There Ain’t No Justice *** (1939, Jimmy Hanley, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, Edward Chapman) – Classic Movie Review 8107

Director Penrose [Pen] Tennyson’s 1939 black and white British movie There Ain’t No Justice is a bright and flavoursome, if minor Ealing Studios sporting drama, with a punchy, appealing performance from Jimmy Hanley as Tommy Mutch, a young cockney boxer who turns professional, comes up against a fight fixing racket but refuses to throw a match.

Edward Chapman plays boxing manager Sammy Sanders. It is based on a 1937 novel by James Curtis.

Promising co-writer/ director Tennyson’s lively but now forgotten first film was praised in 1939, mainly for its realistic portrayal of the boxing world. Tragically, Tennyson made only two other films before he was killed in World War Two, aged 28. Tennyson was Assistant Director to Alfred Hitchcock from 1934 to 1937, starting with The Man Who Knew Too Much and carrying on to Young and Innocent. In 1939 he married Nova Pilbeam, whose biggest film successes were The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent.

Also in the cast are Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, Edward Chapman, Phyllis Stanley, Michael Wilding, Jill Furse, Nan Hopkins, Richard Ainley, Gus McNaughton, Richard Norris and Al Millen.

Real-life boxer Bombardier Billy Wells appears. He is remembered as one of the gong men featured in the Rank Organisation films logo.

Jimmy Hanley stars as boxer Tommy Mutch in There Ain’t No Justice (1939).

There Ain’t No Justice is directed by Penrose Tennyson, runs 83 minutes, is made by Ealing Studios, is distributed by Associated British Film Distributors (1939) (UK), is written by Penrose Tennyson, James Curtis and Sergei Nolbandov, based on a 1937 novel by James Curtis, is shot in black and white by Mutz Greenbaum, is produced by Michael Balcon and Sergei Nolbandov, and is scored by Ernest Irving.

It is available on DVD in the UK on Volume Eight of Network’s Ealing Studios Rarities Collection. It was shown on London Live TV in 2015.

Jimmy Hanley married actress Dinah Sheridan in 1942 and their children are Jeremy Hanley (born 1945) and actress Jenny Hanley (born 1947).

The year before, James Curtis helped to adapt his 1937 novel They Drive by Night for the screen as the noir thriller They Drive by Night (1938). In 2008 the novel They Drive by Night was reissued by London Books as part of their London Classics series.

In 2014, London Books republished Curtis’s 1937 novel There Ain’t No Justice as their tenth London Classic, with an introduction by Martin Knight. It is described thus: ‘A large collection of local thugs, bullies, loafers, and ordinary working people are all vividly portrayed against a background of tenements, saloons, and boxing clubs.’

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8107

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