© The Enterprise Studios 
 1) Body and Soul (1947)  - This remains the finest boxing movie ever made.  Born Jacob Julius Garfinkle to immigrant Jewish parents living on New York's Lower East Side, John Garfield turned a tough childhood to his advantage in becoming a member of the famed Group Theater, under Stella Adler and playing the role of Charlie Davis, a nice guy who gets into boxing to help his destitute mother and becomes champ by taking a devious route.  I’ll never forget Garfield’s movie debut opposite Priscilla Lane, in Four Daughters. He died at 39, not long after he refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee.  A similar fate befell Canada Lee, who plays an over-the-hill middleweight fighter, Ben Chaplin, and who becomes Davis’s sideman. In real life Lee lost sight of one eye in the ring. His dignity and bearing were akin to that of Morgan Freeman, who in Million Dollar Baby plays a former boxer who lost sight of an eye in the ring.  Lee died at 45 after also standing up to the HUAC.  The screenwriter was the blacklisted Abraham Polansky, the director, the brilliant Robert Rossen. But no man did more to make this movie the classic it remains, than cinematographer James Wong Howe, who donned roller skates in the ring to circle the combatants with a hand-held camera, resulting in some of the most exciting black & white action shots in movie history.  Black and white.

© United Artists
 2) Champion (1949) - Kirk Douglas’s best movie roles were in Paths of Glory, Detective Story, Spartacus and yes, Champion, where he is cast as Midge Kelly a seething, unscrupulous fighter who claws his way to the top.  Directed by Mark Robson, with a superb cast that includes the incomparable Arthur Kennedy as Midge’s brother Connie, singer Marilyn Maxwell and lesser light actresses Ruth Roman and Lola Albright, each of whom is surprisingly effective. Black and white.

© United Artists
 3)  Raging Bull (1980) - Robert De Niro was so intent on effecting a realistic portrayal of Jake La Motta that he gained more than 50 pounds to play the boxer in his later years. Unsurprisingly, De Niro won a Best Actor Oscar.  Just as convincing was Joe Pesci as Jake's brother Joey. Leave it to the then fledgling director Martin Scorcese, to generate a blistering screen chemistry among Pesci, De Niro and the young unknown Cathy Moriarity, as Jake’s second wife Vickie. Aside from Scorcese’s Goodfellas, Pesci’s career has careened and Moriarity has all but disappeared from movie marquees. Scorcese’s insistence on shooting on black and white film gives it a strong 1940s feel. The viscerally stylized boxing sequences with slow motion have been imitated in scores of action films, and the non-boxing scenes have a neo-realism reminiscent of Rossellini and de Sica. Black and white.

© Paramount Pictures
4) The Fighter (2010) - I will gladly add The Fighter to the list of my top 10 Boxing Movies of all time. Mark Wahlberg, who plays the junior welterweight title character based on the real-life Micky Ward, reminds me in every way of John Garfield who came out of a hardscrabble childhood akin to that of Wahlberg. The authenticity of the fight scenes rivals that of Martin Scorcese’s The Raging Bull with Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta. From The Champion to Rocky I, the formula doesn’t vary: the protagonist takes his lumps in the ring, the referee is poised to stop it, and the hero gets off the canvas to drop the opponent with a one-two (or even a one).  What this movie has that others don’t, are three superlative actors in addition to Wahlberg. They are Christian Bale, as Ward’s crackhead half brother Dicky Eklund, his once and future manager, a former boxer whose claim to fame is his ambiguous claim that he decked Sugar Ray Leonard (who plays himself); Amy Adams, a stunningly beautiful, poised and humorous actress who shone as the young nun in Doubt, is Mark’s girlfriend Charlene Fleming in a most un nun-like role, and most of all, Melissa Leo as Alice Ward the domineering vile-spewing  mother to Micky, Dicky and their seven weird sisters. Leo is one of America’s great actresses, having been part of the astonishing detective team of the Homicide:Life on the Street TV series as  Det. Sgt. Kay Howard for five seasons. She also was nominated for an Oscar for the movie Frozen River. Wahlberg’s versatility from the back of the camera, has shone through with his mega-hit HBO series Entourage.
 

© Imagine Entertainment   
5) Cinderella Man (2005) –  Call it the pugilistic version of Seabiscuit, since it is so intrinsic to the Depression era with a genuine, down-on-his-luck hero, James J. Braddock. Director Ron Howard has done a marvelous job of capturing the aura of the times. I never knew there was a Hooverville right in the heart of Central Park. His crowd scenes in the old Madison Square Garden are so genuine you practically gag over the cheap cigar smoke and the smell of liniment. More important, his boxing scenes rival Raging Bull in authenticity.  Now to Mr. Crowe as Braddock. He is authentic from the jaunty cap on his head to the tips of his toes. He speaks pure Noo Yawk, ministers to his hungry kids and wife with a tenderness that belies his formidable frame and helps make Renée Zellweger bearable as his wife. Paul Giamatti as Braddock’s manager Joe Gould, is beyond great. He takes a part that has been the domain of cartoon-type characters like Leon Errol in Joe Palooka movies and injects it with depth, humor, perspicacity and humanity. And pay heed to a star turn by Craig Bierko as Max Baer. No surprise to me, who sang Bierko’s praises when he starred on Broadway as The Music Man.  In real life, Baer ko’d at least one opponent into his final resting place and beat up German Max Schmeling with a succession of iron crosses to the jaw. (Baer wore a Star of David on his trunks connoting this victory over the Third Reich-er. Though born to a Jewish father, he was raised as a Catholic). In the movie, Braddock is prepared to endure the worst in exchange for a big pay day for his family. And Bierko flaunts it, making a not-so-subtle overture to Zellweger. He is the spitting image of Baer: good looks, broken nose and a jauntiness and charm that almost – but not quite – wrest the movie from Giamatti and Crowe.

