--- title: "The Champ" year: 1931 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-champ" fi1m_score: 72 critics_score: 63 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-19T21:51:54.776112+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T21:52:04.964497+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Champ (1931) Directed by King Vidor · 1h 26m · MPA NR · Drama, Family **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics 63 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* A drunk, a boy, a racehorse and a bar in Tijuana; the boy is the only adult in the picture > King Vidor’s father-and-son picture is thin as a story and stiff as an early talkie, and none of that matters once Jackie Cooper looks up at Wallace Beery. Bring a handkerchief and forgive the mugging. ## Synopsis Tijuana. Andy ‘Champ’ Purcell (Wallace Beery), once heavyweight champion of the world, now drinks, shoots dice and sleeps where he falls. His small son Dink (Jackie Cooper) gets him home, hides the bottle and tells anyone who asks that the comeback is on. Champ wins a racehorse at dice and hands it to Dink, and the two of them, with hangers-on Sponge (Roscoe Ates) and Tim (Edward Brophy), take it to the track. There they meet Linda Carleton (Irene Rich), who left Champ years ago and is now married to the wealthy Tony Carleton (Hale Hamilton). Linda is Dink’s mother. She sees how the boy lives, and she wants him. Champ wants to keep his son and stay off the drink, and he has never yet managed either for long. ## Review Andy Purcell used to be heavyweight champion of the world. When we meet him he is in Tijuana, waking up on a bar floor, and the person getting him home is his son Dink, who is still a small boy and has plainly been doing this for years. That is the film. Frances Marion’s story adds a racehorse won at dice, a mother who turns up rich and wants the boy back, and one more fight, and King Vidor tells it in 86 minutes without pretending any of it is new. It is a small, sentimental picture built on two faces, and for long stretches the two faces are enough. Jackie Cooper’s is the one that matters. Child actors of the period were taught to perform; Cooper mostly declines to. He takes Beery’s shoes off and puts a blanket over him with the bored competence of a night nurse. He lies to the other boys about his father’s training. When he cries, he does it while trying to stop, which is how children actually cry, and Vidor holds on him and does not cut away to help. We did not expect to be undone by a boy in a flat cap talking about a horse, and we were. Wallace Beery is a bigger and louder proposition. His Champ is all appetite: for drink, for dice, for the sound of his own promises. When he is sober and wheedling for forgiveness he is close to unbearable, and Beery knows it; the wheedling is the point, because Dink forgives him every time. He mugs too much in the bar scenes, rolling his eyes and playing to the crowd. But in the scene where he cannot say sorry and simply stands there, the mugging stops, and what is left is a man who has understood, for about four seconds, what he is doing to his son. Then he goes to get a drink. Gordon Avil’s camera stays largely where it is put, as cameras did in 1931, and Vidor uses that. Scenes play in long takes with the two of them in one frame, so we watch Dink watching Champ. The Tijuana streets are dust, awnings and wooden bars, and the racetrack is the only bright place in the picture. Hugh Wynn’s cutting is plain until the fight, where he keeps returning to Cooper in the corner and lets the boy’s face tell us how the rounds are going. There is almost no music. The soundtrack is voices, footsteps and the hiss of early recording, and the quiet does more than a score would have. The film goes to sleep whenever it leaves the bar. Irene Rich plays Linda, Dink’s mother, as pure understanding, and Hale Hamilton plays her husband Tony as pure decency, and they are both right and both dull. The rich half of the story has no friction because nobody in it wants anything unreasonable. Roscoe Ates’s Sponge has a stutter that is meant to be funny and is wheeled out four times too many. Jesse Scott’s Jonah, Dink’s friend, is written as the comic stereotype of the period, and it is ugly to sit through now. And the plot loops: promise, relapse, promise, relapse, with each turn a little less surprising than the last. Then comes the last stretch, which we will not describe. We knew what was coming; anyone who has seen a film from this decade will know within twenty minutes. It made no difference. Vidor puts the camera on Cooper, lets it run longer than is comfortable, and we sat on the sofa feeling got at and slightly ashamed of how completely it worked. The film is not subtle. It does not need to be, because the boy is real. Vidor had made *The Crowd* three years earlier, a film about a whole city. This is about one room and two people, and it is the lesser work by any measure except the one that counts on a wet evening. Watch it with someone who will not mind seeing you cry. If Beery’s grandstanding grates, wait; the film knows he is too much, and so, eventually, does he. *Fi1m score 72, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **Film Comment**, Raymond Durgnat (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's emotional impact, which survives awareness of its Hollywood formulae and trends. He singles out its success as one of the best city-life films in Hollywood’s populist cycle, ranking it close behind or among Vidor’s best and noting it outperforms Street Scene within its limits. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/king-vidor-a-retrospective-part-one-durgnat/) - **The New York Times**, Mordaunt Hall (70/100, inferred): Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, under King Vidor's direction, stir emotions despite a thin, unoriginal story of horse racing and boxing. The performances save the day and elicit sympathy, though the narrative feels better suited to silent films. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1931/11/10/archives/the-screen-father-and-son.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The film succeeds primarily thanks to Jackie Cooper's inspired, non-hammy performance as the boy. Wallace Beery also delivers a strong turn as the broken-down ex-champion alongside a solid Frances Marion story. [Read](https://variety.com/1930/film/reviews/the-champ-1200410400/) - **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (30/100, inferred): The review finds pictures centered on child actors like Jackie Cooper wearying and exploitative despite the boy's natural talent. It praises Wallace Beery's energetic performance but notes the heavy, tedious story of an alcoholic ex-fighter and his son. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1931/11/21/speakeasy-life-master-coopers-endurance-test-for-special-tastes) - **Film Stories**, Sarah Cook (80/100, inferred): The critic calls the film brilliant and incredible yet devastating. Beery's performance as the alcoholic boxer is singled out as outstanding, with the grief-stricken ending noted for its emotional impact. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/features/old-movies-celebrating-the-work-of-king-vidor/) ## Details - **Director:** King Vidor - **Director:** King Vidor - **Writer:** Frances Marion, Leonard Praskins - **Story:** Frances Marion - **Cinematography:** Gordon Avil - **Editor:** Hugh Wynn - **Producer:** King Vidor, Harry Rapf, Irving Thalberg - **Cast:** Wallace Beery as Andy 'Champ' Purcell; Jackie Cooper as Dink Purcell; Irene Rich as Linda Carleton; Roscoe Ates as Sponge; Edward Brophy as Tim; Hale Hamilton as Tony Carleton; Jesse Scott as Jonah; Marcia Mae Jones as Mary Lou Carleton - **Runtime:** 1h 26m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 21 November 1931 - **Genres:** Drama, Family - **Budget:** $356,000 - **Box office:** $2 million ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $10.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AU, CA, JP, NZ, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1932: Best Actor (won); Best Story (won) ## If you liked this - *The Kid* (1921), Fi1m 84: Chaplin and a small boy against the world; the template this film is working from. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-kid.md) - *The Crowd* (1928): Vidor’s silent city film, larger and stranger than this, and his best. - *Bicycle Thieves* (1948), Fi1m 92: A father, a son and one humiliation too many, on the streets of Rome. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/bicycle-thieves.md) - *Fat City* (1972): Huston’s boxers are past it too, and nobody offers them a comeback. - *Paper Moon* (1973): A con man and a child who runs him; funnier, drier, same bruised heart. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-champ