The disturbing action was accomplished with Hollywood horses. Boots, a gelding trained to fight by Corky Randall, worked with Gable’s stunt double. Although reportedly easy to handle when not revved up for a scene, Boots nailed Gable’s double three times with his hooves and knocked the lens shade off the camera in a close shot. Movie horses are well trained, but there are always risks involved in working with them, especially in fighting scenes.
In Lonely Are the Brave (1963), Kirk Douglas plays Jack Burns, an altruistic outlaw cowboy on a collision course with the modern world. He starts a fight in order to be jailed with his best friend so he can engineer an escape. His friend prefers to do his time, and Jack goes on the run with his beautiful young mare, Whiskey. Described in the movie as “part range stock, part Appaloosa,” the trick-trained mare was actually a Saddlebred with a copper coat and a snowy mane and tail. Appropriately named Bronze Star, the gorgeous dark palomino playing Whiskey was owned by horse rancher John Phillip Sousa.
Jack dearly loves his horse, who embodies the freedom being usurped by “No Trespassing” signs, barbed wire, and other symbols of “progress.” Jack and Whiskey are pursued by Sheriff Johnson (Walter Matthau), whose closest tie to nature is a stray dog he watches through the bars of his office window. Chased by jeeps and helicopters, Jack and Whiskey make it over a treacherous mountain pass only to be struck on a rain-slicked freeway by a semitruck carrying a load of toilets. Badly battered, Jack survives, but Whiskey is severely injured and shot by the sheriff’s deputy. The look on Kirk Douglas’s face as he hears his beloved mare dying is excruciating. The heavy symbolism of Lonely Are the Brave signifies the death of the romantic Wild West.
The Western film, however, refused to die. Challenged by the legacy created by masters of the genre, many of Hollywood’s greatest talents have dared to saddle up in the past few decades. Like John Wayne, they’ve known that, despite the razzle-dazzle of technology, nothing can replace the romantic allure of the all-American cowboy and the thrill of seeing fine horses going full throttle.
The conflict between the cowboy way and technology is illustrated beautifully as Whiskey confronts a chopper on this lobby card of Lonely Are the Brave (1963).
Big Guns on Horseback
John Wayne, of course, continued to make old-fashioned Westerns into the 1970s. His performance as the salty aging cowboy Rooster Cogburn in 1969’s True Grit won Wayne a Best Actor Academy Award. One of the most endearing scenes in the movie comes at the end, when he jumps his horse over a fence to prove his virility. The horse was a wide blaze-faced sorrel Quarter Horse named Dollor. Though his name was a derivative of the Spanish word for sorrow, dolor, the sorrel gelding was a joy for Wayne to ride. In Rio Lobo, released in 1970, Wayne rode Cowboy, a dark reddish brown horse with a bald face and three stockings owned by the Randall Ranch. For 1972’s The Cowboys, Randall Ranch supplied the actor with a buckskin gelding. In 1971’s Big Jake, Wayne rode another sorrel, this one with a narrow blaze and high hind stockings. This gelding, named Dollar, belonged to Stevie Meyers, who also owned James Stewart’s favorite horse, Pie. Wayne rode Dollar in several more films, including 1973’s Cahill, United States Marshall, 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, and his final film, The Shootist, released in 1976. Because of the similarities of the names Dollor and Dollar, the two horses have sometimes been confused, but careful scrutiny of their markings leaves no doubt as to which horse is which.
John Wayne and his True Grit mount, Dollor, who also appeared with the star in The Undefeated (1969).
Though partial to sorrel horses, John Wayne rode an Appaloosa stallion, Zip Cochise, in director Howard Hawks’s 1969 Western El Dorado. A colorful brown with a large spotted blanket, Zip Cochise was owned by Chub Ralstin of Lapwai, Idaho. Because of his height, Wayne actually looked fairly ridiculous on the stout little Appaloosa, but Cochise, as the star called him in the movie, didn’t seem to mind. Obviously well trained, he stands patiently when Wayne takes a fall and comes when beckoned to be remounted.
El Dorado is resplendent with wonderful horses, but Wayne’s costar Robert Mitchum, portraying a drunken sheriff, doesn’t ride at all in the film. In real life, the actor was a fancier of the Quarter Horse breed. He began acquiring his own stock in 1960 and bred cutting horses on his Maryland farm until 1966, when he moved the horses to a ranch in Paso Robles, California. Although he later bred racing Quarter Horses, Mitchum kept some of his original cutting stock and rode his own buckskin, Bull’s Eye Bee (aka Buck), in the 1969 Westerns Young Billy Young and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys.
