Ringside (1949) Reviews

• A Boxing Turkey

  dougdoepke2011-11-29

  Two brothers use their boxing skills to help each other. I got this turkey in the 3-movie package of Forgotten Noir. Good thing the other two aren't so bad. Reviewer bkoganbing is spot on. The premise is ludicrous, at best. Having tough guy King Cobra (Barry) sashay from the ring to the concert stage requires more than a little stretch. No need to belabor the cheap sets, the screwball storyline, or the bad photography. Too bad the results don't rise to a campy level. I'm just sorry that two good performers like Barry and Brown are wasted in this misfire. One thing for sure—despite the bad script, they certainly look like brothers. (In passing— Speaking of brothers, ex- pug Tony Canzoneri {Swinger Martin} could pass for Edward G. Robinson's thuggish brother.)

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• Chopin Or Champion

  bkoganbing2011-05-22

  Ringside is a boxing story from B studio Lippert Productions. It concerns a promising pianist who gives up a career as such to go in the ring and avenge his brother who was blinded during a world middleweight championship bout. The pianist is Don Barry and the blind boxer is Tom Brown. There is probably so much wrong with this particular boxing film I almost dare not catalog it. Barry has some boxing skills, but while he's fast with feet and hands, he lacks a real punch. He wins all his fights by decision. A punch is something you're born with in the fight game, it can't be acquired with training. But even worse no concert pianist worthy of the name would dare risk his hands boxing. Both trades require good hands used for vastly different purposes. Barry has it in his mind revenge, but Brown was a fool to get in the ring. He was told that he had optic nerve damage, but chose to go in anyway. No boxing commission even back then would have sanctioned Brown going in the ring. Fight fans and film fans would have known that back in 1949. All in all Ringside ranks as one of the worst films on pugilism I've ever seen.

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• Tales from the Ring

  sol12182008-05-16

  (There are Spoilers) The movie "Ringside" is very similar to the 1940 boxing drama "City of Conquest" in it having two brothers with totally opposite vocations. Joe O'Hara, Tom Brown, is a professional prizefighter who takes his profession of beating his opponent into submission as part of the job even if it, in reverse, happens to him. Joe's brother Mike, Don "Red" Barry, who had since quit the ring and became an up and coming concert pianist takes again up boxing after Joe was blinded in a bout with Middleweight Champion Tiger Johnson, John I Cason. Both thirsting for revenge as well as make enough money for his brother to get an eye operation to restore his sight Mike enters the boxing ring with the pseudonym Kid Cobra. Running up a winning streak of 19 straight victories Mike makes sure that he doesn't knock out his opponents opting to win on points to give everyone, including Tiger Johnson, the impression that he has cream-puffs in his gloves not hands of stone. It's when Mike gets his title shot at the Middleweight Crown that he plans to use his fists to punish and pulverize the unsuspecting Tiger Johnson for what he did to his brother Joe. We also have Mike falling in love with his brother's girlfriend and fiancée Janet, Sheila Ryan, while Joe is laid up blind in his left eye in the hospital. With the Middleweight Title now on the line Mike's secret identity is exposed by boxing gambler and tipster Swinger Markham, Tony Canzoneri. It was Markham who also tipped off Tiger Johnson's handlers that Joe had an injurer left eye which Johnson took full advantage of in his defense of his hard won title. This news of Kid Cobra's true identity brings Mike's brother Joe rushing from his hospital bed to the boxing arena to plead with him not to kill or seriously injure Tiger Jonhnson for his or anyone else's sake. Even though Mike was supposed to be the sensitive and non-violent, in him being a musician, type he developed a vicious hatred to the point of killing someone in his attempt to avenge his brother. Joe being in the boxing business, from the point of taking and giving punches, had a far more honest feeling about what Tiger Johnson did to him. Being in the ring to win you have to be able to take as well as give punches and it's up to the referee the ring doctor or the fighter's, who's being badly beaten, handlers or even the winning fighter himself to have the fight stopped. By grudgingly following his brother's Joe's advice Mike not only became the Middleweight Champion of the World but was thus able to pay for Joe's eye operation. Mike was also able to live with himself in not killing or seriously injuring an opponent in the ring which would haunted him , if not right away but later, for the rest of his life. P.S "Ringside" also featured the former 1930's Lightwieght Champion of the World Tony Canzoneri, looking like a miniature Two Ton Tony Galento, as the "heavy" in the film playing Swinger Markham.

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• Here we go again....it's the Golden Not syndrome!

  mark.waltz2016-07-18

  "Golden Girls" spoofed the entire plot with an episode that had the girls briefly managing a prize fighter in order to help him get into the school of the arts. A decade after the play and successful film version, low budget Lippert studios did their own variation of the plot that had a violin player stepping into the ring after his own brother got the knock out to end all knock outs. Don "Red" Barry is the young hero who picks up where older brother Tom Brown left off, winning the girl (Sheila Ryan) in his efforts to fulfill his own dreams and help his brother recover. It's totally predictable, over-loaded with clichés and filled with lame dialog as it moves down the path of mediocrity. The conclusion where the blind Brown confronts Barry in the middle of a fight over seeking revenge cinches this as one of the silliest films about boxing ever written, especially when compared to such classics as "The Set-Up" and "Body and Soul". The two boxing leads seem way to old to be entering the ring, making the whole thing pedestrian and unbelievable.

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• We Want Tony!

  JohnHowardReid2012-12-10

  A flabby remake of "City for Conquest", this made-on-the-cheap boxing drama does have realistic fight scenes but little else to recommend it. Some boring scenes with William Edmunds should have been deleted to improve the pace, and the guy who plays the hood who gives Lyle Talbot some interesting info (Tony Canzoneri, a former world's welterweight boxing champion in the fifth of only six movie appearances), should have been handed much more footage instead. Canzoneri makes a great villain. He has class and charisma, he carries himself well, he wears his clothes with grace and style, he moves like a panther, his voice is crisply insinuating, his acting perfect, so why didn't Hollywood use him in lots more films?

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