Winner Take All (DVD), Warner Archives, Drama

James Cagney gives a knockout performance in this two-fisted boxing drama costarring Marian Nixon, Virginia Bruce, Guy Kibbee and Dickie Moore. While resting up at a New Mexico health ranch, lightweight contender Jimmy Kane (Cangey) falls for Peggy Harmon (Nixon), a beautiful widow with a sickly young son (Moore). Promising to send for them in a couple of months, he returns to the ring and lines up a shot at the title. But when he meets a society tease (Bruce) whose flirtations are mistaken for love, Peggy is summoned to win Jimmy back before he destroys his career. The first of several films to showcase Cagney's skills as a boxer, Winner Take All places the actor square in the ring, where he refused the use of a double. The footage would reappear years later in Cagney's final film, Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played an elderly ex-fighter.