At near right, Old Grundy (Douglas Fowley) looks up to Marshall James Flagg, played by Robert Mitchum, who is riding his own Quarter Horse, Bull’s Eye Bee, in The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969).
Another superstar, Marlon Brando donned his spurs for 1966’s The Appaloosa. Brando plays the owner of Osaca, a prized Appaloosa stallion he plans to use as the foundation sire of a horse ranch. When Osaca is stolen by a ruthless Mexican bandit, Brando’s character, Fletcher, braves great danger to reclaim him.
Osaca was played by Cojo Rojo, a stallion originally from Lompoc, California, who had been retired from the racetrack to star in the film. Cojo Rojo was a bay with a spotted rump. Because the director, Sidney J. Furie, wanted a predominately black horse, presumably so he would be more striking on film, Cojo Rojo’s bay coloring was dyed black.
Although it took the star power of actor Kirk Douglas—in dual roles as feuding brothers—to garner international attention for 1982’s Australian production of The Man from Snowy River, it was the horse work that captivated the movie’s many fans. The movie, based on a poem by A. B. “Banjo” Paterson, was helmed by a Scottish-born television director named George Miller (not to be confused with the Australian director of Mad Max fame).
Young actor Tom Burlinson had little riding experience before being cast in the lead as Jim Craig, an eighteen-year-old who goes to work for wealthy rancher Harrison (Douglas) after his father is killed by a stampeding herd of brumbies, Australia’s wild horses. Burlinson trained intensely for six weeks with horse master Charlie Lovick. At first, the actor took lessons on the quiet, twenty-eight-year-old Cheeky. Once he mastered the basics, Burlinson rode the buckskin Denny, a mountain horse owned by Lovik’s father. Denny, making his movie debut in The Man from Snowy River, was Burlinson’s main mount. The bond he forged with the actor ahead of time during week-long trail safaris helped the two through the difficult production. “We were once eight days away,” said Burlinson, recalling one safari, “and there’s nothing like getting used to a horse in that time.”
As the more difficult riding scenes came toward the end of filming, Burlinson was able to hone his skills even more during production. “There were a couple of really dangerous stunts they wouldn’t let me try,” said the actor, “but I actually did do the ‘terrible descent’ after much convincing of the producers.” He is talking about the nearly vertical downhill run after the brumbies. Veteran Australian stuntman and wrangler Heath Harris was hired to help stage the memorable scene. Mounted on Denny’s stunt double, Burlinson followed Harris’s instructions, giving the horse rein and leaning back in the saddle like a pro. Although the filmmakers enhanced the breathtaking sequence by tilting the camera slightly, the actual incline was really quite steep. The duo made it to the bottom without mishap. Burlinson continued the rest of the lengthy chase, which concludes with his dramatic solo roundup of the wild horses aboard Denny. Said Burlinson at the end of the film, “I found great joy working with the horses, and I developed a great bond with the buckskin. I loved him.”
In addition to Charlie Lovick and Heath Harris, American trainer Denzil Cameron was contracted to train a young stallion owned by Douglas’s character in the film. The prized stallion, known from the poem as “the colt from old Regret,” was played by a black horse with a white muzzle. The stallion had been named Dollar in homage to John Wayne’s movie horse.
Superstar Kirk Douglas doesn’t do much riding in the film,
but when he does it’s impressive. As Spur, a peg-legged gold miner, he drives a cart pulled by a flea-bitten gray. As Harrison, however, Douglas is mounted on a striking dark dappled gray and leads a pack of men on the hunt for his colt who has run off with the wild horses. Sixty-six at the time of filming, the regal actor looks every inch the star on the beautiful gray.
The Man from Snowy River’s “terrible descent,” executed by a stunt horse ridden by young actor Tom Burlinson.
A New Breed
In 1969, director George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ushered in a new breed of Western, presenting modern self-aware heroes—not unlike James Bond in cowboy boots. As Butch and Sundance, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are smart-aleck outlaws with sexy devil-may-care attitudes. Paul Newman rides a bay named Hud, the Thoroughbred son of Diamond Jet, star of 1966’s Smoky, while Robert Redford rides a chestnut gelding for most of the picture. Both horses were likely rented from the Fat Jones Stables in its last year of operation.
