Cinderella Man

Here's a recommendation to go see Cinderella Man, the true story of James J. Braddock ... a great boxer, but a greater husband and father.

What a role model for men!

There's a lot of boxing, but it never overshadows or gets in the way of the real story of Braddock's life. The movie got off to a slower start at the box office than expected, so AMC theaters is "guaranteeing" it, saying it'll refund your money if you don't like it. As we were walking out of the theater Sunday night, Anne said, "I guess we won't be asking for our money back."

A few sidenotes:

• Something you don't see in the movie: Braddock later enlisted to fight in World War II. You would think a 40-year-old man with a family would have shied away from that. Different era, different men.
• One of the main characters is Max Baer, the heaveyweight champ of the world in the early 1930s. The movie portrays him inaccurately as an uncaring bully who killed two men in the ring. First, he killed only one man, but grieved over that his entire life and paid for college educations for the boxer's children.
• Baer went on to be a fairly famous actor who even had an affair with Jean Harlow. But maybe Baer's greatest contribution to American culture was his son, Max Baer Jr., who played Jethro on The Beverly Hillbillies for nine seasons! I bet Jethro would have been a pretty good boxer, too.