The Champ cost $361,000 to make and brought in over $1 million at the box office, a solid figure for its time.

"Without much to lean on in the way of a story, the ponderous Wallace Beery and the diminutive Jackie Cooper, under King Vidor's expert direction, last night succeeded in stirring the emotions of an audience in the Astor in a film called The Champ. This picture is a further example of clever acting saving the day, for there is little in this narrative of horse racing and pugilistic bouts that possesses much akin to originality, except possibly the loyalty of the boy to his father, an ex-prize-fighting champion, who is addicted to drink and gambling." -- Mordaunt Hall, The New York Times

"A good picture, almost entirely by virtue of an inspired performance by a boy, Jackie Cooper. There is none of the usual hammy quality of the average child actor in this kid. What also makes The Champ a good talker is a studied, understanding adult piece of work by the costar, Wallace Beery, who had to step to keep up with Jackie, and a Frances Marion original story that isn't bad for a boxing story." -- Variety

"The film is both wise and tragic in accepting that love and kindness may exist in radically incompatible terms. As obvious as that may be, it wasn't so common in Hollywood during the next thirty years in art because of the Hays Code ban on sympathy going to immoral characters." - Raymond Durgnant and Scott Simmon, King Vidor, American

By Frank Miller

AWARDS & HONORS

In a Film Daily poll of national critics to name the best film of 1932, The Champ came in second to Grand Hotel (1932).

In the third Academy Awards® balloting, The Champ was nominated for four Oscars®, including Best Picture and Best Director, the third of legendary director King Vidor's five nominations. It won Frances Marion her second Oscar® for Best Writing. Initially, that was the film's only win, with Norma Shearer announcing that Fredric March's performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) had beaten Wallace Beery's. The audience was not pleased. Beery had been considered the front-runner, and many grumbled that the award should have been given to March's make-up man, not the actor.

As MGM head Louis B. Mayer was accepting the Best Picture Oscar® for Grand Hotel, members of the Academy® were checking the votes and discovered that Beery had only lost the award by one vote. Under Academy® rules, that constituted a tie, so current president Conrad Nagel took the mike after Mayer to announce the discovery and hand Berry an Oscar®. The announcement drew one of the evening's biggest ovations.

At the party afterwards, March noted that in addition to sharing Best Actor honors, he and Beery had each recently adopted a child. "It seems a little odd that Wally and I were given awards for best male performance of the year," he said.

The Academy®'s rules have since been changed to stipulate that a tie will only happen when both nominees receive exactly the same number of votes. That has only happened five times since then, most notably when Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand shared the award in 1968 for The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl, respectively

By Frank Miller