BoxRec

What are the facts and what is fiction in the movie Cinderella Man depicting James Braddock's life? It's for an english paper and I need it as soon as possible.

Look at Braddock's career record and you will see that the majority of what happened in the ring is fact.

However, Corn Griffin (sp?) the guy Braddock beat in his return fight after getting his licence back, was not a highly ranked contender as the movie made out, but a guy who had barely started his pro career and already lost. So this win was nothing like as impressive as the film made it out to be.

From memory that's the only major discrepency I know of. Also that Max Baer and Braddock were in fact the same height, although the movie showed Baer to be the taller man.

jezzamundo wrote:Look at Braddock's career record and you will see that the majority of what happened in the ring is fact.

However, Corn Griffin (sp?) the guy Braddock beat in his return fight after getting his licence back, was not a highly ranked contender as the movie made out, but a guy who had barely started his pro career and already lost. So this win was nothing like as impressive as the film made it out to be.

From memory that's the only major discrepency I know of. Also that Max Baer and Braddock were in fact the same height, although the movie showed Baer to be the taller man.

HA! I remember looking up Corns record at the time of the fight and it was something like 7-4. I was a little shocked that the movie made him seem to be some kind of killer.

Not sure if this is true but I picked this info up on a thread here. Corn Griffin's "enhanced" crediblity over and above his record came from how well he was doing as Carnera's sparring partner. Which should mean very little or nothing in my estimation.

Baer wasn't as bad a guy as they made him out to be....well except for sometimes. But he had more to him than just his dark side.

I love this movie probably almost as much as Rmac loved it so it is hard for me to critisize it but the one noticable boxing cliche is whenever a fighter gets hit and knocked down in a movie is he first must do a 360 before going down, after all how can it be a hard punch if it doesn't spin you all the way around? The only other thing that I saw and you already know this going in, is that the fight scenes were a bit more brutal than the actual fight. Since it's the big screen however one can extend a lot of leway here since no one would want to see a movie about boxing that was not brutal, plus they were by far the best fight scenes of any boxing movie I have seen.

The biggest compliant that I had about Cinderella
Man is in regards to the the very distorted
portrayal of Max Baer, who is shown as a loutish
oaf in the movie.

- Chuck Johnston

Someone wrote that Griffin was "a guy who had barely started his pro career and already lost"


Well, Griffin had perhaps 100 bouts with a score of kayos before he fought Braddock. It's all in my book!

delisa wrote:Well, Griffin had perhaps 100 bouts with a score of kayos before he fought Braddock. It's all in my book!

I am on the final chapter.

Great piece of work Mike.

I finally got around to seeing this film last night. As almost always is the case, the book was much better. Still, it was a good film. I especially liked the depression atmostphere they managed to create.
Very interesting career Braddock had though.

-KOKid-