The film’s high-octane horse work is superb. In one scene, the arrival of the “super posse” tracking down Butch and Sundance sets a unique stunt in motion, one requiring their horses to make a running jump from a railroad car. The car was custom built, with the door opening 3 feet higher than usual so the stuntmen would not be decapitated on the way out. A ramp was built on the other side of the car to give the horses a running start and allow them to gallop through the car. The scene was shot with multiple cameras, including one buried beneath the open door to catch the jumps from below. With a price tag of $1,000 per jump for the stuntmen and their horses, director George Roy Hill wanted to be sure he covered the sequence only once.
Filmed away from the American Humane Association’s watchful eye, and during a time when studio compliance with animal-safety guidelines was voluntary at best, some of the stunts were extra-risky. On location in Mexico, a white mule was rigged with a Running W for a scene in which she was tied to a brown horse and Butch (Paul Newman and his stunt double Jim Arnett) hides between the two animals as they run. The mule does a painful looking nosedive into the dirt but fortunately was not seriously harmed.
A decade later, Redford teamed up with director Sydney Pollack and wrangler Ken Lee for a Western set in more contemporary times. The Electric Horseman (1979) features a horse in a pivotal role. Redford stars as Sonny Steele, former rodeo champion turned breakfast cereal pitchman. His sidekick in the ad campaign is Rising Star, a million-dollar Triple Crown-winning stallion. Disillusioned by corporate greed, Steele kidnaps Rising Star to protest the stallion’s exploitation during a Las Vegas sales convention. Going AWOL from the convention, Steele, ridiculously resplendent in a garish purple cowboy outfit, glittering with twinkling lights, rides Rising Star through a crowded casino and outside onto the neon night street. The stallion’s tack is also lit up like a Christmas tree. The entire electric ensemble, powered by a battery pack hidden in the saddle, cost $35,000.
With journalist Hallie Martin (Jane Fonda) tagging along, Steele and Rising Star go on the run. In the final sequence, Steele releases the stallion to join a band of wild horses, reclaiming his own dignity and freedom in the process. The stirring sight of the beautiful blood bay stallion running free at last is a guaranteed lump in the throat. To make sure the stallion could be caught after filming the scene, a mare in heat was tied to an off-camera tree. Wranglers snatched the ardent stallion before romance could develop.
The character of Rising Star was played by Let’s Merge, a five-year-old Thoroughbred sired by racehorse Urge to Merge. He was purchased at a Pomona, California, auction as a yearling by dressage trainer Barbara Parkening of Burbank. She renamed him High Country and put him in dressage training. When Parkening learned wrangler Lee was looking for a stallion to play a racehorse, she knew High Country could do the job. Nicknamed High C by the production company, the stallion was given to Robert Redford after the film and retired to his ranch in Sundance, Utah.
Three years before The Electric Horseman, Paul Newman had saddled up to play Buffalo Bill Cody in Robert Altman’s Western comedy Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976). As Cody, Newman rode a white Lippizan named Pluto from Washington State. Wrangler John Scott was in charge of the horse work. A former rodeo contender from Alberta, Canada, Scott had gotten his start in movies as a riding extra in director Arthur Penn’s acclaimed historical Western Little Big Man (1970), which starred Dustin Hoffman.
Robert Redford autographed this photograph, thanking The Electric Horseman horse trainer Ken Lee.
Action Directors Take the Reins
The same year Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rode into movie theaters, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch exploded on the big screen. With its own band of cocky heroes and masterfully staged stunts, The Wild Bunch utilized horses for maximum visual impact. Later, director Peckinpah teamed with superstar Steve McQueen to tell the story of an aging rodeo champion in 1972’s Junior Bonner, set largely at a rodeo in Prescott, Arizona. The horse action was coordinated by two-time All-Around World Champion Cowboy rodeo star Casey Tibbs. Ken Lee was credited as “ramrod”—a term borrowed from cattle drives to describe the outfit’s boss. In the film’s most lighthearted sequence, McQueen and his movie father, Ace Bonner (Robert Preston), ride double on Junior’s roan horse in the rodeo parade. Breaking away from the crowd, they go on a wild romp though backyards. Although the big stocking-legged roan with a T-shaped wide blaze doesn’t even have a name in the movie, he was a more important supporting character than some of the humans who received screen credit.
