Ringside Maisie is a film in one of my least favorite genres: a sports comedy. Despite this, it manages to be pretty good. Considering that most of the sports films that I do end up liking generally tend to be ones about boxing or martial arts (like Creed), I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

Once again, Maisie Ravier is en route to another job, and she’s run out of money, which prompts her to be ejected from the train on which she has stowed away. Why she needs to work after falling in love with a rich bachelor who was ready to settle down at the end of Maisie Was a Lady is unknown, just as we never hear why she never went back to the Bar-O Ranch that she inherited at the end of Maisie, or if/why things didn’t work out with Slim, her love interest in that film. Walking along the tracks, Maisie gets picked up by a young boxer named Terry Dolan (Robert Sterling, Ann Sothern’s real-life husband), who takes her back to the training facility. Terry’s manager, “Skeets” Maguire (George Murphy), is immediately suspicious of Maisie, assuming that she’s an athlete chaser of some kind, but he softens to her as the two get to know one another better. Terry admits to Maisie that he and his girlfriend Cissy (Natalie Thompson) are currently lying to Terry’s mother (Margaret Moffatt) about Terry’s line of work. When Maisie is fired from her job as a dancer for refusing to put out for her boss, she finds work as Mrs. Dolan’s companion, which gives her more time to develop a fondness for Skeets. When she learns that Terry wants to quit boxing and open a grocery store like the one his father ran before they lost their savings, Maisie encourages him to tell Skeets, insisting that the manager will understand, but Skeets instead insists that Terry must finish out his contract. When his next bout results in Terry being blinded, perhaps permanently, Maisie once again delivers an impassioned speech that makes everything right. 

Despite this being the longest Maisie picture so far, clocking in at 95 minutes, there’s not much more substantial to say about this one than any of the others. That having been said, I enjoyed this one immensely. I didn’t really buy the budding romance between Maisie and Skeets (perhaps because she has, naturally, more chemistry with Terry), but I did like the sweet relationship that forms between Maisie and Mrs. Dolan. Maisie is a woman for whom her forthrightness is a virtue, and she can’t be relied upon to be dishonest for very long. I was also shocked by the late-in-the-film sudden change in Cissy, who had theretofore seemed like she really and truly loved Terry, but who was ready to ditch him immediately. Watching Maisie tear into her for her fairweather love was as fun as it was watching her give Skeets a talking-to about his treatment of Terry. The tension continues to build throughout, especially once a specialist is brought in from Boston to perform a hail mary operation on Terry to reduce the swelling in his brain and restore his eyesight, which has the most immediate stakes of any of these films. It’s a fun watch, perhaps second only to Maisie Was a Lady so far. Will this love between Maisie and Skeets last? I doubt it, given that the next film is titled Maisie Gets Her Man. We’ll find out together, next time. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond