The Harder They Fall

An obviously ailing Humphrey Bogart made his final screen appearance in The Harder They Fall. Adapted from a novel by Budd Schulberg, the film is a thinly disguised a clef account of the Primo Carnera boxing scandal. Bogart is cast as unemployed newspaperman Eddie Willis, who sells his soul down the ...more

Mark Robson's exposé of professional boxing is impressively realistic, reflecting screenwriter Budd Schulberg's intimate knowledge of the sport, but it has a difficult time being shocking with the revelation of the game's corruption. A Film a clef so closely based on the career of Italian fighter Primo Carnera that he sued Columbia Pictures after it was released, it follows his screen surrogate's career through the eyes of a former sportswriter Humphrey Bogart, who is reluctantly working as his ...more