The Champ (1931)

Director
King Vidor

Main cast
Wallace Beery; Jackie Cooper; Irene Rich; Roscoe Ates; Edward Brophy

Genres
Drama

Description
Dink Purcell loves his alcoholic father, ex-heavyweight champion Andy "Champ" Purcell, despite his frequent binges, his frequent gambling and their squalid living conditions. And there's nothing Andy wouldn't do for Dink. When Andy wins a race horse gambling, he gives it to Dink and they race it at a Tijuana track. There, Dink meets Linda Carleton, a race horse owner herself, and they have an immediate rapport. But Linda's rich husband sees Andy and realizes Dink is Linda's son, who she gave up when she and Andy divorced. Andy is bribed $200 to allow Dink to visit with Linda, but refuses to allow Dink to spend six months with the Carletons. When Andy loses the horse gambling and winds up in jail after a drunken tirade, he realizes Dink's place is with his mother. Dink tearfully goes but sneaks out and returns at his first opportunity, filling a depressed Andy with a desire to make good. So Andy goes into training after his managers arrange a boxing match with the Mexican champion.


Similar movies

The 1954 musical film based on the play by the same name. Actress Grace Kelly won an Academy Award for Best Actress. The film tells the story of an ex-theater actor who is given one more chance to star in a musical yet his alcoholism may prevent it from happening.
A biographical drama centered on the rivalry between Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One motor-racing season.
Now the world champion, Rocky Balboa is living in luxury and only fighting opponents who pose no threat to him in the ring. His lifestyle of wealth and idleness is shaken when a powerful young fighter known as Clubber Lang challenges him to a bout. After taking a pounding from Lang, the humbled champ turns to former bitter rival Apollo Creed to help him regain his form for a rematch with Lang.
A misfit group of New Mexico cowboys find themselves on the journey of a lifetime when they learn their crooked-footed racehorse qualifies to run in the Kentucky Derby. Based on the true story of Mine That Bird, the cowboys must overcome impossible odds even before they reach Churchill Downs and the land of Kentucky's blue bloods.
When world heavyweight boxing champ Apollo Creed wants to give an unknown fighter a shot at the title as a publicity stunt, his handlers pick palooka Rocky Balboa, an uneducated collector for a Philadelphia loan shark.
American chess champion Bobby Fischer prepares for a legendary match-up against Russian Boris Spassky.
True story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted not only the spirits of the team behind it but also those of their nation.
Housewife and mother Penny Chenery agrees to take over her ailing father's Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery - with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin - manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.
Spitz is the German-Jewish coach of the football team Macedonia during World War II. Under his leadership, the team fights to become the champion of Bulgaria's National Football League
Remember the Titans is a celebration of how a town torn apart by resentment, friction, and mistrust comes together in triumphant harmony. The year is 1971. After leading his team to 15 winning seasons, football coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), tough, opinionated, and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. How these two men overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions, plays out in a story full of soul and spirit.
Phar Lap, the big bold chestnut reigned as the king of the turf in the depression that gripped Australia of the 1930s. From his humble beginnings the New Zealand bred horse raced on to become the hero of a nation.
Babe is a little pig who doesn't quite know his place in the world. With a bunch of odd friends, like Ferdinand the duck who thinks he is a rooster and Fly the dog he calls mom, Babe realizes that he has the makings to become the greatest sheep pig of all time, and Farmer Hogget knows it. With the help of the sheep dogs Babe learns that a pig can be anything that he wants to be.
French sailor Querelle arrives in Brest and starts frequenting a strange whorehouse. He discovers that his brother Robert is the lover of the lady owner, Lysiane. Here, you can play dice with Nono, Lysiane's husband: if you win, you are allowed to make love with Lysiane, if you lose, you have to make love with Nono… Querelle loses on purpose…
When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient's dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist can stop it: Paprika.
BLUE STATE is a romantic comedy about a disgruntled Democrat who actually follows through on a drunken campaign promise to move to Canada if George "Dubya" Bush gets re-elected.
Taking over Leeds United, Brian Clough's abrasive approach and his clear dislike of the players' dirty style of play make it certain there is going to be friction. Glimpses of his earlier career help explain both his hostility to previous manager Don Revie and how much he is missing right-hand man Peter Taylor
After getting into a car accident while drunk on the day of her sister's wedding, Gwen Cummings is given a choice between prison or a rehab center. She chooses rehab, but is extremely resistant to taking part in any of the treatment programs they have to offer, refusing to admit that she has an alcohol addiction.
The more you love, the harder you fight.The world looks at Billy Flynn and sees a has-been who seemingly never was, an ex-boxing champion slammed to the mat years ago by booze and gambling. But Billy's son TJ sees what the world doesn't. He knows his flawed but loving father is, was and always will be The Champ.
