The Champ (1931)

Directed by King Vidor

Starring Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper and Irene Rich

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer 

Former heavyweight "Champ" Purcell is a mess. He drinks too much. He gambles away any meager earnings he has. When he gets a chance to return to the ring, he shows up in front of the promoter drunk and out of shape. 

His vices force his young son Dink to be the man of the house. Champ loves his son, but cannot overcome his vices. When the father does finally see a gambling winning streak, he takes the money and buys Dink a horse. 

Dink's pet is brought to the track as a race horse, where the boy and his father encounter Linda and Tony. Linda is actually Champ's former wife and Dink's mom. The fighter agrees to let Dink spend some time with Linda. 

However, Dink does not care at all for his mother's well-to-do lifestyle. She responds by attempting to take the boy from his father. And when an all night drinking-and-gambling binge results in Champ losing Dink's horse, the man reluctantly agrees. 

Now Dink is heading off on a train with his mother to a new life and family while Champ wastes away alone. Will Dink stay with his mother? And will the Champ jump at one last chance to climb into the ring? 

The Champ is a great film and, while Wallace Beery may have won the awards, the film's success rests primarily on the shoulders of Jackie Cooper.

 In The Champ, Cooper plays Dink, who (thanks to his father's alcohol and gambling issues), is forced to be the adult in his apartment. He dresses his father and works to get the ex-boxer to his appointments. 

The real trick in Cooper's performance is not simply in playing the character as more mature. He still remains a kid, just with an additional burden.  We see in Cooper's eyes some resentment of his father's behavior, but also acceptance and unconditional love. 

That becomes critical later when Dink has an opportunity to escape his father for a better life and refuses. The turn of events could feel like an overwritten plot machination, but Cooper gives us such a fully realized character, it makes total sense why he'd race back to his no-good dad. 

Speaking of dad, Beery is brilliantly understated in the title role. Again, it's a character that could go off the rails, but even when Andy loses Dink's beloved horse to cover gambling debts, you believe he wants to do right by his son. It's a revelatory turn from an actor who is primarily known for playing the heavy. 

As for King Vidor's direction, it elevates the film above its relatively simple premise. Each shot is carefully framed and whenever we are with Dink, we are seeing the world from the level of a child, barely seeing anything above the torsos of the adults that surround him. 

The Champ is wonderful filmmaking, centered around two fantastic lead performances by Cooper and Beery. It's filled with sports film cliches, but it serves as both a prototype of those tropes and an exercise in elevating them above even most movies today. 

***** out of ***** 

NOTE: Beery received the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Champ. 

NOTE: Original version of this article referred to Jackie Cooper as starring in The Kid because I am an idiot.  This is the corrected version. Thanks to reader policomic for the correction.