The Champeen

Champeen, The (1923)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Cute Our Gang short has a cop busting Sammy for stealing apples and tells him that he must pay the owner a dollar or else face hard jail time. Sammy later sees Mickey and Jackie fighting over Mary so he decides to put them in the ring so that he can earn some money selling tickets. This is certainly a charming little entry in the series because it takes a pretty simple premise and makes you laugh with the simple jokes. One of the highlights happens early on when Sammy comes up with a simple way to steal apples without getting caught but of course this bright plan eventually backfires. This is followed up with another funny gag of Sammy rolling under a fence to try and avoid the cop. The second half of the film deals with the fighting and the match is a pretty good one. We get plenty of physical action as well as some nice sight gags. The one gag that somewhat goes over the line is when Sammy tries to get his younger family members to fight in the ring. One of the kids is clearly just over a year old yet the older kid punches him in the face. He begins to cry but the scene goes on and the young child is hit a couple more times. These Our Gang shorts at times crossed the line and this is certainly one of those times.

Our Gang was a team of rascals who lived in a world where adults were mere extras.It was Hal Roach who found these kids and made them famous.In this little silent treat Mickey (Mickey Daniels) and Jackie (Jackie Condon) feud over Mary (Mary Kornman).Sunshine Sammy (Ernest Morrison) decides to arrange a boxing match between these two.It's a huge riot all the way.The Champeen from 1923 is a direction of Robert F. McGowan.Producer Hal Roach was also writing it.Mr.Roach (1892-1992)was a genius.During his one hundred years on Earth he did a lot and with many, including Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy.This silent short gives a very fine picture of that era.Nothing is the same today without those little rascals around.

This Hal Roach comedy short, The Champeen, is the ninth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. It's also the first one involving a rivalry for a girl's affection, in this case the girl is Mary Kornman and the boys are Mickey Daniels and Jack Davis. It's hilarious watching them take turns trying to get soda pop for her running back and forth. Ernie Morrison is called Sammy here for the first time in the series. He's been stealing fruit from the nearby stand and when he gets caught, he's told by the cop that unless he pays the owner a dollar, he'll go to jail for the rest of his life. So Sammy decides to promote a fight between Mickey and Jack, both of whom agree thinking they'll each take a dive in the second round...This is the first time in the series that the leading lady's fickleness is explored which culminated years later in Darla's having to choose between Alfalfa, Butch, and Waldo which I remember enjoying quite a bit when watching the '30s shorts on TV during the late '70s. Plenty of great sight gags abound and I was wonderfully surprised seeing Jack biting into Mickey's ear at one point. Good thing he didn't chew it off like Mike Tyson did a couple of decades ago! So on that point, I highly recommend The Champeen. P.S. Besides Ernie and Allen "Farina" Hoskins, there's another African-American player featured here, Dorothy Morrison, Ernie's sister. This was her first appearance in an Our Gang film.

Hal Roach launched his Our Gang series in the early 1920s, and it continued to run in various forms (with considerable cast turn-over, naturally) for over twenty years. When TV came along the series had a whole new lease on life, and several generations of baby boom children grew up with the sound era shorts. I enjoyed those comedies when I was a kid, but when I discovered the silent era Our Gang comedies I found I liked them even better. This is one series that produced some of its best entries right out of the starting gate, with the original cast. The first thing you notice about these early films is that the kids inhabit a rough, hard knock world -- they're scruffy little street urchins, not well-scrubbed suburban children -- and the films themselves are looser and more spontaneous than the carefully staged sitcoms with Spanky, Darla, and Buckwheat of later days. The early comedies also tend to move fast, and they're often really funny! There's a lot of rough-housing, memorable sight gags and witty title cards.

'The Champeen' is a fine example of what made the series so popular from the start. It kicks off with some rowdy action involving the kids stealing apples from a fruit stand, and nearly getting nabbed by a cop. The cop turns out to be a nice guy, however, and decides to scare our protagonist, Sammy, into obeying the law by painting a vivid picture of life in prison. (Sammy was played by the gang's first African American boy, Ernie Morrison, who projected a pleasant, low-key charisma on screen.) Instead of getting hauled off to jail Sammy is told he must repay the grocer one dollar, so in order to raise the money he decides to exploit the ongoing rivalry between Mickey and Jackie by pitting them against each other in a boxing match. As the bout's promoter, Sammy stands to earn the dollar he needs and perhaps even turn a profit. The big bout is the highlight, with non-stop gags and a subplot involving a snobby rich kid who shows up at ringside and gets clobbered on general principle.

The plot is simple enough to allow plenty of time for comedy, and happily it all seems to spring naturally from the situation and the kids' characters. We never get the sense that the kids are performing routines imposed on them by grown-up gag writers, which was sometimes the case in the sound shorts. I'd say the only problem with some of these early comedies, including this one, is that the kids occasionally come in for pretty rough handling (and sometimes, so do their pets) to the extent that we worry about their well-being. At one point in The Champeen little Farina, who looks barely old enough to walk, is put into the boxing ring with another toddler for a sparring match. They're both wearing big padded boxing gloves, but when the other kid hits Farina he bursts into tears, and it sure doesn't look like he's "acting." Fortunately, the moment quickly passes and our attention switches back to the older children. Several of the kids from these very early series entries (The Champeen was only the ninth Our Gang comedy produced) rank with the most talented and photogenic kids of the entire series, including Sammy, Farina, cute little Mary Kornman, freckled Mickey Daniels, and a boy named Jackie Condon who had a mop of blonde hair and an oddly demonic quality. He looks like the kind of kid who was capable of raising some serious hell when the mood struck him.

At any rate, this is a highly enjoyable two-reel comedy from the Our Gang's early heyday, and well worth seeking out. I only wish the Hal Roach/Pathé shorts were easier to find, so here's hoping somebody puts out a good DVD collection one of these days that includes this one, Dogs of War, Derby Day, and some of the other goodies from this period.

When this cute Our Gang short begins, a couple kids are out stealing apples. The cop spots them and catches Sammy--telling him that unless he pays the grocer a dollar for the apples, he'd throw the book at him. There is then a cute sequence where young Sammy imagines himself in stripes working on the rock pile! Later Sammy comes up with a bright idea--get the money by staging boxing matches. But the kids don't wanna see babies fighting. Sammy notices that Mickey and Kackie are arguing and decides to exploit this for his own end--and schedules a match between the two. Just before the fight, however, both chicken out...so Sammy lies and tells them both that the other boy will take a dive in the second round. What's next? See the film.

Aside from some racist dialog between Sammy and a pro boxer, this is a cute cartoon and very, very typical of the sort of Our Gang films they made back in the silent days. The humor isn't exactly sophisticated but it holds up reasonably well today...and compares favorably to the other silent comedies of the day.