Right Cross

When is a boxing movie not a boxing movie?

After the success of Mystery Street, MGM signed director John Sturges to a contract and assigned him Right Cross, replacing director Roy Rowland.¹

Stocked with MGM contract players, the story concerns a Mexican boxer, played by Ricardo Montalban, struggling with personal and professional insecurities while rivaling his best friend, a reporter played by Dick Powell, for his aging promoter’s daughter, played by June Allyson.

Despite taking third billing to real-life husband-and-wife Allyson and Powell, this is Montalban’s movie, and he convinces as a boxer risen from the barrio, harboring fears of a “gringo conspiracy” to send him back while simultaneously feeling obligated to the folks in his old neighborhood.

Unfortunately, top-billed Powell proves less convincing as a cynical, womanizing, tough guy. A notable scene features Marilyn Monroe as one of Powell’s would-be paramours, but he abandons the pickup to help Montalban smooth things over with Allyson. Consider the disbelief the film attempts to suspend: first, that Monroe would be interested in Powell, second, that she would prefer him over star-fighter Montalban, and third, that either man would prefer Allyson over her. It’s asking too much.

Allyson proves equally miscast. She has no chemistry with Montalban, and, despite the soft-focus and pageboy haircut, looks her thirty-two years, making her about ten years too old for the part. Her scenes with Powell fare better, but still lack the spark present in a Bogart-Bacall pairing that the film needed to make it work.

The script by Charles Schnee doesn’t help. It’s a tonal mishmash that touches on serious themes like racism, organized crime, and interracial marriage, while interjecting liberal doses of screwball comedy, such as the scene where Powell struggles to make spaghetti for Allyson, or the myriad of moments calling for Powell to put on clownish expressions. These later moments rob the former of any gravitas.

Schnee also punts on resolving the film’s love triangle, opting for a reductive nonending that robs all the characters of any believable arc. Then again, he does offer moments of brilliance, like Powell’s piercing line to Allyson regarding the torch he’s carrying for her, “Marry him Pat. Make an honest man out of me.”

Director John Sturges handles the material with workmanlike efficiency. The backlot locations give the film an artificial veneer it never shakes, but Sturges imbues the lone boxing sequence with reasonable verisimilitude. He’d later refer to the film as a “mild, nothing picture,”² which sells it short. True, it doesn’t hold up to Sturges’s best films (which were all yet to come in 1950), but it’s not wholly without merit.

It’s a film about a boxer, but not about boxing. True, boxing fans will be disappointed the film only features a single bout, and fans of Allyson and Powell will be disappointed to find they aren’t a couple and take a backseat—story wise—to Montalban. But Montalban fans should enjoy his rich performance.