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 100^th 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 4^th 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]               

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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 4^th 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 75^th 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]