It's been a few months since I've reviewed an Errol Flynn movie, and this week, I'm looking at one of his favorite films that he starred in: Gentleman Jim.
(Originally posted on Channel Awesome on March 30, 2015) It's been a few months since I've reviewed an Errol Flynn movie, and this week, I'm looking at one of his favorite films that he starred in: Gentleman Jim. Gentleman Jim is a romanticized biopic about James J. Corbett (1866 - 1933), a heavyweight boxer who helped revolutionize and class up the sport. Born and raised in San Francisco, Corbett grew up in a middle class household and trained in boxing at upscale sporting clubs when he wasn't clerking at a bank. College-educated and well-read, Corbett earned the nickname "Gentleman Jim" (among others) on account of his handsome looks and lack of brute force in the ring. Corbett pioneered what has been referred to as "scientific boxing," using his speed and agility to wear down his opponents, along with rapid-fire jabs to keep them disoriented. He was the first professional boxer to compete using Marquess of Queensberry rules, first making a name for himself in the ring by defeating Joe Choynski in 1889 and then racking up a steady stream of victories. Corbett was also both a decent baseball player and actor, and took up acting full-time after retiring from professional boxing in 1903, in the theater as well as film. He still kept training, charging admission for people to watch him train in boxing. Not only did young women flock to these exhibitions to see him practice, but so did a young Raoul Walsh, who was eventually tapped to direct Gentleman Jim. Corbett's greatest claim to fame was defeating world heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan (1858 - 1918), claiming his title of World Heavyweight Champion in the process. If you haven't heard of Sullivan, this might not seem like a big deal. However, in the late 1800s, the Boston-born Sullivan was one of the most famous people in the world as the last bare-knuckle champion of boxing. Sullivan was a true celebrity, famed for his boxing prowess and boisterous personality. From 1879 to 1892, Sullivan racked up 40 wins in the ring under the bare-knuckle London Prize Ring rules. He was known for striding into bars and bragging he could thrash anyone willing enough to take him on. Unfortunately, Sullivan was also a racist, refusing to fight fellow renowned boxer Peter Jackson because he deemed boxing a white man's sport. (Corbett, however, had no such reservations, and he and Jackson fought to a draw in 1891 - a fight that lasted 61 rounds.) Corbett's match against Jackson had boosted his fame, and there was a lot of anticipation for the Corbett/Sullivan bout. Corbett won the day after a 21-round bout that resembled a bullfight more than a boxing match. WARNING: Here be spoilers! Read further at your own risk! We open in San Fransisco in 1887, where a crowd has gathered in secret to attend a prize fight, which are banned by state law. The fight has drawn a wide range of people from various classes - working class stiffs like bank teller James Corbett (Errol Flynn), his friend and co-worker Walter Lowrie (Jack Carson), the eminent Judge Geary (Wallis Clark), and even a group of fashionable young women. However, some of the attendees were apparently less than discreet, and the cops break up the fight, arresting the crowd. While in jail, Geary vents about how the dirty tricks employed by prize fighters are ruining boxing and keeping laws in place that make prize fighting illegal. He segues into plot exposition about how he's a member of the Olympic Club, looking to turn gentlemen of good families and breeding into fighters in order to bring some respectability into the ring. This gets Corbett's attention, as he's a boxing enthusiast, and he tries to figure out a way to get admitted. When regular client Victoria Ware (Alexis Smith) drops by the bank to get some money for her father's poker game - naturally being held at the Olympic Club - Corbett uses the opportunity to get into the club and meet some of the members. After conniving his way into the gym and getting to impress the resident boxing coach, Victoria sponsors Corbett's membership, if for no other reason than to get him to leave her alone. Corbett's new membership is a source of pride to his entire family, of which he seems to be the one cultivated member. However, his pranks and insistence on putting on airs (including having bellboys page him just to make people think he's important) start driving his fellow members up the wall. They decide to teach him a lesson by setting up a match between him and Jack Burke , England's former heavyweight champion who happens to be visiting San Fransisco. To everyone's surprise, however, Corbett wins the match, impressing everyone with his boxing skills. This is only the beginning, as Corbett Victoria and the Olympic Club members keep setting up matches for Corbett against tougher and tougher boxers, just so they can see him finally take a fall. However, Corbett's more than a match for all his opponents. His fame increases with each new victory, building up to his historic confrontation with John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond) himself. At his highest moment, though, Corbett is finally knocked off his high horse - not by a defeat, but by a humbled Sullivan personally giving Corbett his prized World Championship belt. Although Gentleman Jim was adapted from Corbett's 1925 autobiography The Roar of the Crowd, the film plays fast and loose with the details of Corbett's life, omitting his first marriage to Olive Lake. Perhaps one of the biggest changes was that Corbett was soft-spoken and demure in real life, a far cry from a Corbett written to be more in synch with Flynn's own personality - arrogant and self-centered. (More on that in a bit.) The post-fight scene between Corbett and Sullivan, where Sullivan gives Corbett his World Championship belt was made up by the screenwriters - Corbett and Sullivan never liked each other in real life, and Sullivan boasted he could have beaten Corbett if he'd trained harder. (Not only that, but Sullivan had sold that belt years before.) Still, as with all historical fiction, there's dramatic license, and given how superb Flynn and Bond are in this scene, I'm glad it's in the movie. Of all the roles Flynn ever played, Jim Corbett was one of his personal favorites, if not his favorite - probably because it was a break from costume adventure hero role he kept getting typecast as. He had been an enthusiastic boxer for