reflections in a glass slipper

Last night Jimbo and his girlfriend saw the movie Cinderella Man. It was an entertaining movie, of the Rocky genre, and I thought it was worth seeing, but, as in all movies about someone overcoming tremendous odds to be successful, the opponent necessarily has to be portrayed as villain and I wonder whether Ron Howard’s portrayal of Max Baer as a monster may have been overdone. By the way, Baer was played by Craig Bierko, who did a very convincing job of convincing us Baer was a really nasty guy. You may remember that Bierko played the baddest of the many bad guys in the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight, where he also left no doubt how bad he was.

I read this morning that Max Baer, Jr., the son of the former Heavyweight Champion of the World, and coincidently the actor who portrayed Jethro Bodine in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies, objects to the portrayal of his father. Baer, Jr., says his father was not at all the sadistic killer he was portrayed to be.

When I looked up Baer’s biography on Wikipedia, it states that after Baer knocked out Frankie Campbell and Campbell died, Baer gave the money from his next few fights to Campbell’s family. Baer also lost four of his next six fights. Baer supposedly wore a Star of David on his trunks when he fought Max Schmeling in 1933. This sounds as if he may have been somewhat ahead of the rest of the world in recognizing Nazi persecution of the Jews. Another note I found interesting was that Baer failed to take James Braddock seriously and didn’t train properly for their fight. This may explain why he lost, more than simply being a battle of good versus evil, where evil loses by unanimous decision.

This is not to say that Baer was probably a saint. I think a prerequisite to getting in the ring with someone else and beating the crap out of them is that one must fit within the guidelines of being a hard-ass.

Anyway, Cinderella Man is a good way to keep yourself occupied for two-and-a-half hours on a Saturday afternoon. The cast is excellent. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger put on very quality performances, and Paul Giamatti melds into his character as well as he did in Sideways. You’ll probably want to see it, but perhaps you may not want to give it as much thought as I did.

Because sometimes we can think too much here in Jimbo’s world.