The Big Punch

This film has lots of Warner B film and post war themes in it. There is a successful college athlete (Wayne Morris) who will be an ordained minister after graduation, an almost unrecognizable Gordon McRae in his first film role as a mediocre fighter who looks for God and finds Tolstoy, and Lois Maxwell as a former WWII army nurse who saw so much death and injury that she has lost her faith in God and her desire to be a nurse, even in peacetime.

Morris is a young single man, going on his first assignment as minister to a small Pennsylvania town. He has a hard time winning acceptance at first in spite of his likeable demeanor because he doesn't look or act like any minister that this town has had before, or at least recently. They don't like that he still is an athlete. It is amusing how he wins them over. Little does he know that quoting Tolstoy in front of McRae's character gets him thinking and causes him to not throw a fight after he had agreed to do so. And the people that lose money because of him are not exactly the boy scouts. He makes a run to the small town where Morris is now a minister, and without telling him all of his troubles, winds up boarding with him. Complicating matters is that he and Morris both are falling for the former army nurse with a crisis of faith.

It's interesting how this little film even manages to weave a gangster angle into this thing. Warner Brothers made a bunch of mediocre Bs in the 30s and 40s, but I'd say this seldom seen film is a hidden gem.