The champ 1931 - A heartwarming film about parents and children

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: King Vidor
Main Cast: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Roscoe Ates

"Wallace Beery won an Academy Award for his tour de force performance as a washed-up boxer. The bibulous Beery travels from one tank-town bout to another in the company of his faithful son Jackie Cooper and his stuttering manager Roscoe Ates. Hoping for a comeback in Tijuana, Beery is approached by his ex-wife Irene Rich, now married to wealthy Hale Hamilton. Rich convinces Beery that Cooper would be better off with her. Feigning brusqueness, Beery orders his son to get lost, hoping that the kid will be disillusioned enough to remain with his mother. But Cooper runs away from his new home and shows up back in Tijuana, just as Beery is in the middle of his comeback bout. Cheered on by his son, Beery knocks his opponent cold - and then collapses himself. Dying, Beery tells the tearful Cooper that everything will be all right if the boy returns to his mom. While Wallace Beery was capable of laying on pathos with a trowel, his final scene in The Champ can still move an audience to tears - far more so than the similar scene between Jon Voight and Rick Schroeder in the wearisome 1979 remake. In 1953, writer Frances Marion updated and revised her Champ script, changed the washed-up pug to a washed-up comedian, and came up with The Clown, one of Red Skelton's few dramatic vehicles." - www.allmovie.com

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Skippy 1931 - A timeless classic (not just) for children

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022397/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3
IMDB rating: 6,4

Director: Norman Taurog
Main Cast: Jackie Cooper, Robert Coogan, Mitzi Green, Jackie Searl, Willard Robertson

"Percy Crosby's popular newspaper comic strip Skippy comes to life in this 1931 film. The passage of time and a loss of innocence have somewhat dampened the impact of Skippy, but it still stands as a powerful and affecting film. Although aimed at children, most adults will find a great deal to enjoy in Skippy, starting with Jackie Cooper's moving performance. Cooper pushes all the right buttons, and while occasionally his work feels somewhat calculated, most of the time it's natural and effortless. He can be both innocent and conniving, shrewd and naïve, and when he's happy, joy radiates from within. And both he and Robert Coogan are incredible at turning on the waterworks and tearing the heart out of the audience. Coogan's work is also exceptional, even if he is occasionally more manipulative than Cooper, and the two work together as if they really were two pals instead of actors. A great deal of credit for their success, of course, must go to director Norman Taurog, who handles the entire film with delicacy and sensitivity. Much of Joseph Mankiewicz's dialogue still packs a punch, even if some of it now seems a bit hokey; much the same can be said of the plot, especially since viewers have seen so many of its elements in other films through the years. But none of this will matter to younger kids, and little of it will matter to adults, who will likely forgive Skippy its flaws in favor of the nostalgic pleasures and pains that it brings back.
Twenty-five years later, Jackie Cooper, by that time a prominent TV producer/director, tried to revive Skippy as a weekly series, with future My Three Sons co-star Stanley Livingston in the lead." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/skippy-v110494/ 

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