Carnera: The Walking Mountain

Popped up on my library's video shelf this week, and first review sums it up pretty well. Didn't cost me a nickel, and I still wanted my money back. Sorry, cheap shot, but no sense going over the sad details again, when I'm just going to say ditto.

You have to wonder why the film can't live up to Carnera's very interesting real life. His career was mostly notable for suggestions that he was just a marketing gimmick, created to take advantage of a giant with a glass jaw. Early fight victories against bimbos, to earn his title shot, suggested his schedule was put together by mobbed-up management, looking to profit from one last bet on the big fight. That aspect was portrayed best in Bogart's last film, "The Harder They Fall."

I just wanted to add one more juicy rumor, found in Walter Winchell biography (I think it was Gabler's, but not sure). Supposedly, Carnera fooled around with wife of Damon Runyon. Just one of multiple offenders, it seems, but Runyon took it personally and used his connections with Owney Madden to get revenge by setting up big fight in NY, wherein over-matched Carnera got his bell professionally rung.

Difficult to document in real-life history, so the story may be total BS. But to paraphrase a famous philosopher, when the rumor is more interesting than the fact, print the legend. And Carnera's legend is certainly more interesting than any alternate facts presented in this film. Eighty years after he fought, the big guy is once again badly-used by his promoters - this time without any payoff.