Joe Palooka in Winner Take All (1948)

Ham Fisher's comic-strip pugilist Joe Palooka is once more visualized on-screen in Monogram's Winner Take All. In this one, soft-hearted boxer Joe (Joe Kirkwood) is approached by a trio of gamblers, who want him to throw an upcoming bout. Naturally he refuses, but has cause to regret this decision when the crooks claim to have kidnapped Joe's young ward Tommy (Stanley Clements). When he discovers that the abduction is a hoax, Joe wins the fight and settles accounts with the bad guys. William Frawley costars as Joe's trainer Knobby Walsh (a role played in subsequent "Joe Palooka" entries by Leon Errol), while Elyse Knox, real-life wife of athlete Tom Harmon, plays Palooka's ever-loving fiancee Ann Howe. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi