Hollywood Hoofbeats

by Petrine Day Mitchum

  Several horses played the young Casey’s Shadow, and although they embodied the right spirit of a developing racehorse, an astute observer can see that their blazes don’t always match. The lead horse playing the two-year-old was a flashy bald-faced sorrel with four white socks. Although he was supposed to be a registered Quarter Horse, Casey, as he was named for the production, was actually a Morgan/Quarter cross. He did 90 percent of the work but was doubled by Baldy Socks, who, according to wrangler Phil Cowling, required makeup applications of “Streaks and Tips” to match Casey. Cowling taught Baldy Socks to lie down for a scene in which Casey is ill. He worked under the supervision of his boss wrangler, the late Al Janks, who supplied all the horses for the film.

  Walter Matthau and Alexis Smith pose with their equine costar of Casey’s Shadow (1978).

  Racehorse Biographies

  Several biographical stories of famous racehorses have made it to the screen. Ironically, the more fictionalized scenarios have not usually been as compelling as the scripts that stick closer to the truth.

  The Great Dan Patch

  The life of Dan Patch, an unbeaten Standardbred harness racer who became a household name in the early twentieth century, was perfect movie material. Sired by Joe Patchen, a renowned pacer from Illinois, the exceptional colt from Indiana was foaled in 1896. He was owned by his breeder, dry-goods merchant Dan Messner Jr. Trained by Johnny Wattles, Dan Patch (named for his owner and his sire) did not race until he was a four-year-old. After cleaning up on the county-fair circuit in Indiana, the fabulous pacer went on the national Grand Circuit and won fifty-two consecutive races.

  After his mare Lady Patch was poisoned, presumably by gamblers, Messner feared for Dan Patch’s life. He sold the colt to M. E. Sturgis of Buffalo, New York, for $20,000. Dan Patch continued his undefeated career, touring the country in a private white railroad car emblazoned with his picture and name. Wherever he stopped to race, the locals proclaimed a Dan Patch Day. Pampered by four grooms, the horse reportedly loved the attention, including the band music that usually heralded his arrival.

  By the end of 1903, no horse in America dared to challenge the remarkable stallion. Sturgis sold him for $60,000 to Marion W. Savage, owner of International Stock Food Company of Hamilton, Minnesota. A marketing genius, Savage used the Dan Patch name to promote a variety of products, including horse feed, cigars, silk scarves, and pillows. Dan Patch raced only in special exhibitions against the clock, pulling his trademark white sulky. The other horses in these races were there purely to give Dan the incentive to strut his stuff. He commanded a stud fee of $300, a fortune at the time. Breeders were enticed by Savage’s assurance that “a colt by Dan Patch is just like a government bond.” Dan Patch made millions for Savage, who reportedly loved the great pacing horse. In 1916, at age twenty, Dan Patch collapsed and died. Savage died thirty-two hours later, from complications after a heart attack. Dan Patch and his devoted owner were buried at the same hour.

  The 1949 equine “bio-pic” The Great Dan Patch left out most of the dramatic details of the horse’s career in favor of a sappy fictionalized love triangle between a fictional owner, David Palmer (Dennis O’Keefe), his socially ambitious wife Ruth (Ruth Warrick), and Cissy Lathrop (Gail Russell), the pure-hearted, horse-savvy daughter of Dan Patch’s equally fictitious trainer, Ben Lathrop (John Hoyt). While the gorgeous black horse with a white star who played Dan Patch was cited by the Hollywood trade publication Variety for his beauty and performance, no credit is given in the film to either the horse or his trainer.

  Phar Lap

  Many believe a New Zealand-bred gelding named Phar Lap (“lightning” in Siamese) was the greatest galloper the world has ever seen. Director Simon Wincer’s 1983 film Phar Lap is a valentine to the remarkable horse, whose astonishing career was cut shockingly short by a mysterious death.

  In the movie, trainer Harry Telford (Martin Vaughan), betting on the colt’s ancestral bloodlines, buys the horse in New Zealand for an Australia-based American owner, Dave Davis (Ron Leibman), in 1928. The ungainly fifteen-month-old red chestnut arrives in Australia, and Davis is so unimpressed, he agrees to let Telford lease the gelding for three years. Convinced Phar Lap has a lazy streak, Telford is hard on the colt on which he has staked his economic future. Slow-motion scenes depicting the trainer legging up Phar Lap by galloping him in sand dunes reveal just how arduous this is for a horse. Despite the rigors of training, Phar Lap doesn’t show much speed until he reaches the age of four. Topping out at 17 hands, he finally hits his gargantuan stride—with the help of his strapper (Australian for “groom”) Tommy Woodcock (Tom Burlinson), who figured out the key to unlocking his competitive spirit. Phar Lap simply needed to be held back and then allowed to run from behind. His jockey, Jim Pike (James Steele), never even has to use the whip.

