Warner Bros. DVD Clearance Sale (series)

The Champ

DVD Features:

Audio:

• Mono 1.0

Major Awards:

Academy Awards - Best Actor (1932)

Academy Awards - Best Original Screenplay (1932)

Description by OLDIES.com:

Grab your dreams, come out of your corner and step out swinging. The double Oscar winner The Champis ready to take on the world! With feet planted, chin tucked and its heart unashamedly on its sleeve, this original father-son tale (remade in 1979) remains one of the all-time tearjerkers. In an Academy Award-winning Best Actor performance, burly Wallace Beery - he of the fog-cutter voice and gruff warmth - plays the washed-up prize fighter making a ring comeback to provide for his son. Nine-year-old Our Gang comedy star Jackie Cooper is Dink, as devoted a son as ever stood in any man's corner. Laugh. Cry. Cheer. Cry some more. Even as The Champ breaks your heart, it heals the spirit.

Product Description:

In many ways a male version of Vidor's STELLA DALLAS, THE CHAMP also works overtime on the tear ducts. Wallace Beery stars as Andy "Champ" Purcell, the former heavyweight champion, now down and out, who is kept alive by the devotion of his young son, Dink (Jackie Cooper). The champ is trying to make a comeback but continues to backslide into drinking and gambling in Tijuana dives, despite the efforts of Dink and his friends to save the boxer from himself. While gambling, the Champ does manage to win a horse, and while he and Dink are at the track, the boy runs into his mother, Linda (Irene Rich), although neither knows the other. When she speaks with the Champ, he agrees that the boy would be better off living with her and her wealthy husband, Tony (Hale Hamilton). Hiding his love behind a mask of indifference, the Champ convinces the boy to go to the country to live with his mother. But Dink can't abide the separation and runs away to rejoin his father in time for the biggest fight of his career. An unusually understated and affecting performance by Beery along with good work by Cooper erase some of the triteness of the melodrama, which must have spoken powerfully to depression-era audiences whose numbers undoubtedly included more than a few "Champs" struggling to care for their children.

Plot Keywords:

Drama | Recommended | Sports | Tear Jerker | Vintage

Production Notes:

• Theatrical release: November 13, 1931. Wallace Beery shared the Best Actor Oscar for 1931-32 with Fredric March. Beery improvised much of his dialogue. Beery's contract stipulated that a stunt double would do the fight scenes for him. However, after Vidor invited a number of young women whom Beery knew onto the set to watch fight scenes being shot, the actor suddenly decided to do the fight scenes himself.

Cast and Crew: