''Day of the Fight'' is a 1951 American short-subject

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

financed and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who based this black-and-white motion picture on a photo feature he shot two years earlier for '' Look'' magazine.

Synopsis

''Day of the Fight'' shows Irish-American middleweight

boxer Boxer most commonly refers to: * Boxer (boxing), a competitor in the sport of boxing *Boxer (dog), a breed of dog Boxer or boxers may also refer to: Animal kingdom * Boxer crab * Boxer shrimp, a small group of decapod crustaceans * Boxer snipe ee ...

Walter Cartier during the height of his career, on April 17, 1950, the day of a fight with middleweight Bobby James. The film opens with a short section on

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...

's history and then follows Cartier through his day as he prepares for the 10 P.M. bout. Cartier eats breakfast in his West 12th Street apartment in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, goes to early mass, and eats lunch at his favorite restaurant. At 4 P.M., he starts preparations for the fight. By 8 P.M., he is waiting in his dressing room at Laurel Gardens in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area."The Day of the Fight" (TCM article)
/ref>

Cast

Douglas Edwards Douglas Edwards (July 14, 1917 – October 13, 1990) was an American radio and television newscaster and correspondent who worked for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) for more than four decades. After six years on CBS Radio in the 1940s ...

as ''Narrator'' (voice only) * Walter Cartier as ''Himself'' (uncredited) *Vincent Cartier as ''Himself - Walter's twin brother'' (uncredited) *

Nat Fleischer Nathaniel Stanley Fleischer (November 3, 1887 – June 25, 1972) was a noted American boxing writer and collector. Career Fleischer was born in New York City. After he graduated from City College of New York in 1908, Fleischer worked for the ' ...

as ''Himself - boxing historian'' (uncredited) *Bobby James as ''Himself - Walter's opponent'' (uncredited) * Stanley Kubrick as ''Himself - man at ringside with camera'' (uncredited) * Alexander Singer as ''Himself - man at ringside with camera'' (uncredited) *Judy Singer as ''Herself - female fan in crowd'' (uncredited)

Cast notes

* The year after the fight chronicled in ''Day of the Fight'' took place, Walter Cartier made boxing history by knocking out Joe Rindone in the first 47 seconds of a match (16 October 1951). Cartier had played some bit parts in movies before he appeared in ''Day of the Fight'', and afterwards, up until 1971, he continued to appear occasionally in films and on television. With regard to his televised performances, his best known role is in the 1955-1956 season of the American

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

The Phil Silvers Show ''The Phil Silvers Show'', originally titled ''You'll Never Get Rich'', is a sitcom which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959. A pilot titled "Audition Show" was made in 1955, but it was never broadcast. 143 other episodes were broadcast – all half-a ...

'' in which he portrays the mild-mannered character Private Claude Dillingham. * Alexander Singer, who was a high-school friend of Stanley Kubrick (both attended William Howard Taft High School in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

), served as assistant director and as a cameraman on this production. Singer also worked on Kubrick's ''

Killer's Kiss ''Killer's Kiss'' is a 1955 American crime film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Howard Sackler. It is the second feature film directed by Kubrick, following his 1953 debut feature '' Fear and Desire''. The film stars ...

'' (1955) and '' The Killing'' (1956), and had a long career as a director of films and television dramas. *

, the narrator on ''Day of the Fight'', was a veteran

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

radio and television newscaster. At the time, he was the anchor on the first televised daily news program, which would later be titled ''Douglas Edwards with the News'' and then '' The CBS Evening News''.

Production

Kubrick and Singer used daylight-loading

Eyemo The Eyemo is a 35 mm motion picture film camera which was manufactured by the Bell & Howell Co. of Chicago. Background Designed and first manufactured in 1925, it was for many years the most compact 35 mm motion picture film camer ...

cameras that take 100-foot spools of 35mm black-and-white film to shoot the fight, with Kubrick shooting hand-held (often from below) and Singer's camera on a tripod. The 100-foot reels required constant reloading, and Kubrick did not catch the knock-out punch which ended the bout because he was reloading. Singer did, however. ''Day of the Fight'' is the first film credit on composer

Gerald Fried Gerald Fried (born February 13, 1928) is an American composer, conductor, and oboist known for his film and television scores. He composed music for well-known television series of the 1960s and 70s, including ''Mission: Impossible'', '' Gilli ...

's resume. Kubrick did not pay him for his work in scoring the production. "He thought the very fact that my doing the music" for the film "got me into the profession was enough payment", Fried told ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' in 2018, although he conceded in the same newspaper interview that Kubrick's point was accurate. A childhood friend of Kubrick, Fried later composed the score for the director's ''

Paths of Glory ''Paths of Glory'' is a 1957 American anti-war film co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of ...

'' (1957) and three other films. Since the original planned buyer of the documentary went out of business, Kubrick was able to sell ''Day of the Fight'' to RKO Pictures for $4,000, resulting in only a net profit of $100 for him after paying the film's $3,900 in production costs.Joseph Gelmi
"An Interview With Stanley Kubrick (1969)
excerpted from ''The Film Director as Superstar'' New York: Doubleday, 1970. However, the physicist and author

Jeremy Bernstein Jeremy Bernstein (born December 31, 1929, in Rochester, New York) is an American theoretical physicist and popular science writer. Early life Bernstein's parents, Philip S. Bernstein, a Reform rabbi, and Sophie Rubin Bernstein named him after th ...

, who in November 1965 conducted a 76-minute interview with Kubrick for ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', documented that the project was actually not a break-even endeavor, that it instead lost $100. ''Day of the Fight'' was released as part of RKO-Pathé's "This Is America" series and premiered on 26 April 1951 at New York's Paramount Theater, on the same program as the film ''

My Forbidden Past ''My Forbidden Past'' is a 1951 American historical film noir directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner. Adapted by Leopold Atlas from Polan Banks' novel ''Carriage Entrance''. Plot The events take place in the 1 ...

''. Frank Sinatra headlined the live stage show that day

Synopsis

Cast

Cast notes

Production

Notes

External links