Kirk Dou­glas at 100 – In praise of his knock­out turn in Champion

“They’re cheer­ing more than a man tonight. They’re cheer­ing a sto­ry. A sto­ry that could only have been lived in the fight game. A sto­ry of a boy who rose from the depths of pover­ty, to become cham­pi­on of the world.”

Though tak­en from the 1949 dra­ma Cham­pi­on, these lines could (if you remove the box­ing ref­er­ences) fea­si­bly be describ­ing the endur­ing star of that film, Kirk Dou­glas. Like his char­ac­ter Michael ​‘Midge’ Kel­ly, Dou­glas man­aged to escape pover­ty before mak­ing it in the big leagues as one of Hollywood’s finest actors – in fact, it was his tow­er­ing per­for­mance in Cham­pi­on that ele­vat­ed him to super-star­dom sta­tus, earn­ing him an Oscar nom­i­na­tion and lay­ing the ground­work for his major future roles in the likes of The Bad and the Beau­ti­ful and, most famous­ly, Spar­ta­cus.

But as is so often the case with char­ac­ters por­trayed by Dou­glas, Midge is far from being a straight-for­ward, all-Amer­i­can hero. Those open­ing lines, spo­ken by a ring­side com­men­ta­tor as Midge enters the are­na for a cham­pi­onship bout, might sound like a pre­am­ble for a hero­ic sto­ry about mak­ing it to the top, but by the end of the film they have been exposed as hol­low myth-mak­ing, com­plete­ly igno­rant of the dark­er real­i­ties of his life. Per­haps it’s no more than we should expect from a screen­play by Carl Fore­man, who also penned High Noon and was black­list­ed in the 1950s – this is a film that sub­verts rather than cel­e­brates the rags-to-rich­es nar­ra­tive of an under­dog becom­ing a cham­pi­on, and cyn­i­cal­ly expos­es the fal­lac­i­es of the Amer­i­can Dream.

Not that this is appar­ent from the film’s ear­ly scenes. Via flash­back we learn of Midge’s youth before he entered the fight game; he’s depict­ed as a love­able rogue whose dreams are con­stant­ly blight­ed by a world that appears to be against him. At first his grand plan is to leave his home­town of Chica­go with his broth­er Con­nie (Arthur Kel­ly) to Cal­i­for­nia, where they expect to find a restau­rant they have just pur­chased wait­ing for them, only to dis­cov­er that the agree­ment they had signed was a con. And Midge is sim­i­lar­ly screwed over the first time he tries box­ing, when his pro­mot­er sly­ly claims vir­tu­al­ly all of his fee.

The raw tal­ent he dis­plays in that fight is how­ev­er enough to attract the inter­est of train­er Tom­my Haley (Paul Stew­art), and even­tu­al­ly the pair strike a part­ner­ship – but only after Midge aban­dons his lover Emma (Ruth Roman) who he was forced to mar­ry hav­ing been caught being inti­mate togeth­er by her father. Leav­ing her is his first moral­ly ques­tion­able act of the film, and begins the moral descent the char­ac­ter spends the rest of the film spi­ralling down.

The box­ing scenes are thrilling­ly realised, with a vis­cer­al imme­di­a­cy that long pre­dates the likes of Rag­ing Bull, all brought togeth­er with exhil­a­rat­ing ener­gy by Oscar-win­ning edi­tor Har­ry W Ger­stad. Dou­glas looks the part in the ring too, not just for his impos­ing physique, but also for the inten­si­ty of his stare and the mali­cious­ness of his scowl. The film makes good use of var­i­ous box­ing movie tropes, too: there is a great train­ing mon­tage, and Midge is ruth­less­ly exploit­ed by pro­mot­ers at one point being asked to take a dive.

He doesn’t throw the fight, yet still finds him­self slid­ing inex­orably towards cor­rup­tion and greed. Des­per­ate to have a crack at the title, he ditch­es his train­er and friend Haley, prompt­ing Con­nie also to leave his side; he breaks the heart of a girl he’s hav­ing an affair with (Lola Albright) by accept­ing a large sum of mon­ey from her hus­band to leave her, and he opts not to dis­close to anoth­er woman he gets involved with (Mar­i­lyn Maxwell) the fact he is already married.

It’s not until much lat­er in the film, how­ev­er, that Midge com­mits his worst sin. Pri­or to the cli­mac­tic cham­pi­onship fight, Con­nie returns to sup­port him with news that he and Emma have fall­en in love. Despite ini­tial­ly react­ing pos­i­tive­ly, Midge, appar­ent­ly bit­ter at her fil­ing for divorce, shock­ing­ly rapes her. It’s a bru­tal moment, and the point at which Midge moves beyond any hope for redemption.

The sadis­tic appeal of watch­ing box­ing movies is exem­pli­fied in the final fight scene, where we watch Midge take a beat­ing as a kind of deus ex machi­na pun­ish­ment for his sins. He ulti­mate­ly dies of his wounds, but not before stag­ing an unlike­ly come­back to knock out his oppo­nent to win the fight. The crowds may again cheer his name and he may have retained his title, but his brother’s dou­ble-edged trib­ute rings hol­low now that we know the man behind the myth: ​“He was a cham­pi­on. He went out like a cham­pi­on. He was a cred­it to the fight game, to the very end.”