Iron Man (1953)

***SPOILERS*** Working in the Coaltown Pennsylvania coal mines for a living Coke Mason, Jeff Chandler, looks forward to opening up his own business repairing and selling radios. It's later that Coke is forced into a boxing match with the far bigger Alax Mallick, James Arness, because Coke won a bet with him in who can mine more coal in a one hour period. Coke after taking it on the chine for the entire first round suddenly put the big guy away with a vicious left right combination.It seemed that the meek and pacifistic Coke had a mean streak under his harmless facade. That streak surfaced when Coke got pushed around which Mallick, in him being knocked unconscious, was unfortunate enough to find out. This wild and uncontrollable animal inside Coke had his older brother and coal mine foreman George, Steven McNally, as well as his fiancée Rose Warren, Evelyn Keys, come to see him as their meal ticket to get out of Coaltown and then start a new and much better life. The only problem with all this is that Coke is not exactly normal when he's fighting someone. With his cave man and animal like style of fighting he may very well end up killing someone in the boxing ring! Or even worse, for Coke, with his ability to take enormous amounts of punishment end up getting killed himself!The movie "Iron Man" has an at first reluctant Coke being matched up with a number of pushovers that he easily makes mincemeat out of until he's matched against Joe Savella, Steve Martin, for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. Taking an unbelievable beating from the much more skillful Savella Coke ends up losing when his brother and manager, not being able to see Coke take any more punishment, throws in the towel thus ending the fight.Coke feeling both hurt and humiliated over his loss to Savella now becomes obsessed in having a rematch and evening the score with him. What Coke is totally unaware of is that things are being set up by not only his brother George and boxing promoter Max Watkins, Jim Backus, but Rose as well for Savella to throw his match with him thus making Coke the new Heavyweight Champion of the World. With Coke being the most hated and despised fighter in professional boxing due to his dirty like tactics, like rabbit punching and hitting his opponents when their still down, is a gold mine for promoters in getting the boxing arenas packed solid.Resentful in him being suspected in having his Heavyweight Championship Crown won undeserved, by Savella throwing the fight with him, Coke then instead of retiring from boxing, which he promised Rose he'll do, goes on a "Bum of the Month" campaign taking on all comers and, to the great disappointment of the boxing crowd and sports writers, knocking them out cold.It's when Coke is matched against his good friend and former sparing partner Tommy "Speed" O'Keefe, Rock Hudson, that a sudden change comes over him. Knowing that in his wild and unethical, as well as dirty, tactics in the ring he may well end up killing or permanently injuring Tommy. Trying for the first time in his professional boxing career to fight a good hard as well as clean fight Coke not only ends up getting a cheering ovation from the crowd, who at first hated his guts, but the love and respect of Tommy who used to looked up to Coke as a big brother as well as Rose who had earlier dumped him!Fine boxing action sequences done in newsreel, not Hollywood, style photography makes "Iron Man" one cut, or punch, above what your used to seeing in boxing films on the silver screen. Even though Jeff Chandler, who's in real life a strapping six foot four inch 200 pounds, was a bit awkward in his boxing scenes, he sometimes looked like he was standing and walking on stilts, he was still very believable in them.***SPOILERS*** The by far the best thing in the movie wasn't Jeff Chandler's, or Coke Mason's, fight scenes but his genuine humanity which was buried under the rage and fury that overtook him whenever he stepped into a boxing ring. It was those very noble and human feelings towards his opponent Tommy "Speed" O'Keefe that in the end brought the very best out of him. And despite him losing they Made Coke a true champion in the eyes of both his very few friends and many enemies that he, at that time, had in the world.

This film is a remake of Iron Man of 1931 with Lew Ayres and Jean Harlow, also made in 1937 as Some Blondes are Dangerous, but here Evelyn Keyes, the blonde is not the central character. Jeff Chandler, Rock Hudson and James Arness are workers in a mine and also boxers. Chandler wins his fights when he hates and gets furious, he becomes an animal and also the public does not like him. Rock Hudson is the nice guy and Evelyn Keyes is Chandler's girlfriend and Stephen McNally his brother and also agent. The fight scenes do not look very real, specially when Chandler gets punched on the face, it does not seem to affect him, it is almost like he does not defend himself, he only cares about hitting. I think that in a real fight he would be knocked out in a couple of minutes fighting this way. The film is interesting, specially because of the presence of Hudson and Arness at the beginning of their careers.

