Winner Take All

I recently recorded a couple of early James Cagney movies that I hadn't seen before. Among them was Winner Take All. I've got enough movies "recorded" to my cloud DVR that it took a while to get around to watching it, and as always, the reviews are getting scheduled a good deal in advance now that I'm more able to watch a whole bunch of movies.

Cagney plays Jimmy Kane, a New York boxer who is loved by the fans. Or a former boxer, as the announcer at the current fight tells the crowd that Kane is going west for a cure, presumably for his heart but just as much because he's been spending too much time with women and illicit booze. So Jimmy goes to a ranch out in New Mexico.

Now, there wouldn't be much of a movie if that were all that happens, so of course Jimmy meets someone of note at the ranch. That someone is Peggy (Marian Nixon), who had worked in Texas Guinan's joint, which is where she briefly met Jimmy. Peggy is in New Mexico with her son Dickie (Dickie Moore), who is really the one who needs to be out there for his health. As you can guess, Jimmy and Peggy become good friends. But Peggy is having trouble paying the bills, leading Jimmy to take up boxing across the border in Mexico to raise the money to pay Peggy's bills.

Jimmy is able to return to New York, and meets Joan (Virginia Bruce), a woman who is of a much higher social class than Peggy could ever hope to be. Jimmy is too darn stupid to realize that Peggy is the right one for him, and decides that he's going to impress Joan by taking elocution and etiquette lessons, as well as getting plastic surgery to get his face fixed, not that this is what Joan wants. She's just slumming and now that Jimmy has a normal nose again, she doesn't like it.

And yet Jimmy is still too stupid to realize that Joan is trouble and should be avoided. He starts fighting again, but does so in a way to try to protect his nose, which isn't what the fans want at all. Jimmy's trainer Pop (Guy Kibbee) brings Peggy back from New Mexico, but even this isn't enough to get Jimmy to see the error of his ways. How is Jimmy going to learn his lesson so that we can all get to the requisite happy ending? For that you're just going to have to watch.

James Cagney had already made The Public Enemy before making Winner Take All, so he was already a star and it's a bit of a surprise that Warner Bros. would put him in a movie with as slight a story as this. I'd assume that the audiences were looking to see Cagney in this sort of role. It's not terrible, but there's a reason Winner Take All is decidedly lesser Cagney. You could do worse, and it's only 67 minutes so it's not like it's a hugh time investment, but you could do a lot better too.