© Columbia Pictures
6) The Harder They Fall (1956)  – Based on Budd Schulberg’s runaway best seller. Humphrey Bogart, looking wan in his final feature, is cast as Eddie Willis, a cynical sportswriter turned press agent who readily enters into an unholy alliance with Nick Benko, crooked promoter, portrayed by Rod Steiger, in one of his more memorable roles,  to push an Argentine giant Toro Moreno (read: Primo Carnera and portrayed by Mike Lane), possessing almost no ability, into the championship through a series of fixed fights. Max Baer who creamed the real Carnera, plays Buddy Brannen in the movie. Director Mark Robson again sees fit to use black and white as his medium of choice.

© MGM
7) Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) – Who will forget the savage Tony Zale-Rocky Graziano ring encounters? I certainly won’t. Staged by the brilliant director, Robert Wise, the climactic battle in this movie, with Zale, the 'Iron Man,' is one of the best choreographed fights ever filmed. This second ’56 boxing biopic starred Paul Newman, making his mark as a serious screen actor with his plug-ugly portrayal of the middleweight champion Graziano, who rose from the New York City streets and a household of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father. An unregenerate punk, Graziano goes from reform school to the army to prison, where he meets Johnny Hyland (Judson Pratt), the prison fitness instructor. Hyland sees Rocky’s potential as an athlete and urges him to channel his violent energy in a better direction. Released from prison and still behaving like a thug, the boxer hooks up with small-time manager Irving Cohen (Everett Sloane) whose daughter, played by the Italian actress Pier Angeli becomes his wife. Sloane is but one of an extraordinary cast of character actors including Josef Buloff (the original Ali Hakim of Oklahoma!) , Eileen Heckart, Harold Stone and Jackie Kelk - and three people who made their screen debuts in un-credited roles, George C. Scott, Steve McQueen and Robert Loggia.

© Arena Stage
8) The Great White Hope (1970). In its powerful 1968 Broadway production which I saw, TGWH had more than 60 characters. Given the economics of theater today, that would be unheard of. James Earl Jones gave a Herculean performance as Jack Jefferson based on the early 20th century heavyweight champ Jack Johnson who refused to “know his place,” and Jane Alexander was his white mistress Ellie Bachman. Alexander, whom I knew when she so ably headed the NEA, recounted the time Muhammad Ali came backstage and astutely said, “This play’s about me, except for the white chick.”  Howard Sackler who wrote the script, saw Jack Jefferson as a tragic hero, a Coriolanus-like man who oversteps himself, essentially moving out of his tribe and getting clobbered. The screen adaptation, directed by Martin Ritt, which to its credit starred Jones and Alexander (rather than box office luminaries like Sidney Poitier and Audrey Hepburn) was faithful to the spirit and intensity of the show but lacked much of the wallop. Hal Holbrook was indeed a member of the movie cast.

© MGM
 9) Rocky (1976) – The Rocky five-movie series raises eyebrows and a few guffaws, but there is no denying that Sylvester Stallone reinvented the underdog film genre with his Best Picture Oscar winner. Knowing that the property was a do-or-die effort for Sly the Producer, added to the intrigue. The Rocky theme by Bill Conti has become a high school band staple as have roller bladders ascending the Philadelphia Museum of Arts steps. The cast included Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weather and celebrated Burgess Meredith.

© Columbia Pictures
10) Golden Boy (1939) – Many would rate Clifford Odets’s narrative of a violin-playing boy who becomes a prizefighter as a five-handkerchief weeper. Based on Odets’s Group Theater Broadway production, the film marked William Holden’s movie debut in the title role of Joe Bonoparte. In the stage production, Elia Kazan was Joe, with John Garfield an understudy.  As an eight-year-old, I saw the “World Premiere” of the movie while vacationing with my parents and sister in Scaroon Manor. Our visit to a tiny movie house in the town of Schroon coincided with Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. In watching and re-watching the film, Barbara Stanwyck continues to shine as the hard-edged Lorna Moon (befitting her Brooklyn upbringing as Ruby Stevens) who succumbs to the innocent young boxer, as do Adolph Menjou, Edward Brophy and Sam Levene. But Lee J. Cobb is over-the-top as Joe’s East-Lynnish melodramatic father.