Kirk Douglas and Marilyn Maxwell
Marilyn Maxwell and Kirk Douglas in Champion (1949).
Champion
film by Robson [1949]
Champion, American film noir, released in 1949, that was one of the first movies to expose the brutality and corruption in the sport of boxing. It garnered six Academy Award nominations and is often cited as one of the best boxing movies ever made. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) Champion was based on a short story by Ring Lardner. It starred Kirk Douglas as “Midge” Kelly, a young man who rises to the top of the boxing world only to find himself isolated and mentally destroyed by the moral compromises he had to make to secure his ...(100 of 182 words)