Golden Boy (1939 film)

For other uses, see Golden Boy.

Golden Boy
Original poster
Directed byRouben Mamoulian
Screenplay by
Based onGolden Boy
by Clifford Odets
Produced byWilliam Perlberg
Starring
Cinematography
Edited byOtto Meyer
Music byVictor Young
Color processBlack and white
Production
company
Columbia Pictures
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • September 5, 1939 (1939-09-05)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Golden Boy is a 1939 American drama romance sports film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and William Holden. It is based on the 1937 play of the same title by Clifford Odets.[1][2]

Plot

Promising young violinist Joe Bonaparte (William Holden) wants to be a professional prizefighter, “to own things and to give things” that a career in music cannot provide. Joe brings Tom Moody (Adolphe Menjou), an almost bankrupt fight manager, the news that Moody's fighter has just broken his hand. Joe—who was sparring with the man when it happened—wants to take the boxer's place in the impending fight. Lorna Moon (Barbara Stanwyck), Moody's longtime girlfriend, persuades him to take the chance. (Moody wants to marry Lorna, but his wife wants $5,000 to divorce him—The equivalent of $115,733.57 in 2026.)[3]

Joe calls his father to tell him he'll be late tonight. Papa (Lee J. Cobb), wants his son to continue developing his musical talent and has spent $1,500 ( $34,720.07 in 2026.[4]) on a Rugieri violin for Joe's 21st birthday.

Moody, Roxy and Lorna discover why Joe has been holding back in the ring, protecting his hands. Lorna is dispatched to convince him to keep fighting. Joe confides in her: “A prizefight is an insult to a man's soul.” and she is “like music” to him. But he realizes that Moody sent her, they quarrel—and he promises to be the next world champ.

Joe tells his heartbroken father to return the violin and wins fight after fight in a cross country tour that lasts 8 months.

Dangerous Gangster Eddie Fuseli (Joseph Calleia) wants a piece of the action. He and Joe are to meet the next day. Moody tells Lorna to keep Joe away from Fuseli.

Joe takes Lorna home with him. Papa refuses Joe's money; Joe gives it to his brother-in-law to buy a cab. After dinner, the whole family sings. Papa brings out the violin. Joe tries to play Brahms' Cradle Song and runs out. Papa asks Lorna to look after his son.

She tells Joe she has never seen such happy people or been so happy herself. She tells him she was wrong about him: His heart's in music; he has enough money to get his hands right. But Joe wants the crown— and her. She tells him what she owes Moody, but agrees to share Joe's home.

At the office, Moody tells Lorna his wife wants a divorce. She tells him she's leaving him, and he grabs her. Joe walks in and misunderstands. Fuseli walks in, and with one phone call he uses his influence to get Joe a fight in Madison Square Garden.

Lorna declares her love for Moody.

Five months later, under Fuseli's influence, the formerly sweet Joe has turned into a hard-hearted boxer. He is about to fight the semi-final match, against Chocolate Drop “Chokky” (James “Cannonball” Green).

Fuseli has bought Moody out. Papa comes the changing room and gives Joe the “word” to fight he has always withheld. It's “too late” for music. Joe weeps while the trainer gives him a massage and a pep talk.

Joe walks out to the ring determined to “show them all”.by winning. He knocks out his opponent in the second round, killing him and breaking his own right hand. Lorna tells Moody that she loves Joe and goes to him. Joe will not be consoled. When he tells Chokky's grieving family his life is worth nothing, Chokky's father tells him that is not true.

Joe quits Fuseli, who slugs him. When he tells Lorna he has nothing to give her. She replies that this is the beginning of a new life. His hand will heal. She takes him home to his father, who embraces both of them.

Cast

The cast included:[5]

James "Cannonball" Green plays Chocolate Drop, Joe's final opponent, in an uncredited role.[6]

Production

In 1938, Columbia purchased the rights to Odets' play for $100,000, intending to produce a film starring Jean Arthur and directed by Frank Capra. Actors considered for the role of Joe Bonaparte included John Garfield, Elia Kazan, Richard Carlson, and Tyrone Power.[7] However, director Rouben Mamoulian expressed interest in Holden after seeing his screen test. Under the terms in which Holden was obtained contractually from Paramount, Columbia paid him $25 a week.[8] Golden Boy was Holden's first starring role and jumpstarted his career.[5]

“The film is memorable in great part because of the luminous performances of Barbara Stanwyck and Mamoulian’s personal discovery, William Holden…Holden credited Stanwyck with having pulled him through his demanding assignment by coaching him in her trailer each evening after the day’s shooting.”—Film historian Marc Spergel in Reinventing Reality: The Art and Life of Rouben Mamoulian (1993).[9]

The producers were initially unhappy with Holden's work and tried to dismiss him, but Stanwyck insisted that he be retained.[10] Thirty-nine years later, when Holden and Stanwyck were joint presenters at the 1978 Academy Awards, he interrupted their reading of a nominee list to thank her publicly for saving his career.[10] In 1982, Stanwyck returned the favor during her acceptance speech for an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony, saying of Holden, who had died after falling in his home a few months earlier: "I loved him very much, and I miss him. He always wished that I would get an Oscar. And so tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish".[11][12]

