The Champ

King Vidor's film is about a broken-down boxer in Tijuana, ruined by drink and gambling, and the son who loves him without condition. Wallace Beery plays the champ, Jackie Cooper the boy, and the whole picture rests on what passes between them. There is a curiosity in its Oscar record. Beery shared Best Actor with Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The reason was that March had beaten him by a single vote, and under the rules of the time a margin that narrow counted as a tie. Today a tie requires the votes to be exactly equal. Frances Marion won the Oscar for Best Story, and the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Vidor was nominated five times as a director and never won. Who it is for: viewers curious about early sound melodrama and about Jackie Cooper's work as a child actor. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for emotional manipulation, which the film pursues openly and without apology.