Best movies like Palooka

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Palooka Starring Jimmy Durante, Lupe Vélez, Stuart Erwin, Marjorie Rambeau, and more. If you liked Palooka then you may also like: West of Broadway, Whistle Stop, Our Dancing Daughters, Rapture, Red-Headed Woman and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Joe Palooka is a naive young man whose father Pete was a champion boxer, but his lifestyle caused Joe's mother Mayme to leave him and to take young Joe to the country to raise him.

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Know any good movies to watch like Palooka 1934. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

West of Broadway

A wealthy soldier returns home after WWI, discovers his socialite fiancee no longer wants to marry him, and weds an admitted gold-digger he's just met after a night of drinking and partying.

Whistle Stop

When beautiful Mary returns to her "whistle stop" hometown, long-standing feelings of animosity between two of her old boyfriends leads to robbery and murder.

Rapture

Agnes, a lonely teenage girl, and her father befriend an escaped convict, named Joseph, who arrives at their farm in Brittany, France. When Joseph develops an attraction to Agnes, her father threatens to break up the union.

Red-Headed Woman

Lil works for the Legendre Company and causes Bill to divorce Irene and marry her. She has an affair with businessman Gaerste and uses him to force society to pay attention to her.

Body and Soul

Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.

Champion

An unscrupulous boxer fights his way to the top, but eventually alienates all of the people who helped him on the way up.

Rock Around the Clock

A frustrated big-band promoter runs in to rock-and-rollers Bill Haley and the Comets at a small-town dance. He quickly becomes their manager and, with the help of Alan Freed, hopes to bring the new sound to the entire country. But will a conniving booking agent, with a personal ax to grind with the manager, conspire to keep the band from making the big time?

The Crowd Roars

A young boxer gets caught between a no-good father and a crime boss when he starts dating the boss's daughter, although she doesn't know what daddy does for a living.

Joe Palooka, Champ

After losing heavyweight contender Al Costa to mob boss Florini fight promoter Knobby Walsh recruits small town boy Joe Palooka to take his place. First in the series.

Joe Palooka in Winner Take All

Joe is scheduled for the big fight as usual. This one has more fight sequences than plot.

Gentleman Joe Palooka

In the second film of Monogram's Joe Palooka series, Joe is 'used', by two state senators scheming to obtain oil-rich lands, in a publicity campaign to get the land transferred to the state, supposedly for a park. When Joe learns that he has been used as a dupe he becomes disillusioned and leaves the prize=fighting profession. But, his manager, sparring partners, and fiancée manage to expose the land-grab scheme, clear Joe's name and discredit the crooked politicians.

Joe Palooka in the Knockout

The third of the Monogram series based on Ham Fisher's "Joe Palooka" comic strip, opens with Knobby Walsh, the manager of Joe Palooka trying to talk his way out of a traffic citation, and the story leading to that point is told in flashback as narrated by Walsh. Heavyweight champion Joe, after knocking out an opponent who later died in his dressing room, feels responsible and threatens to give up boxing. But the dead fighter's fiance thinks he died as the result of a drug that was given to him by a gang of gamblers, who made a rich haul betting on Palooka. Joe, Knobby and the police unite to run down the gamblers, but not before Joe also is nearly murdered by the same means...a poisoned mouthpiece. Elyse Knox is along as Joe's sweetheart Anne Howe, although Anne and Joe had long been married in the comic strip.

Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad

Joe Palooka goes blind during a fight. An operation restores his vision, but he's told not to fight for a year. His trainer Knobby has picked up another fighter, but gangsters are pressing him to fix fights. Joe decides to risk his eyesight to save Knobby's honor.

Joe Palooka in the Counterpunch

Joe heads for South America to fight the Latin champ. Shipboard, he helps federal agents fight counterfeiters. He also spars with love interest Anne Howe.

Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey

Newlyweds Joe and Anne Palooka are delayed in their honeymoon plans by the helpful Humphrey Pennyworth and by considerably-less-helpful manager, Knobby Walsh.

Joe Palooka in Humphrey Takes a Chance

A crooked boxing promoter tries to shake down Joe's manager by setting up a rigged fight in Humphrey Pennyworth's hometown.

Joe Palooka in the Big Fight

Gangsters frame Joe on a drunk charge and a murder rap so they can put their own fighter into a big event. Joe investigates in an attempt to prove his innocence.

From the Terrace

Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. At the brink of attaining his career goals, he is forced to choose between business success, married to the beautiful, but unfaithful Mary and starting over with his true love, the much younger Natalie.

Iron Man

Prizefighter Mason loses his opening fight so wife Rose leaves him for Hollywood. Without her around Mason trains and starts winning. Rose comes back and wants Mason to dump his manager Regan and replace him with her secret lover Lewis.

Sinners' Holiday

Ma Delano runs a penny arcade in Coney Island, living upstairs with her sons and daughter. Story involves rum-running, accidental murder and a frame-up.

Straight, Place and Show

The Ritz Brothers go to the race track. They raise training end entrance money in a wrestling match and help a young man train the horse of his fiancée.

Their Own Desire

Lally is a rich girl whose father writes books and plays polo. After 23 years of marriage her father decides to divorce Lally's mother and remarry to soon-to-be-divorced Beth Cheever. This sours Lally on all men. While on vacation with her mother she meets Jack, who succeeds in stealing her heart. Then Lally discovers that Jack is the son of Beth Cheever, the woman who is to marry her father.

Southpaw

Billy "The Great" Hope, the reigning junior middleweight boxing champion, has an impressive career, a loving wife and daughter, and a lavish lifestyle. However, when tragedy strikes, Billy hits rock bottom, losing his family, his house and his manager. He soon finds an unlikely savior in Tick Willis, a former fighter who trains the city's toughest amateur boxers. With his future on the line, Hope fights to reclaim the trust of those he loves the most.

Casablanca Driver

This mockumentary follows the world's worst boxer and the events that led to his meteoric rise in the year 1969.

Age of Indiscretion

A book publisher finds his business floundering, which prompts his socially ambitious wife to desert him for a society millionaire, leaving him with their young son. The publisher's fortunes improve dramatically, however, when a best-selling romance novelist decides to publish her new book with his firm. In the meantime, his ex-wife has married the millionaire, and she and her new mother-in-law come up with a plan to sue her ex-husband for custody of the boy.

The Third Day

A man stumbles out of a car crash with no memory of what transpired. Everyone who he meets suggests that he is a ruthless man with an aggressive temper. Could he be deliberately blocking out memories of his past?

The Rich Are Always with Us

A wealthy couple's marriage is falling apart due to the man's infidelity. The wife's male friend has long loved her and sees his big opportunity.

Fighting Fools

The boys are working at the local boxing arena where their friend, Jimmy Higgins, is boxing. During a crooked match Jimmy is killed. The boys seek out his older brother, Johnny, a former boxer who gave up the sport rather than go crooked, and help train him to get back in the ring. They try to get him a shot at the title, and when they do the same crooked gangsters that were behind Jimmy's death try to get Johnny to take a dive.

Mother Didn't Tell Me

Jane Morgan (Dorothy McGuire) marries handsome doctor William Wright (William Lundigan), despite warnings from a host of other doctor's wives that she will be neglected and lonely, thanks to his career. Based on the novel The Doctor Has Three Faces by Mary Bard and billed as a movie with "all the answers" for new wives, this dated little film follows Jane's struggles to adapt her life to better suit her husband's needs.

Man of the World

A young American girl visits Paris accompanied by her fiancee and her wealthy uncle. There she meets and is romanced by a worldly novelist; what she doesn't know is that he is a blackmailer who is using her to get to her uncle.

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