most of his life, which served him well in Gentleman Jim (and more than one bar brawl). Former welterweight champion Mushy Callahan (born Vincent Morris Scheer - he changed his name due to anti-Jewish prejudice) had worked with Flynn for the boxing scene in The Perfect Specimen (1937), and once again served as technical adviser on this film. He helped Flynn replicate Corbett's distinctive style, and while Flynn did his own stunts in the ring, the close-ups of Corbett's dance-like moves are of Callahan. However, the shoot took a lot out of Flynn, and he ended up having a heart attack while filming one of the boxing scenes, holding up production for a week while he recovered. Warner Bros. didn't want to hurt Flynn's box office appeal, so they claimed it was just fatigue. In reality, though, Flynn actually suffered from a variety of ailments throughout his life, including tuberculosis and malaria, and his excessive vices didn't help. These ailments also made him unfit to serve in the military - at the outbreak of World War II, Flynn tried and failed to get into every branch of America's armed forces, due to being classified as 4F. The secrecy surrounding his health ended up biting him in the ass, as many people assumed Flynn was an unpatriotic draft-dodger. So how does Flynn do in his favorite role? Pretty well - his enthusiasm clearly carries through, and matches Corbett's own. It's a typical Flynn role in many ways, with him playing a charmer who can talk his way into and out of a mess, as well as someone who can handle himself physically. The final scene at the end with Ward Bond, however, makes for a very sharp contrast with the bombast and smoothness that comes before, and it's one of Flynn's best acting moments of his career. (That scene alone makes the film worth watching.) Alexis Smith is awesome as Victoria, probably Flynn's best on-screen match since Olivia de Havilland. She stands up for herself when Corbett crosses inappropriate boundaries, and her role in the film is integral to the plot beyond inevitable love interest. They spend most of the movie at each others' throats, to the point where you wonder what the hell she and Corbett see in each other. (Smith had previously shared the screen with Flynn in 1941's Dive Bomber, the last film Flynn made with Michael Curtiz, and they'd co-star again in San Antonio in 1945.) The supporting cast is mostly solid, although the comic relief character of Walter Lowrie feels rather superfluous to the plot. Longtime Flynn sidekick Alan Hale, however, is a joy to watch as Corbett's father, with his energy nearly matching Flynn's. William Frawley (who I can't believe I didn't recognize as having played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy) is another of the standout supporting players as DeLaney, Corbett's fast-talking manager. (In my defense, I'm more of a movie guy than a TV guy.) In Raoul Walsh's capable hands, Gentleman Jim ends up being an engaging and entertaining movie. Despite an over-reliance on plot convenience, the story moves along at a good pace. It's well-shot, the editing is tight, and the sets and costumes are lavishly detailed. (Fun fact: the barge used in the scene of Corbett's dockside fight with Joe Coynski was one of the ships used in Flynn's 1940 swashbuckler classic The Sea Hawk.) The boxing scenes are well-staged and choreographed, although they'll definitely seem tame to some when compared to more modern boxing films such as Rocky or Raging Bull. The biggest weaknesses are in the script, which exuberant performances can't always overcome. For example, I'd have liked to have seen Corbett get more characterization, more of an explanation as to why boxing means so much to him. (This plays into a major problem I have with the film, which I'll get into in a bit.) Not only that, but he seems happy with his family, and he doesn't come off as ashamed of his upbringing or where he comes from. So why does being a gentleman matter to him so much? This lack of character depth actually ends up making Corbett look like an arrogant jerk instead of someone we're supposed to be charmed by. Flynn's no stranger to playing heroic characters who can talk their way out of trouble, but that's usually for the sake of thwarting an injustice or getting someone out of trouble. Here, Corbett does it for his own advancement and nothing else, which makes his character hard to like. Even his defense of Judge Geary (which we only hear about, as it takes place off-screen) comes off as just being a way to get into the Olympic Club. The film tries to make Corbett more sympathetic by having him stick up for a drunken Walter (which doesn't work, since Walter's behavior is way the hell out of line by anyone's standards), or the multiple scenes of how he tries to help out his family. During one of his spats with Victoria, you'll hopefully be rooting for her when she tells Corbett off for kissing her without her consent, and Corbett's "you were asking for it" response is cringe-worthy, to say the least. I'd say this film was a product of its times and the attitudes of the 1940s, except we continue to see this type of character (and attitude) today. For the first few years of his film career, Flynn was knocking it out of the park with one hit film after another, and Gentleman Jim was no exception. It was a rousing hit with audiences and critics, and is widely considered to be one of his best films. However, Flynn's glory days weren't to last much longer. In October of 1942, a month before Gentleman Jim's theatrical release, Flynn was arrested for rape (a crime he was acquitted of at his 1943 trial). I won't go into the details of the trial or the political machinations that fueled it, as they're well documented in numerous sources. (Thomas McNulty's excellent biography of Flynn, which I've mentioned before, is the one I'd put the most stock in.) While the notoriety didn't hurt the movie at the box office (and may have even helped it), people were now seeing Flynn in a different light. His "I'm no gentleman" line towards the end of the film got a lot of scornful reactions from audiences, and it only got worse from there. Although he had a few solid hits afterward, Gentleman Jim arguably marks the end of Flynn's golden days in Hollywood. For all its problems, Gentleman Jim is light-hearted entertainment, boosted by great performances and a beautiful closing scene. If you want to see Flynn playing something other than a sword-swinging champion of justice, this isn't a bad one to check out.
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