What happens
Mitch Kelly, a young fighter with no ring experience, is taken on by his manager Tommy Haley after a losing bout in Kansas City. Kelly rises through the boxing ranks in the 1950 Screen Director's Playhouse production of Champion, starring Kirk Douglas as Kelly and Frank Lovejoy as Haley. The episode, first broadcast on March 17, 1950, follows Kelly's climb as he grows more ambitious, drawn to money and status, and his relationships with his brother Connie and with the women in his life begin to strain. Kelly's new associates press him toward a fixed fight, and his choices pull him away from the people who helped him.
Kansas City, Los Angeles and the boxing circuit of the United States in the late 1940s, including fight venues and urban apartments.
Characters: Mitch Kelly, Tommy Haley, Connie Kelly, Johnny Dunn, Grace Diamond, Jerry Harris
Listen for: Kelly's boast after his first win, 'I'm gonna get someplace,' and the sequence in which he is pressed to throw a fight.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.