Gus Percy Helton as Red Hal Fieberling as "Tiger" Nelson Darryl Hickman as Shanley Kenny O'Morrison as Moore James Edwards as Luther Hawkins David Clarke as "Gunboat" Johnson Phillip Pine as Tony Souza Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig (New York photographer) has a cameo as the timekeeper Background In 1947, almost two decades after March's poem was published, RKO paid him a little over $1,000 for the rights to the piece. Although March had nearly a decade of Hollywood writing credits during the 1930s (working on what a 2008 essay in The Hudson Review called "one forgotten and now unseeable film after another"), RKO did not ask him to adapt his own poem. The screen adaptation included a number of alterations to the original text. The protagonist's name was changed from Pansy Jones to Stoker Thompson, his race was changed from black to white, he went from being a bigamist to being devotedly married, and his beating and subsequent death on a subway track was turned into an alley assault and a shattered hand. The opponent's name was changed from Sailor Gray to Tiger Nelson. Production Casting In an audio commentary accompanying the 2004 DVD release of the film, Robert Wise attributes the change in the protagonist's race to the fact that RKO had no African-American star actors under contract. Although the film did have an African American actor (James Edwards) in a minor role as another boxer, Edwards was not a "star" under the then existing studio rules. March later commented in an Ebony interview, saying: not only [did they throw] away the mainspring of the story, they evaded the whole basic issue of discrimination against the Negro.... Hollywood’s attitude to the Negro in films has been dictated all too often by box-office considerations: they are afraid of losing money in the Jim Crow South. Robert Ryan, who was cast as Stoker Thompson, had boxing experience from his time at Dartmouth College, where he was heavyweight champion for four years in a row. Wise and Sid Rogell had first thought of Joan Blondell to play Julie, following her performance as Zeena Krumbein in Nightmare Alley, but RKO owner Howard Hughes refused, saying "Blondell looks like she was shot out of the wrong end of a cannon now". Filming Dore Schary, the uncredited executive producer who got the project going at RKO before his 1948 move to MGM, is credited with giving