 2005 NY 
Times, we learn that Ron Howard has a strong affinity for the period. He 
said, ''I've always been fascinated by the Depression.'' His father Rance 
Howard had told him stories about the family's subsistence farm in 
Oklahoma, just like the kind that was featured in ?Grapes of Wrath.?

In high school, Howard made a 30-minute documentary about the Depression, 
interviewing his father and others and using old photos.

He told the NY Times:

''What was really shocking to me were the images of poverty in big cities. 
Whenever you'd see poor straggling kids with the New York City skyline in 
the background, or you'd see these men, still dressed in their business 
suits but standing in a breadline, it was as least as devastating as the 
Okies with all their stuff packed on a Model T. I wanted to remind people 
that the working poor existed then, and we have it today. While the economy 
is mostly up and then sometimes down -- the Internet bubble bursting felt a 
little bit like '29, where people had overextended and fallen into that 
trap again -- we're anxious. Our population is anxious. We're not in a 
depression, thank God, but I think it's crossing our minds that something 
could happen, things could change, and not for the better, for the worse.?

In one memorable scene in ?Cinderella Man,? Braddock goes to Central Park 
to try to find a fellow longshoreman and neighbor Mike Wilson (a fictional 
character) who had run away from home out of despair. Upon arriving there, 
he discovers cops sweeping across a Hooverville burning shacks and clubbing 
homeless men, including his neighbor.

In June of 1934, Braddock was thrown in as a last-minute substitute for a 
bout with top heavyweight contender John ?Corn? Griffin. Nobody expected 
him to survive the first round. To everybody?s surprise, Braddock was 
victorious. For the next couple of years he fought and defeated other top 
contenders until meeting Max Baer, the reigning champion who had already 
killed two fighters with his devastating punches. This showdown supplies 
the dramatic momentum for the remainder of the film.

When Braddock was at his most desperate, he was reduced to applying for 
relief payments at a government office. After he started making money 
again, he went back to the office and paid back exactly what he had 
received. In including this scene, Howard explained its importance to the 
NY Times: ?As much as it [receiving government assistance] ate at him, it 
saved his family. It's this kind of harmony, in a way, between a 
governmental system that would offer support, and a population that 
wouldn't exploit it.?

Unfortunately, this feeds into a prevailing mythology about government 
hand-outs that grew up during the Reagan administrations and continues 
unabated. It views aid to the needy as a kind of favor that often goes 
unappreciated. Unlike the Irish-American Braddock who was anxious to get 
back on his own feet and pay off his debts to the government, there are 
ostensibly far less honest people who use such handouts as a way to buy 
booze or drugs.

In another key scene, Wilson and Braddock are seen discussing the problems 
of finding work on the docks in a waterfront bar. Wilson is bitter at the 
system. He tells Braddock that he distrusts both FDR and the Republicans 
and sees unionizing the longshoremen as their only salvation. 
Unfortunately­-but understandably­-Howard does not dramatize Mike Wilson 
acting on these beliefs. Braddock tells Wilson that the only fighting he 
wants to engage in is in the ring.

In a very real sense, Howard?s take on the Great Depression is in the 
tradition of Frank Capra. Although Capra obviously made movies calling 
attention to the plight of working people in the 1930s, he did not view 
political action as a means to redress these conditions. It was instead a 
kind of old-fashioned ?roll up your sleeves? ethos that was championed in 
films such as ?It?s a Wonderful Life.?

In order to get the audience to identify with an underdog like James J. 
Braddock, Howard felt it necessary to turn Max Baer into a stock villain. 
Baer is seen warning Braddock not to take on the fight unless he wanted to 
be killed like his previous victims. He also tells him that he might sleep 
with his wife to bed after he is dead and buried.

In real life, Max Baer was nothing like this. He preferred partying to 
fighting and only saw it as a necessary evil to make a living. In other 
words, he was not that much different from any other fighter. Furthermore, 
after Frankie Campbell died from the beating administered by Baer in 1930, 
a traumatized Baer cried and had nightmares long afterwards. Baer was 
charged with manslaughter, but was cleared of all charges. He gave purses 
from succeeding bouts to Campbell's family, but lost four of his next six 
fights. Indeed, by the time that Baer met up with Braddock, he had lost his 
edge.

Although no attention is drawn to it in ?Cinderella Man,? you can see a 
Star of David on Baer?s trunks during the fight with Braddock and in an 
earlier fight in the film with Primo Carnera. Baer first wore the Jewish 
Star in a bout with the German Max Schmeling in 1933. Although Schmeling 
was no Nazi by any stretch of the imagination, Hitler stated that his 
championship vindicated Aryan superiority. At this point Baer proclaimed 
his Jewish identity and turned the fight into a struggle for racial 
justice, just as Joe Lewis would a few years later. There is some 
controversy whether Baer was Jewish, but some researchers are convinced 
that his father was probably half-Jewish. Whatever the case, he became a 
hero to Jews after beating Schmeling.

Primo Carnera was also a fascist icon. This oversized but under-talented 
heavyweight was hailed by Mussolini as a symbol of the new Italy, but 
Carnera went back to Italy in 1937 and joined an anti-Fascist resistance 
group. After being captured by Mussolini's state police, he spent most of 
World War II in a forced-labor camp.

In the 1950s, Budd Schulberg wrote a movie titled ?The Harder They Fall? 
that was based on the Carnera-Baer fight. It was one of a legion of exposés 
about the fight game. It was no coincidence that Schulberg also wrote the 
screenplay for ?On the Waterfront.? Schulberg was forced to become an 
informer against the Communist Party in the 1950s. As an ex-party member 
himself, he was given a choice of naming names or being blacklisted 
himself. Like other ex-CP?ers, Schulberg remained attracted to ?social? 
issues, but lost the radicalism of his youth. ?The Harder They Fall? was a 
polemic against the corruption of the boxing industry, but stopped short of 
addressing the question of why capitalist society mounts such latter-day 
gladiator contests.

That question gets to the heart of how class society is constructed. 
Professional sports in general, and boxing in particular, expresses the 
cash nexus that is intrinsic to commodity production. The boxer is simply 
super-exploited labor. Even though James J. Braddock left the blue-collar 
world of the Jersey docks for the glittering ring, he never really left 
class exploitation behind.

It is doubtful that Hollywood would ever be capable nowadays of getting at 
this deeper reality, especially when it requires millions of dollars to 
finance a film. Today?s NY Times reports that Universal Pictures executives 
are considering shelving ?Cinderella Man? since it is a box-office failure, 
taking in a mere $34.6 million after two weeks. The film cost $88 million 
to make. Brian Glazer, the producer, said, ?There are hardly words to 
describe how we all feel. I feel like crying.?

One way the film might have realized a profit is if it had selected a less 
costly actor than Russell Crowe. There other reasons to have passed him 
over. One cannot think of anybody less suited to play the self-effacing and 
likeable James J. Braddock. Crowe has been in the news lately after 
pummeling a hotel desk clerk with a telephone in a moment of pique. Last 
March he told an Australian magazine that Osama bin Laden wanted to kidnap 
him as part of a ?cultural destabilization plot.? In this particular 
instance, one might have considered giving critical support to bin Laden.