Cinema Revisited: The Crowd Roars (1938)
Directed by Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Maureen O’Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Frank Morgan, Lionel Stander, William Gargan, Jane Wyman. Released August 5, 1938.
Running time: 90 minutes.
My familiarity with the story of prizefighter Tommy McCoy who supports his drunken father and kills a pal in the ring, has been as a result of the Mickey Rooney feature “Killer McCoy” (1947). I wrote a book on Rooney's films for Rowman and Littlefield publishers. "Killer McCoy" was a remake of this earlier Robert Taylor feature, and pretty much eclipsed it in televised popularity. Couple that with the fact that this film’s title is the same as an earlier race car drama with James Cagney, and unfortunately this 1938 movie has become elusive.
The material is solid and works as well with Taylor, whose charisma and good looks probably better fit the central role than Rooney's had. Dean Stockwell plays Tommy as a boy tenor who travels with his drunken ex-vaudeville father singing in dives for money, none of which seems to make it home to his long suffering mother. A chance bout for young fighters that Tommy enters, results in his discovering skills he didn’t realize he had. Developing a quick interest in the fight game, his experience grows with training, but his father becomes more troublesome, drunkenly selling Tommy’s contract to gangsters. The lead gangster’s daughter falls for Tommy, and further conflict is added to the narrative.
MGM nicely fills out the supporting roles with Frank Morgan as the father, chewing the scenery as only he can, Edward Arnold fully in his element as the stern, unwavering gangster, and Maureen O’Sullivan as the attractive, smitten daughter. William Gargan plays the man who gets Tommy into the fight game, and who he kills in the ring when the former attempts a comeback. Smaller roles are rounded out by Lionel Stander in a scene-stealing role as Tommy’s trainer, and Jane Wyman playing against type as O’Sullivan’s wacky friend. Toss in Nat Pendelton in a cameo as a rival gang leader and the ensemble comes out to be about perfect. Interestingly enough, Taylor and Arnold would play similar roles, with essentially the same conflict, a few years later in the film “Johnny Eager” (1941).
As this is an MGM feature, it does not have quite the grittiness of a Warner Brothers production, but the pre-war drama turns out to be superior to the post-war one featuring Rooney. This is not to say that “Killer McCoy” is a weak film – it isn’t – but somehow all of the roles cast here are superiorly played. Rooney’s enthusiastic bombast sometimes distracts from those moments when he has to be especially serious, but this is understandable in that “Killer McCoy” was an attempt to present him as an adult actor once he returned from the war. Despite his talent, Rooney never recaptured the stardom he enjoyed in the pre-war 1930s, and he spent the rest of his 90-some years reaching for it.
Robert Taylor was an established star when he made “The Crowd Roars;" number three at the box office among his fellow actors. "The Crowd Roars" was very well received by critics and moviegoers. It was held over in many city theaters. The boxing angle, with its tough characters played by top drawer actors, is the focal point of “The Crowd Roars." And while the obligatory romance is sometimes a distraction, it was likely added to attract women to the theater. This worked, as the film made four times its production costs during its first run.
Taylor’s five-pack-a-day smoking habit caught up to him and he died while only in his 50s. But in 1938 when this film was made, his popularity was such that he was even joked about in the Three Stooges short comedy "Three Missing LInks," released that year (Curly insists he’s “the Robert Taylor type” regarding a young woman’s possible interest). And "The Crowd Roars" shows him at his best.