Playwright Clifford Odets was reportedly displeased at the many changes made in the film from his original play, partly due to the Motion Picture Production Code and partly to the rewritten ending. Whereas the play ended with Joe and Lorna deciding to escape their problems and being killed in a car accident, the film closes with Joe and Lorna deciding to return to Joe's home together.[13][10][14]

The climactic boxing scene was filmed on location at Madison Square Garden in New York City.[5]

Reception

New York Times film critic Frank Nugent offers conditional praise for Mamoulian's adaption of the Clifford Odets play. According to Nugent, Golden Boy is at its best when it diverges from “stage bound” patterns and applies cinematic methods to convey “the Odets allegory.” The climactic and tragic boxing match, which occurs off-stage in the play, appears in the film as “a savagely eloquent piece of cinematic social comment” showcasing the social milieu that attend these fights: “[T]he mugs, the gamblers, the fashionable set, the race groups, the sadists, the broken-down stumble-bums rolling their heads with the punches...these are the memorable things in the picture, the truly cinematic things.”

Though “scarcely [a] first-rate motion picture,” concedes Nugent, Golden Boy "is the sort of film we can endorse heartily in spite of its shortcomings.”[15][16]

Accolades

The score by Victor Young was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.[5]

Adaptations

On January 7, 1940, Stanwyck performed a parody of Golden Boy on The Jack Benny Program.[17]

The 1947 film Body and Soul was partly based on Golden Boy.[6]

Theme

Columbia Picture's screenwriters “stripped (Clifford Odet's stage play) of its left-wing rhetoric” as well as its tragic denouement.[18] Director Mamoulian ignored the larger social issues of “modern capitalist society” and proceeded to reduce the central theme to that of an individual's struggle to “choose between his spiritual or animalistic impulses.”[19][20]

By entering into a Faustian bargain, concert violinist cum professional boxer Josef “Joe” Bonaparte “loses his soul and wreaks destruction on the lives of others in his quest for self-fulfillment. In the end he is left with almost unendurable guilt.” Mamoulian and Columbia deviated from the Odets theme and tacked on a Hollywood-style happy ending.[21][22] The picture does not address the “racial issues inherent in the fight” in which the white Bonaparte “Golden Boy” is pitted against the African-American “Chocolate Drop,” who is killed in the homicidal match.[23] Film historian Marc Spergel writes:

Mamoulian has the murdered boxer’s father say “We just little people, and all of us got a burden, even you,” maintaining the screen image of blacks as lovingly accepting their status as morally superior victims, without rancor, and so patronizing blacks under the guise of ennoblement.[24]

Spergal concludes that Golden Boy is an expression of the misanthropic outlook that informs Mamoulian's themes: A cinematic metaphor that defines Hollywood “as a place where artistic sensitivity and appreciation are wasted on people who crave only bread and circuses…”[25][26]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Milne, 1969 p. 168: Filmography
  2. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 172-173: Odet’s play “was a success in 1937 when it was produced by the Group Theatre on Broadway.” And p. 281: Filmography and Stageography.
  3. ^ "What is $5,000 in 1939 worth in 2026?". www.amortization.org. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  4. ^ "What is $1,500 in 1939 worth in 2026?". www.amortization.org. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  5. ^ a b c d "Golden Boy (1939)". American Film Institute. 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Boddy, Kasia (2013). Boxing: A Cultural History. Reaktion Books. p. 88. ISBN 9781861897022.
  7. ^ Jensen, 2024 p. 151-152: See here for Warner Bros. refusal to loan Garfield for the part at Columbia.
  8. ^ Jensen, 2024 p. 151: He was being pain $50 week at Paramount.
  9. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 174-175: Elided material reads “Stanwyck was able to maintain control over her own performance…”
  10. ^ a b c Ashe, Brandie (August 21, 2013). "William Holden, the 'Golden Boy'". The Retro Set. Archived from the original on November 28, 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  11. ^ video: "Barbara Stanwyck's Honorary Award: 1982 Oscars", Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences via Youtube.com; accessed November 12, 2016.
  12. ^ Robert Osborne, "TCM – Golden Boy" via Youtube.com; accessed November 12, 2016.
  13. ^ Jensen, 2024 p. 153-154: See here how film differs from stage version, issues with Production Code and screen depiction of suicide forbidden.
  14. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 172: Golden Boy appears to be “uncharacteristic of the work one associates with his career.”
  15. ^ Nugent, 1936
  16. ^ Milne, 1969 p. 120: “Holden is good, unshowy and sincere in the title role, his film debut…”
  17. ^ Jack Benny on the Old Time Radio Network
  18. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 173
  19. ^ Spergel, 1969 p. 116: The is less a conflict between “Capital and Labor” but a “moral and personal one” and a “crise de conscience.” And p. 173
  20. ^ Callahan, 2007: “Mamoulian couldn’t muster much interest for his version of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy (1939)...”
  21. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 173: “...an obligatory hopeful ending.” Also see here for reference to “Faustian conflict.”
  22. ^ Jensen, 2024 p. 153: “...Faustian parable…”
  23. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 174: “...the film is in no way innovative…”
  24. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 174
  25. ^ Spergel, 1993 p. 173: Ellided material reads “where artists are exploited and managers are villainous exploiters.”
  26. ^ Danks, 2007: “Mamoulian quickly developed a taste for nostalgic Americana and a suspicion of the benefits of the modern world…Golden Boy (1939) and Applause do not really have a genuine feeling for the present day.”

References

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