GOLDEN BOY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 23, 1 December 1939, Page 30

GOLDEN BOY

(Columbia) Whichever way you look at it, "Golden Boy" is a worth-while picture. I say "whichever way you look at it" because, if you like boxing, there are several stirring bouts; if you like music, then you will hear such lovely things as "Meditation" from "Thais" and a Brahms "Cradle Song." If you are interested in acting, you will find that William Holden is one person who justifies the Hollywood-abused adjective of dynamic. You will also find Barbara Stanwyck in what may well be her best performance, Adolphe Menjou and Joseph Calleia adequate in their roles, and an actor named Lee J. Cobb who plays superbly an Italian father. And furthermore, if you are one of the few who still believe that pictures can have ideas, take note that this picture is from

the play by Clifford Odets, whose previous claims to fame were that he wrote "Waiting for Lefty" and " Till the Day I Die," and married Luise Rainer. These are the things which make "Golden Boy" worth seeing. In giving some idea of the picture, it is as well to mention the strange mixture it is. If you went to a wrestling match and they played the "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture before the bout, or if you went to a Menuhin concert and a feather-weight boxing match were staged as a curtain-raiser, you would be, to say the least, surprised. Yet, in " Golden Boy," the fact that at one moment William Holden is pummelling his way round a canvas square and, a short time after, playing Brahms on the violin, does not seem so extraordinary. Perhaps that is because Clifford Odets is the dramatist. I suspect that the film lacks some-

thing that the play possessed, but there is still enough to make it stand right out from the usual Hollywood factorymade drama, In this play, Odets has told the old story of heart against head in New York. The beautiful hands of Joe Bonaparte (William Holden) are adept at two things-playing the violin or punching a face. At either trade they can make money; but Joe’s personal preference seems to be for playing rather than punching until circumstances and a fight-promoter named ‘Tom Moody (Menjou) set him well on the way to becoming a boxing champion. When Joe’s fingers begin to itch for the feel of violin strings again, a heroine is introduced to persuade him that boxing is the better game; but after Joe has accidentally killed a negro in a fight, and broken his precious hand into the bargain, culture apparently wins the match. A man cannot be a boxing champion with a broken hand, but he may still be a great musician; and it is a consolation to Joe as well as the audience when the heroine applauds his decision to stick to music. It is hard to give acting honours to any one person in the picture. They must be shared between William Holden, Lee J. Cobb and Barbara Stanwyck. And, of course, much credit also to _Rouben Mamoulian, who directed it.