The Big Chance

A carnival boxer (John Darrow) falls for a nightclub girl (Merna Kennedy) who is mixed up with a gangster, and tries to fight his way out — literally, in a fixed fight he is paid to throw. Mickey Rooney, thirteen and billed as Mickey McGuire, turns up in a supporting role on the way to stardom, and J. Carrol Naish plays the heavy. A typical poverty-row crime melodrama of 1933, it is worth watching mainly for Rooney and for the seedy carnival atmosphere Albert Herman shoots on real midway locations. Released the same year as King Kong and Forty-Second Street, this is what the other half of Hollywood was making. The film is in the public domain.