The Life of Jimmy Dolan ** (1933, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee) – Classic Movie Review 8024

Director Archie Mayo’s 1933 Warner Bros black and white romantic drama The Life of Jimmy Dolan [The Kid’s Last Fight in GB] stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who comes out on fighting form and gives an earnest star turn as Jimmy Dolan, a vagabond boxer becoming a fugitive for on a manslaughter charge when he kills a reporter. But he uses his fighting money to found a sick children’s home, run by nurse Mrs Moore aka Auntie (Aline MacMahon).

The Life of Jimmy Dolan is soupy, schmaltzy, old-fashioned stuff that belongs to the Edwardian era and has not dated too well. But it is competently written and filmed with production-line care and smoothness. It is pacy and still enjoyable, and packed with amusing acting.

Also in the cast are Guy Kibbee, Fifi D’Orsay, Lyle Talbot, Shirley Grey, Harold Huber, George Meeker, Mickey Rooney, Anne Shirley and John Wayne.

The screenplay by David Boehm and Erwin Gelsey is based on the play Sucker by Bertram Millhauser and Beulah Marie Dix.

The Life of Jimmy Dolan is remade as They Made Me a Criminal (1939) with John Garfield.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 8024

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