  Phar Lap wins the 1930 Melbourne Cup and the Futurity Stakes, races of greatly varying distances. After winning thirty-six races, “the Red Terror” as he was known by his many fans in his adopted country, is handicapped so heavily it is impossible for him to continue racing in Australia. Greedy for more winnings, Davis and Telford decide to send him to America to run in the Aqua Caliente Handicap on the California-Mexican border. Woodcock is promoted to Phar Lap’s trainer and nurses him through a badly cracked hoof to win the $100,000 purse on March 20, 1932.

  Seventeen days later, Phar Lap suddenly becomes gravely ill on the northern California farm where he is resting up for his next big race. Woodcock, sleeping in a nearby stall, is awakened by the horse’s pitiful groans. Despite the desperate ministering of Woodcock and a veterinarian, Phar Lap drops dead. Gamblers’ henchmen are suspected of poisoning the big red horse. Although a postmortem showed evidence of poisoning, the tragic mystery was never solved.

  In preparing Phar Lap (1983), producer John Sexton was so concerned about historical accuracy that he sent master of horse Heath Harris and head trainer Evanne Chesson on a month’s long search for a red chestnut horse big enough to portray the 17-hand wonder. They looked at horse after horse, but none had the size and rich red color of Phar Lap. Then one day, lunching with friend Shirley Pye McMillian at Branca Plains, her sheep and cattle station at Walcha, Harris and Chesson spotted a big red horse in a paddock. McMillian had been traveling and was totally unaware of the search for Phar Lap’s double. Her horse, the 17-hand Thoroughbred/Whaler cross Towering Inferno, was a ranch mount that the stockmen didn’t like. “He was just too big for the men to keep getting on and off,” said McMillan. “Even so, I kept him as I thought he might one day do something worthwhile.” According to Harris, it was kismet. He knew he had found his star horse as soon as he walked toward the gelding. “He moved just like Phar Lap,” he later recalled. “His color was exactly right, even his hind fetlocks were white.” He also had a white star and, most surprisingly, a distinctive pattern of black spots on his thigh in the shape of a Southern Cross, like Phar Lap.

  Towering Inferno was nicknamed Bobby after Phar Lap’s own stable name. The script required him to rear, strike, paw the ground, look in both directions, nod his head, and play dead. He had to tear a shirt off the back of a stableboy—like the real Phar lap used to do. In addition to all these tricks, he had to learn to gallop with a camera car right beside him. Harris and Chesson quickly discovered that Bobby had the smarts to go with his movie-star looks, and the trick for them was staying one step ahead of the clever horse. Their patience and hard work with Bobby paid off, as the horse turned into a fabulous performer who never spooked at the camera. In fact, he became something of a ham and reveled in the attention of the film crew. Those who remembered the real Phar Lap were astonished by the resemblance. When Bobby was presented to the press, veteran racing journalist Johnny Tapp turned to producer John Sexton and said, “It’s a reincarnation.”

  Tom Burlinson, the handsome young star of The Man from Snowy River, is wonderful in the role of Tommy Woodcock. Fortunately, the late Woodcock was, at seventy-eight, still very much alive when Phar Lap w
as being made, and the actor was able to glean a great deal from him. Woodcock even lent a custom-made horse blanket that had belonged to Phar Lap for a scene depicting the gelding’s trip to America. Amazingly, it fit the movie Phar Lap as if it were made for him.

  Tommy Woodcock was with Phar Lap almost constantly during his short-lived career. When Phar Lap died, Woodcock could not control his tears for the horse he had loved greatly. Under the direction of Simon Wincer, Burlinson and Towering Inferno recreated this heartbreaking scene so convincingly that it’s difficult to keep a dry eye while watching the sad finale to the beautifully crafted Phar Lap.

  Towering Inferno, aka Bobby, was purchased by Heath Harris after production. He was retired from movie work but raised more than $300,000 for charities in Australia and New Zealand making personal appearances as the horse from Phar Lap. At age twenty-six, a bizarre turn of events claimed his life. Bobby was struck by lightning—the very thing Phar Lap was named for—while taking shelter from a thunderstorm under a tree on the Harris ranch. Since the veterinarian was too far away to euthanize the fatally injured gelding, Harris—who felt about Bobby the way Tommy Woodcock had felt about Phar Lap—was obliged to put his suffering old friend out of his misery. He has said it was the hardest day of his life.

