9/20/2023 0 Comments Footlight parade castWhen Voight read with the nine-year-old New Yorker, he was so impressed he said it would be a crime not to cast him. The film's real casting triumph, however, was Ricky Schroder, the young boy discovered in Zeffirelli's national talent hunt. In fact, she would become a mother the year after The Champ's release. And the chance to play a mother fit her maternal dreams. She was hoping to marry longtime love Terry O'Neill and start a family, so she was only taking smaller roles. Getting Dunaway for the relatively small role was a casting coup for Zeffirelli, though it fit well with the actress' own career plans. A month later, they signed Fayeĭunaway, still riding high after her Oscar win for Network (1976), to play Voight's ex-wife, whose attempt to gain custody of the son she had deserted years earlier triggers the film's crises. Later that month, they signed Jon Voight, who had played a boxer a few years earlier in The All-American Boy (1973). With no star, Zeffirelli had to delay the start of shooting until March 1, when he started doing location work in Hialeah, Fla. The next choice for The Champ was Robert Redford, but he wanted major script changes that would require pushing back the film's February start date. Eventually O'Neal stepped into the ring in the decidedly lighter The Main Event (1979), co-starring Barbra Streisand. But Zeffirelli wanted to cast an unknown so he organized a nationwide talent hunt, which helped generate publicity for the film. Sidekick in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973). The choice made sense since O'Neal's daughter, Tatum, had won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar when she made her screen debut as his He agreed on condition that his son, Griffin O'Neal, be cast as his on-screen offspring. MGM originally had approached Ryan O'Neal to star. In fact, it went into production without a leading man. But for all that, it was an amazingly troubled shoot. The studio gave Zeffirelli the red-carpet treatment, hiring frequent collaborator Dyson Lovell to produce, Oscar-winner Fred Koenekamp to shoot the picture and Grammy-winning jazz great Dave Grusin to compose the score (for which the film would receive its only Oscar nomination). directing debut of Franco Zeffirelli, a noted opera director who had scored a huge hit on-screen with his lushly photographed version of Romeo and Juliet in 1968. The 1979 version of The Champ marked the U.S. In 1952 Red Skelton had turned in a rare dramatic performance in The Clown, which transferred the action from boxing ring to circus ring without much success at the box office. Of course, it was hardly the first time since 1931 that MGM had used that story. Originally, Wallace Beery had starred as the washed-up boxer who returns to the ring to build a better life for his loving son (Jackie Cooper). MGM tried to outdo itself with The Champ (1979), the first official remake of its Oscar®:-winning hit from 1931.
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