Can it be merely coincidence, even in the relative innocence of 1951, that the boxers in Iron Man go by the names of Coke and Speed? (The fact that they're played by Jeff Chandler and Rock Hudson, whom viewers today will identify as, respectively, a cross-dresser and a gay man, adds another latter-day dimension to their sweat-lubricated clinches.) In any case, their stimulating monikers do no injustice to the story – a jacked-up, strung-out fight movie that's a worthy entry in that oddly distinguished, brutal genre.It starts in Coaltown, Pennsylvania, a mining community where the only excitement is wondering when the shafts will cave in. When Chandler takes on a bully and thoroughly thrashes him, his brother (Steve McNally) and girl (Evelyn Keyes) see a glamorous future and fast money for him – and for them. The only catch is that Chandler isn't a born boxer: He's clumsy and gets pummeled. But when he's hurt (and then jeered at), he falls into blind, murderous rages, going after his opponents by fair means or foul. He wins purses and titles but not the hearts of the fans – they don't like dirty fighters, and come only in hopes of seeing him get his comeuppance. But they keep coming, and soon Chandler's poised for the heavyweight title.The story, ably directed by Joseph Pevney, follows a familiar course: The fallings-out with his brother and his wife, the big-time sportswriter who becomes his manager (Jim Backus), the fixed fight, the fallacious sense of invincibility. And the ending is a little too pat and feel-good. But it's one of Chandler's best roles (he's as good as Kirk Douglas in The Champion, if not so convincing as Robert Ryan in The Set-Up, both of two years earlier). Evelyn Keyes has but two things to do: First egg him on, then beg him to stop, but she's, as always, distinctive. (She gets slugged by him, too.) Hudson's another case entirely. In the part of the loyal sparring-partner who turns into the challenger, he's confined to playing L'il Abner – a good-natured but dim-witted lout. But in the final grudge-match, he reverts to the sheer, feral physicality of which he was capable but rarely called upon to display – and, in its final scene, he all but steals the movie away from Chandler. He's the breakout star.

A well-cast Jeff Chandler, in his physical prime at about age 32, plays a Pennsylvania miner named "Coke" Mason who reluctantly becomes a boxer in order to earn some extra money. (He wants to use this money to marry girlfriend Evelyn Keyes and open up a radio store.) "Coke" is a mild-mannered fellow who proves to be an indifferent fighter until he's goaded into anger. Then, with an almost audible "click," he turns on his opponent in a murderous rage and attacks him without mercy. This streak of brutality quickly earns him the enmity of the crowd even as it causes his rapid rise in the standings. Meanwhile his friend and fellow boxer "Speed" O'Keefe (Rock Hudson) has the boyish good looks and clean-cut manner which make him a crowd favorite. Inevitably the two meet in the ring to decide the world heavyweight championship.These ingredients could easily be combined into a serviceable B-movie but there's a problem here: the character played by Evelyn Keyes. The script can't decide whether she's the faithful girlfriend who's appalled by the violence of the boxing ring or instead the greedy golddigger who sees her boyfriend as a means to a life of wealth and comfort. This confusion about her character proceeds to muddle the script's conception of other characters. Stephen McNally as Chandler's ambitious brother also has the makings of a villain as does Joyce Holden as the "other woman." However, since Keyes might (or might not) be the story's real villain, these two characters are often left in a state of limbo -- not quite good, not quite bad. An air of indecision thus lingers over many parts of the movie and keeps it from having the desired impact.The movie's fight scenes lack the gritty reality of those in, say, "Raging Bull," but this movie almost seems slanted at a female audience so instead of blood and bruises we get attractive "beefcake" shots of Chandler's and Hudson's bare torsos, gleaming with sweat and shaved of hair. (Knowing what we do now of these two actors' private lives, it's easy to imagine how much they enjoyed filming these "beefcake" scenes -- not to mention getting buck naked for the showers that followed!) Fans of "beefcake" get a bonus in also seeing James Arness stripped to the waist for an early fight scene with Chandler.Though it's hard to imagine Rock Hudson as the heavyweight champion of the world, he has an eager, likable quality that hasn't yet been hardened by the movie-star status soon to settle around him.This "Iron Man" is a re-make of a 1931 "Iron Man" starring Jean Harlow. Notes indicate that the Jean Harlow version was also re-made in 1937 under the title "Some Blondes Are Dangerous" but information on this movie seems to be missing from the files.Finally, you can tell how old this movie is by one simple fact: virtually all the boxers in it are white!