The Cinderella Man - An Early Script

I just finished reading a script version of Cinderella Man. After I finished the last page, it was almost as though I were back in the 1940's, watching John Garfield and Irene Dunne or Jean Arthur on the screen as Jim and Mae Braddock. The story has such an old-fashioned feel to it. It is more about depression days and the family's struggle to survive than about boxing - still the matches Braddock fights are central to the plot, and they are graphic and bloody.

If the right look is achieved for this film (and I can only picture it in black and white), and if some grit can be built into the story, it should be a great part for Russell - and, incidentally, for the actress who will play Mae Braddock. Like Alicia Nash, she is the power in the family - the one holding them together. If you saw Dorothy McGuire in A Tree Grow in Brooklyn, you would know what I mean. The two women are very similar, though Mae is sweeter in character.

Jim is an uncomplicated, quiet man, willing to put his dreams aside for the sake of his family - until he knows that fighting is what he can do best. Then he becomes a rock - even Mae cannot budge him.

There are scenes of life in hobo camps, on the docks, on the bread lines; there are family scenes and sweet love scenes; there is even a Karl Malden-like priest to counsel Jim and a newspaper man that could be played by James Gleason! The script gives us a blast from the past as it stands now - with no villains (even Baer has a soft side at the end), only people trying to live through a terrible time in our country's history. No wonder The Cinderella Man was a hero to so many! When he won over Baer and became the heavyweight champion of the world, he fulfilled the dreams of every poor person in America.

I'll keep my fingers crossed on this one. Ron will have a challenge to keep things out of the soup, but I trust Russell to find the hard core of Jim Braddock, and bring him to vivid life once again.