Cinderella Man Academy Award Nominee

Cinderella Man is a film by Ron Howard inspired by the real life events of earlier heavyweight champion, common-mans hero, James J. Braddock. The film, released in 2005 was nominated for the Academy Awards and is produced by Penny Marshall and Brian Grazer besides Ron Howard himself.

Cinderella Man featured Russell Crowe in the lead as James J. Braddock with Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Paddy Considine, Connor Price, Angelo Dundee and Bruce McGill. The story and screenplay is by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman assisted with the screenplay. This $88 million film was distributed by Universal Pictures, Miramax Films and Buena Vista International. The Music was by Thomas Newman and cinematography by Salvatore Totino.

Cinderella Man is about James J. Braddock; a hard-nosed Irish-American boxer who faces a number of loses in the light heavyweight category and is compelled to sacrifice his career. Then United States falls into the Great Depression and to sustain his family in that environment, he takes up numerous odd jobs. In spite of his hardship, he never stops dreaming of making it big in the boxing arena. The opportunity comes when a contender gives up and Braddock replaces him. He is pitted against the worlds number two contender to the title. He is seen as a mere punching bag for the opponent.

But James Braddock stuns everybody when he knocks out his opponent in the third round. He goes on to fight many more fights and wins, despite a permanent hand injury. Soon he catches the fancy of the people who sees him as a hope in the depression and he is called the Cinderella Man. Eventually, he stages one of the biggest upsets in the boxing history when he defeats Max Baer to become the Heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Cinderella Man was filmed in Toronto and a number of locations were made to look like New York City of the 1930s. Madison Square garden was actually The Bays Queen Street store on Richmond Street which was modified complete with the store fronts, parked period cars and stop lights from the 1930s. The entire filming was done at night on these busy streets so that the daily life was not disturbed.

Cinderella Man has been criticized by the relatives of Max Baer and the boxing critics for depicting Max as a vicious person both inside and outside the ring. He was shown to have killed two men in the ring and this; the critics say is not true. Only one man, Frankie Campbell, died during a fight with Baer. Historical evidence shows that Baer was a much gentler and fun-loving man that is actually portrayed, known to crack jokes often. But the depiction of Baer is actually based on the press reports of the time and they showed him to be vicious. Wikipedia