1931-32 – Wallace Beery
The Champ
Here is Wallace Beery with his second nomination for Best Actor, and his first win, though he did have to share the honor with Fredric March. His performance was pretty good, though, to be honest, I wasn’t convinced of Beery’s portrayal of a boxer. He handled the dramatic scenes with depth and skill, but he was completely unconvincing in the ring, and during the training sequence. Here’s what I mean.
Sometimes, it is easy to tell if an actor has the skill to convincingly pull off a character. Here, it was pretty clear that Beery was faking his boxing, and I’m not even a boxing aficionado. The straight-elbowed way he was throwing his punches during the climactic match would have seriously hurt his elbows and shoulders, and put very little power behind his blows, and yet we are supposed to believe that he knocked his opponent out. His posture had very little defensive capabilities, leaving his gut exposed to punishment. And I’m thinking he would probably have been off balance with his fighting stance, as he was leaning back the whole time, putting all his weight on his back foot. I’ll admit that I’m not a boxer, and that I could be wrong, but he seemed to fight like a novice who was afraid of getting hit in the face by his opponent, not a former world champion in the sport.
But during the dramatic scenes, he was wonderful. The scene where he tries to convince his son that he doesn’t love him anymore was heartbreaking. When he even goes so far as to smack Dink in the face to get him to go live with his mother, I was left in shock. Then, when the boy tearfully goes, he is so ashamed of hitting his boy, he bloodies his fist against a concrete wall. The following scene, where he is reunited with his child, was wonderful to see.
Honestly, I don’t think Beery should have won this Oscar, not because his acting was that bad, but because he was wrong for the role. He just clearly wasn’t a boxer, and because of that, I didn’t completely believe his performance. And much of this complaint could have been fixed with some simple technical training before filming began. Keep your weight forward, keep your arms close to protect yourself, and don’t throw sideways punches with locked elbows. You’ll be more believable.