Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man opens in 1928; Jimmy is a boxing star who lives a comfortable life with his family. However, the movie quickly flashes to 1933 and four years into the Great Depression. Bills come into the house and they have no way of paying them. They do not have enough food, at breakfast Jimmy’s daughter says, “Mommy I want more,” but the answer she gets is you cannot have anymore because we have to save some for the boys. Jimmy tries to get fights at night, but they seem to be few and far between, so to try to make some money Jimmy gets up really early and goes to the docks to try to get a shift. There are tons of men crowding the gate to get a shift and they only need about five to ten people each day. Jimmy hasn’t gotten a shift in a while. When he gets home he finds out that his oldest son, Jay, stole salami. Jimmy makes him return it and does not seem to understand why he took it, but as they leave the store he says that his friend had to go to family far away because his parents could not afford to keep him. Jimmy promises that they will always be together as a family and that he does not have to worry about that. Jimmy goes to the fight, but does not fight well at all and has his fighting license revoked. His kids sleep on the floor and they cannot afford to pay the rent of the heating bill. They are out of credit at the market, so they have no more food. By December they are way past due on their heating bill and the company turns off their heat. The kids start to get sick and when Jimmy leaves Mae, his wife, sends the kids away, she is unaware of his promise. Jimmy gets very angry and goes to a relief agency to get money, and then he goes to his boxing buddies and pleads with them for money. He gets enough money for them to turn the heat back on and brings the kids home. His situation is terrible and it really shows how people lived during the Great Depression. They barely had enough to live on. It also shows what many people who deal with poverty today go through.
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In June of 1934, Jimmy gets an offer to come back into the boxing ring for one night to fight one of the latest hot shots. They let him go on because they figure if he wins it will be huge and if he gets knocked out, which they think is the most likely; it will be huge because he has never been knocked out. He wins the fight and his manager is able to get him into a few more fights that he wins. Mae is not happy that he back in the ring because she worries about him so much. When she goes to his managers fancy apartment she realizes it is just to keep up appearances. He has sold most of his furniture to make it look like he has plenty of money. Jimmy’s friend loses his job and gets into some trouble. He participates in a strike that turns bad; he gets trampled and dies. This worries Jimmy a lot and he does not want this to happen to him or his family. He accepts a fight for a big title against a guy who has already killed two people in the ring. When he is warned that he might get killed he tells the men around him that more people die working on scaffolding and working triple shifts each day. He knows that he does not want to go back where he was and says that he has something to fight for now. He goes through the fight and comes out victorious.