User Reviews

Dick Powell and June Allyson made three joint appearances for MGM films while she was under contract to Leo the Lion. The first was in Meet the People, the second was The Reformer and the Redhead and the third was this drama Right Cross.

Powell though married to Allyson and billed first in the credits takes an essentially supporting role as a sportswriter and confidante of aspiring boxer Ricardo Montalban. He kind of likes Allyson in the film but he's a good guy and steps aside for Montalban in the romance department.

What Right Cross does demonstrate is the power of internalized self hate can have on one's soul. Montalban plays a Chicano American who doesn't think he's good enough for the perky and Caucasian Allyson. The surprise for him is that he can't believe that she really does like him a lot and not just because he's a potential champion.

Lionel Barrymore is on hand as Allyson's father in one of his last films for MGM. Right Cross has another distinction, it is the last time that Dick Powell sang on the big screen as he takes a chorus of Alla En El Rancho Grande.

The boxing sequences are nicely and realistically done. But I think Right Cross is more of a romantic film with a boxing background than the other way around.

Right Cross features Ricardo Montalban as Johnny Monterez, a Mexican-American boxing champ with a chip on his shoulder and a bum hand that's threatening to end his career. He's involved in an on-again off-again relationship with June Allyson, playing the daughter of aging boxing manager Lionel Barrymore, and his best friend is journo Dick Powell, who also gets to sing a song mid-way through the picture. Crisply written by Charles Schnee, Right Cross does a decent job of dealing with issues of race in post-war America, with Montalban unwilling to allow his sister to date a 'gringo' because of the mistreatment (unspecified) he's received from the white man. Of course, MGM weren't brave enough to cast more than one Hispanic actor in the film, with Sicilian born Mimi Aguglia and Italian-American actress Teresa Celli featured as Moms Monterez and sister Marina. Barrymore doesn't have much to do, but the leads are all excellent, as are uncredited David Fresco, John Maxwell, and Smoki Whitfield in small but memorable roles.

***SPOILERS*** With a perfect 84 and zip ,in him having never been defeated, under his belt World Middleweight Champ Johnny Monterez, Ricardo Montalban, has nothing more to prove in the ring. Still Johnny feels very insecure in him being of Mexican heritage in a, as he called it, "Gringo Society". The fact that his boxing days will soon be over has Johnny feel that he'll, like most boxers, end up broke with his millions in purse money gone into the pockets of those he entrusted to invest it for him.

The film "Right Cross" is more about boxer Johnny Monterez being afraid of the future after boxing then being afraid of boxing in the ring, against formidable opponents, itself. Johnny is also afraid that his All-American girlfriend Pat O'Malley, June Allyson, will leave him as soon as his big paydays-as world champ-in the ring are over. This leads Johnny to drop Pat's dad boxing prompter as well as his manager Sean O'Malley, Lionel Barrymore, who guided his career to the championship for Allan Goff, Barry Kelly, who promised Johnny a 10% stake in his business after he retired.

As we soon find out Johnny is only good to Goff as long as he's fighting and bringing crowds to the arena's to see him defend his title. It's when Johnny injures his right, and money punch, hand that he realize that without his knock-out punch he'll end up in the trash can, like most of the fighters who are controlled by Goff, not on Groff's payroll like he thought he would.

Being matched up to defend his title against "Killer Al" Helden, Court Shepard, Johnny feels that he'll have no trouble dispatching the right handed punching slugger with his superior boxing ability and fancy footwork. It's when Johnny's good friend, and the real life husband of the actress who pays Johnny's girlfriend Pat, sports reporter Rick Garvey, Dick Powell, warns him about his dangerous habit of being a sucker for a straight right, or right cross, that Johnnys arrogance and bravado take over his ring wise intelligence and plain old common sense. Something that would soon prove to be fatal to Johnny when he steps into the ring with the right cross throwing Al Heldon.

Even though the fight scenes in the film are saved for the final 10 or so minutes they rank right up there with some of the best fight sequences in movie history. Both actors Ricardo Montalban and Court Shepard are so good, and professional, in their mixing it up in the ring that they could have even given Middleweight Champs, of the 1950's, Sugar Ray Robinson or Jake LaMotta a run, or fight, for the money in a real professional boxing match.

***SPOILERS*** As for Johnny he finds out the hard way that Pat is only interested in him as a person not him in being champ. It was Johnny dumping Pat's father Sean as his promoter/manager that caused the old man, Pat feels, to suffer a fatal heart attack. Now with his boxing career over Johhny, no longer in the limelight, knows who his friends, real friends, really are. But it took a terrible beating in the ring for Johhny to find that out.

P.S Check out a cameo appearance in the movie by the soon to be America's, as well as the worlds, #1 sex symbol Marilyn Monroe as fashion model Dusky Ledoux. Even as a mostly unknown actress, back in 1950, in what seem like barley a minute of screen time Marilyn still had men going nuts, and turning heads, over her. Even the star, together with Ricardo Montalban and June Allyson, of the film Dick Powell just couldn't keep is eyes off her and asked Marilyn, or Miss Ledux, to come up to his place for a date and check out his great spaghetti and meat ball recipe: Marilyn turned him down.