When the champ's promoter, Rev. Sultan, decides something new is needed to boost the marketability of the boxing matches, he searches and finds the only man to ever beat the champ. The problem is that he isn't a boxer anymore and he's white. However, once Rev. Sultan convinces him to fight, he goes into heavy training while the confident champ takes it easy and falls out of shape.
When he loses a highly publicized virtual boxing match to ex-champ Rocky Balboa, reigning heavyweight titleholder Mason Dixon retaliates by challenging the Itallian Stallion to a nationally televised, 10-round exhibition bout. To the surprise of his son and friends, Rocky agrees to come out of retirement and face an opponent who's faster, stronger and thirty years his junior.
When Jake LaMotta steps into a boxing ring and obliterates his opponent, he's a prizefighter. But when he treats his family and friends the same way, he's a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment. Though LaMotta wants his family's love, something always seems to come between them. Perhaps it's his violent bouts of paranoia and jealousy. This kind of rage helped make him a champ, but in real life, he winds up in the ring alone.
After Gordon Bombay's hockey comeback is cut short he is named coach of Team USA Hockey for the Junior Goodwill Games. Bombay reunites the Mighty Ducks and introduces a few new players, however, he finds himself distracted by his newfound fame and must regather if the Ducks are to defeat tournament favourites Iceland.
Billy "The Great" Hope, the reigning junior middleweight boxing champion, has an impressive career, a loving wife and daughter, and a lavish lifestyle. However, when tragedy strikes, Billy hits rock bottom, losing his family, his house and his manager. He soon finds an unlikely savior in Tick Willis, a former fighter who trains the city's toughest amateur boxers. With his future on the line, Hope fights to reclaim the trust of those he loves the most.
After Rocky goes the distance with champ Apollo Creed, both try to put the fight behind them and move on. Rocky settles down with Adrian but can't put his life together outside the ring, while Creed seeks a rematch to restore his reputation. Soon enough, the "Master of Disaster" and the "Italian Stallion" are set on a collision course for a climactic battle that is brutal and unforgettable.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
In 1964, a brash new pro boxer, fresh from his olympic gold medal victory, explodes on to the scene: Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African American's in sport with his proud public self confidence and his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. Yet at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test.
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling, to the point where she "borrows" David's expense money to pursue her addiction. This finally breaks up their marriage, but David continues trying to help her.
Chow Yun-Fat plays Ko Chun, an extremely talented and well known gambler. On the eve of a big confrontation with a famous Singaporean gambler, Ko walks into a trap set by Knife, an avid but a so-so gambler (Andy Lau), meant for an Indian servant. Struck on the head, Ko suffers from amnesia and regresses to a child-like state. Knife takes care of Ko and begins to exploit Ko's gambling talents.
Corey (Fred Savage) refuses to let his emotionally disturbed younger brother Jimmy (Luke Edwards) be institutionalized, and the two run away together. They soon join forces with a resourceful girl (Jenny Lewis), who notices that Jimmy has a special talent: he is a "wizard" at video games and can achieve the high score on absolutely everything he plays. Evading their parents and a sinister bounty hunter, the trio head for a climactic showdown at the national video game championships in California.
A television producer with a penchant for drinking and gambling is sent to Las Vegas to convince his troubled niece to enter rehab.
Silver-screen icons Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney star in this classic drama as Nick and Jack Venizelos, two brothers whose fateful trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a tragic turn of events. Directed by filmmaker Alfred E. Green, this film marks the only time in Robinson and Cagney's historic careers that the pair would team up on-screen.
Gambling addiction bring the stories of three otherwise unconnected people together as it destroys each of their lives.
Dan Mahowny was a rising star at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. At twenty-four he was assistant manager of a major branch in the heart of Toronto's financial district. To his colleagues he was a workaholic. To his customers, he was astute, decisive and helpful. To his friends, he was a quiet, but humorous man who enjoyed watching sports on television. To his girlfriend, he was shy but engaging. None of them knew the other side of Dan Mahowny--the side that executed the largest single-handed bank fraud in Canadian history, grossing over $10 million in eighteen months to feed his gambling obsession.
New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him. After a heavy loss betting on basketball, he relies on his mother to bail him out to the tune of $44,000. Unfazed, he continues to gamble recklessly, winning big at a casino, only to blow it all just as quickly. When his debts become more than he can handle, the loan sharks begin to circle.
Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) is a young bank employee who is encouraged by his friend Caron to take an interest in gambling. After winning money in a game of roulette, he decides to vacation in Nice, where he falls in love with Jackie (Jeanne Moreau), divorced and mother to a child she rarely visits. Though Jackie also enjoys Jean's company, she constantly warns him that her passion for gambling will always be greater. Jean becomes jealous of not having all of her attention and has mixed feelings about gambling, yet he too is to some extend seduced by this new life style that involves taking risks. Despite Jackie's cool façade and alleged control over her choices - she claims she is unattached to the money itself, but rather the thrill of the game, and doesn't mind going from rich to poor in a matter of seconds -, she soon begins to reveal her vulnerability and the emptiness she often feels as result of her addiction.
Fight promoter Nick Donati grooms a bellhop as a future champ, but has second thoughts when the 'kid' falls for his sister.
A fictional story inspired by North America's most famous female boxing promoter, Jackie Kallen. Her struggle to survive and succeed in a male dominated sport.
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
Tired of the dangerous life as gambling boss, Ace Corbin 'retires' from the racket and travels cross-country by train to begin a new life with a new name. On the train, he meets Eleanor and they fall in love. Eleanor is afraid to tell Ace she's a soiled dove and Ace doesn't tell Eleanor of his shady past. Old enemies won't let Ace begin his new life, and old commitments's won't free Eleanor of her sordid ties. Ace's old life and Eleanor's deception collide with the typical results. But love conquers all!
Kaitlyn is a high school student whose obsession with gambling leads to her accumulating a mountain of debt. Her habit also causes a high degree of family tension.
A former stripper's (Rebecca Hall) talent with numbers lands her a job with a professional gambler (Bruce Willis) who runs a sports book in Las Vegas.
Set in the 1930's this intricate caper deals with an ambitious small-time crook and a veteran con man who seek revenge on a vicious crime lord who murdered one of their gang.
A story of two teenagers trapped in the world of illegal underground boxing. One is fighting to save his fathers life and using the money pay off gambling debts accumulated by his father. The second is fighting for the money to get out of the ghettos. While being exploited by a boxing promoter the two teens become friends. An explosive ending puts the two friends in the ring against each other.
Gambling fever -- along with a brutal bookie -- leads three crooked cops into a double-dealing scheme that lands them in hot water way over their heads.
A gambling queen uses blackmail to stop a British financier from closing her Chinese clip joint.
Lucky Jackson arrives in town with his car literally in tow ready for the first Las Vegas Grand Prix - once he has the money to buy an engine. He gets the cash easily enough but mislays it when the pretty swimming pool manageress takes his mind off things. It seems he will lose both race and girl, problems made more difficult by rivalry from Elmo Mancini, fellow racer and womaniser
When a Las Vegas bodyguard with lethal skills and a gambling problem gets in trouble with the mob, he has one last play… and it's all or nothing.
Master director Martin Scorsese depicts the sloping depth of a casino mafia boss’ fall. Filmed in a semi-documentary fashion; about the life of the gambling paradise Las Vegas and its dark mafia underbelly.
Sasha Mitchell ("Kickboxer 2&3") triumphanty returns to the ring as David Sloan, fighting not just for his survival, but for his beautiful wife, who has become the sexual captive of the despicable world champion, Tong Po. Framed, forgotten and furious, Sloan has been wasting away in prison, but the Feds agree to release him, if he will lead them inside Tong Po's impenetrable Mexican fortress, protected by its deadly guards and adorned by its sexual slaves. Sloan reluctantly teams up with a female fighter to gain entry into Po's tournament of champions, a savage battle where winner takes all - and to Sloan - that means everything!
Two card sharks, pretending to be brother and sister, clean out a small-town banker, then take over a crooked gambling joint.
Cinderella Man is the story of a boxer in the 1920’s who after his retirement has a surprise comeback in order to get him and his family out of a socially poor state. The film is based on the true story of boxer Jim Braddock who was more famously known as Cinderella Man.
The Horatio Alger parable gets the film noir treatment with the redoubtable Edmund O’Brien as a whip-smart telephone technician who moves up the ladder of a Syndicate gambling empire in Southern California until distracted by an inconveniently married Joanne Dru and his own greed. Ripped from the headlines of the 1950 Kevaufer Organized Crime Hearings, this fast-moving picture is laden with location sequences shot in Los Angeles, the Hoover Dam and Palm Springs including the famous Doll House watering hole on North Palm Canyon Drive!
Jack Manfred is an aspiring writer who to make ends meet, takes a job as a croupier. Jack remains an observer, knowing that everything in life is a gamble and that gamblers are born to lose. Inevitably, he gets sucked into the world of the casino which takes its toll on his relationships and the novel he is writing.
When a poor college student who cracks an online poker game goes bust, he arranges a face-to-face with the man he thinks cheated him, a sly offshore entrepreneur.
When a local gambling house kidnaps some peasants because they failed to pay their debts, a rival gambling house pays their debts and sets them free.
In order to release his kidnapped sister, sports car mechanic Jackie Chan has to beat a super-criminal street racer.
A former college athlete joins forces with a sports consultant to handicap football games for high-rolling gamblers.
A race car driver tries to outrun the beautiful tax auditor out to settle his account.
Theater usherette Bunny O'Day (Clara Bow) inadvertently becomes hostess of a private gambling den, and gets involved in a romance with a ne'er-do-well gambler.

© Valossa 2015–2024