The roan was Ken Lee’s own Quarter Horse, Pie—not to be confused with Jimmy Stewart’s favorite movie mount. Purchased as a five-year-old, the gelding was just a good all-around saddle horse, gentle enough for Lee’s children to ride. Another of Ken Lee’s own horses, Soldier, doubled Pie in his big scene, jumping large obstacles. Pie had previously appeared in the 1968 Sydney Pollack Western The Scalphunters, starring Burt Lancaster. Pie died prematurely from complications of colic while on hiatus from movie work. It was a great loss for the Lee family as Pie was not only a great movie horse but also a beloved pet.
Nearly a decade later, director Walter Hill brought the story of the James Gang to the screen, casting real-life brothers as the legendary outlaw brothers. The Long Riders, released in 1980, starred James and Stacy Keach as Jesse and Frank James; David, Keith, and Robert Carradine as Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, and Dennis and Randy Quaid as Ed and Clell Miller. Although authentic in its period detail, the film is a departure from staid Westerns of yesteryear, largely because of its stylish staging, hip Ry Cooder soundtrack, and crisply choreographed action—which included some dangerous stunts. Although one horse was clearly trip-wired for a dramatic solo somersault in the middle of a street, no injuries were reported.
Hell-bent for trouble, The Long Riders, LED BY James Keach, Stacy Keach, and Robert Carradine, thunder through town on their wild-eyed black horses.
One of the film’s most spectacular sequences is a slow-motion shot of the gang jumping their horses through plate glass windows—twice—as they escape through a building. Wrangler Jimmy Sherwood, who worked with head wrangler Jimmy Medearis, spent six weeks prepping the horses to build their confidence. They were trained to jump in tandem over low obstacles. To get them used to something hitting their bodies as they ran, the horses were run through tape strung between posts. They practiced jumping through the windows without glass and finally did the shots, jumping through candy glass. All the main movie horses were shipped to the South Carolina location from veteran wrangler Rudy Ugland’s California ranch. Because Hill wanted the gang’s horses to be uniformly and dramatically black, they were dyed to match one another.
Rudy Ugland served as head wrangler on Walter Hill’s Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jason Patric, and Matt Damon costarred, proving once again that great actors love to play movie cowboys. Matt Damon rode the sorrel gelding 101, named a
fter the famous old Miller Brothers 101 Ranch. Gene Hackman rode a mule named Susie, who had made her movie debut in Dances with Wolves. Robert Duvall, who Rudy Ugland said is “probably the best rider of all the actors I ever mounted on a horse,” rode the sorrel Quarter Horse gelding Gino, a veteran of many films.
In the title role of Geronimo, Wes Studi rode one of Ugland’s own horses, Ajax, a white trained rearing horse. Because of his ultra-sensitive mouth, Ajax could inadvertently be pulled into a rear by a heavy-handed rider. Studi, however, had very light hands and impressed Ugland with his excellent horsemanship. Ajax had previously appeared as Gregory Peck’s mount in 1989’s Old Gringo. After Geronimo, Ajax continued to work in commercials and television movies. In his later years, he was, like many light-colored horses, vulnerable to skin cancer. Sadly, he was put down because of complications from the disease in 2003, at age twenty-three.
In 2004, Walter Hill directed the pilot episode of HBO’s series Deadwood, featuring Keith Carradine as Wild Bill Hickok. The horses for Deadwood came from Jack Lilley’s Movin’ On Livestock in Canyon Country, California. The series went on to great success, employing scores of horses who lent Western authenticity to the drama.
Hill’s most recent foray into the Old West was producing and directing the AMC television mini-series Broken Trail (2006), starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church as cowboys driving a herd of mustangs for sale. Canadian Dusty Bews supplied the horses and did a superb job wrangling not just the actors’ mounts but the “wild” herd.
Meeting the Western Challenge
Horses are integral to the plot in director Lawrence Kasdan’s slickly produced 1985 homage to the Western, Silverado. The very first sound in the movie is a horse’s soft nicker, which signals the imminent attack of vengeful villains on the sleeping hero, Emmett, played by Scott Glenn. Soon Emmett is on the trail, mounted on a husky dapple gray and ponying a bay tobiano pinto left behind by the villains. His mission is to find his brother, then join his sister in the town of Silverado. En route, he revives the nearly dead Paden (Kevin Kline), who has been robbed of everything except his red long underwear. Paden confesses that all he really cares about is recovering his stolen bay horse. Joining forces with Emmet, Paden soon recovers his bay and expresses his affection for the horse by kissing him on the mouth.
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