SUNDAY PUNCH

US, 1942, 76 minutes, Black and white.
William Lundigan, Jean Rogers, Dan Dailey, Guy Kibbee, J. Carrol Naish, Connie Gilchrist, Sam Levene, Leo Gorcey, Rags Ragland, Anthony Caruso.
Directed by David Miller.

Sunday Punch is a supporting feature from MGM, released at the beginning of America’s involvement in World War Two. It has good credentials, direction by David Miller who had just made Billy the Kid and who was to make a number of interesting films, particularly in the late 50s and early 60s including Sudden Fear, The Opposite Sex, Midnight Lace, Back Street, Lonely are the Brave and Captain Newman MD. The story is from playwright Fay Kanin, who frequently wrote with her husband Michael Kanin (who was the brother of celebrated playwright Garson Kanin who also wrote for his wife, Ruth Gordon).

The cast includes a lot of MGM regulars at this time. William Lundigan played leading hero roles, Jean Rogers this time has to be a femme fatale. Dan Dailey is a Scandinavian janitor. The rest of the cast will be familiar to audiences who watch the films of this period.

While it is a boxing film, it is also about the group of men who live in an apartment block, presided over by Connie Gilchrist. Women are forbidden. However, she lets her niece, played by Jean Rogers, stay and this has an effect on the men. William Lundigan falls in love with her, Dan Dailey decides he needs to become a boxer and win to win her over. In the meantime, she has some less than respectable connections and exploits them only to find that she has to face herself.

Popular ingredients for this kind of drama, melodrama of the period.

1. The title? Meals on Sundays? The boxing element?

2. An MGM support film? Black and white photography, New York setting, the apartment house, the rooms and corridors? Meals? The boxing training, the ring? The nightclubs? The cross-section of New York? Musical score?

3. The focus on the apartment, the men who boarded there, Ken and his college studies, wanting to make money and make a name for himself, falling in love with Judy? The contrast with Ole, his work, attraction to Judy, his asking Pops about being a boxer, his strong hand, his training, his wins? The other men with their comic touches, Biff, Killer, Baby?

4. Roscoe as the trainer, the hard work, forbidding the young men to mix with women? His shock at Judy’s presence? His working with Pops? Pops, getting old, his decision to promote Ole? Success?

5. Matt Bassler, his connections, boxing, clubs and dances? His taking on Judy?

6. The build-up to the rivalry between Ken and Ole? Their friendship? The inevitability of the fight? Judy and her double-dealings? The bout, Ken as the gentleman, Ole as the winner?

7. Popular comic, serious and melodramatic action for the period?