The Crowd Roars

Boxer Tommy "Killer" McCoy can duck away from a foe's haymaker punch but one thing he can't dodge is bookies eager to rig matches. Now, on the night of his biggest fight, Tommy's supposed to take a dive. If he doesn't, a gambler warns, he may never again see his father or the woman he loves alive. Continuing his move into more assertive roles, Robert Taylor laces up the gloves for the fisticuffs and melodrama of a film that, per one of its taglines, "puts the MAN in romance." The cast is one any male in Hollywood would be glad to have in his corner: Frank Morgan, Edward Arnold, Jane Wyman, Lionel Stander and Maureen O'Sullivan, who teamed with Taylor just months before in A Yank at Oxford.

Not a remake of the 1932 James Cagney vehicle of the same name, THE CROWD ROARS is set in the sweat-stained world of professional boxing. Handy with his fists, young Tommy McCoy (Robert Taylor) is virtually pushed into the ring by his alcoholic father Brian (Frank Morgan). During his climb to the championship, Tommy accidentally kills one of his opponents in the ring, and is thereafter tagged "Killer McCoy". He then falls in with crooked gambling czar Jim Cain (Edward Arnold), who uses various methods of persuasion to get Tommy to do his bidding. Though the film at first seems to holding the fickle fight fans responsible for the cesspool that professional boxing had become by 1938, the blame is ultimately laid squarely on the shoulders of men like Jim Cain. THE CROWD ROARS was remade by Mickey Rooney as KILLER MCCOY (1947).