  With James Steele as jockey Jim Pike aboard Towering Inferno, in white bridle as Phar Lap, towers over the competition at the start of a turf race.

  Tom Burlinson and Towering Inferno recreate the tragic end of Phar Lap.

  Two Seabiscuits

  A horse that could have given Phar Lap a run for the money was Seabiscuit, an underdog who bucked the odds to become America’s sweetheart during the Depression. The two biographical films about Seabiscuit, made more than fifty years apart, couldn’t be more different. The Story of Seabiscuit (1949) starred Shirley Temple and suffered the same type of truth tinkering that had plagued The Great Dan Patch. Not only were the lives of the real people surrounding Seabiscuit altered to ill effect, but in this case the equine actors also were uncooperative. When the horse portraying War Admiral kept beating the movie’s Seabiscuit, director David Butler resorted to archival footage of the famous match between the two rivals.

  The true story of Seabiscuit, a crooked-legged horse who went from loser to champion with the help of a half-blind jockey and a washed-up trainer, was magnificently told in Laura Hillenbrand’s marvelous book Seabiscuit, An American Legend, published in 2001. Ripe for a remake, Seabiscuit’s incredible rags-to-riches story was given topflight treatment by the A-list producing team of Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and director Gary Ross. For the 2003 Universal Pictures movie Seabiscuit, Ross cast Tobey Maguire as Seabiscuit’s jockey Red Pollard, Chris Cooper as trainer “Silent” Tom Smith, and Jeff Bridges as owner C. S. Howard. Elizabeth Banks was cast as Marcela (Mrs. C. S.) Howard, and William H. Macy as racing wag “Tick Tock” McGlaughlin. With the human stars set, the awesome task of casting the equine hero of the movie was next. Enter the wrangler from Montana, Rusty Hendrickson.

  The forty horses initially selected for the film were between three and seven years old. Culled from all over America, most were Thoroughbreds, but a few Quarter Horses and solid color Appaloosas made the grade. None of the horses was a big winner at the track. As Hendrickson pointed out, “A good movie horse is different from a great racehorse.” Six weeks before the cameras rolled, He and his crew began prepping the equine cast, gaining their trust and exposing them to new experiences. They learned to follow the camera car by working alongside a pickup truck. They learned to stand for long minutes in the starting gate while microphones on rods hovered overhead. As the weeks went by, one small Thoroughbred gelding from Kentucky, Fighting Furrari, emerged as the star. A slight wind problem had kept the athletic little bay from being a top racehorse, but Hendrickson saw his potential as an “actor.” He resembled the real Seabiscuit, Hendrickson said, and “he has a cute personality.” His nice temperament made him an ideal cast horse, one that the star, Tobey Maguire, could handle with confidence. Having taught Maguire to ride on the Western Ride with the Devil, Hendrickson knew the actor could sit a horse. Riding a racehorse, of course, is a whole different proposition.

  Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron coached Maguire on the finer points of balancing on a horse galloping 40 miles per hour. “I started going to Tobey’s house in late July [2002] and put him on the Equicizer [a mechanical horse jockeys use to condition themselves]. He learned his lessons extremely quickly.” Although for safety reasons, during most of the race close-ups, Maguire is aboard the “S.S. Seabiscuit,” a customized Equicizer mounted on a flatbed truck, the star does quite a bit of riding in the film. According to McCarron, who videotaped the young actor’s progress, Maguire easily earned the respect of the professional riders on the film. “After four lessons, I showed the video to the jockeys, and they were very impressed. I think it all worked out very well.”

  Once the lead horse was chosen, nine more were selected to play Seabiscuit’s doubles. Some are seen only from a distance. All are Thoroughbreds except one, a Quarter Horse, Triple Digit Cash, owned by Hendrickson and nicknamed “Biscuit” for the production. A trick horse, Biscuit specialized in “mouth work” and had his moment when Seabiscuit rips the silks off a rival jockey. Because the real Seabiscuit was a complex character, it took more than one horse to duplicate his quirks. Another, nicknamed Gravy, was taught to rear for his role as the angry Seabiscuit. Muffin, however, had the cushiest role as the lazy Seabiscuit, who lies down in his stall. The horses were all made up to match Seabiscuit’s plain bay color, with socks and stars carefully painted brown.

  In addition to Triple Digit Cash, Hendrickson brought four more of his own Quarter Horses to the production: Cutter Bailey Ford, Go Benny Dial, Keepin Doc’s Memory, and Doc’s Keepin Gossip. The latter two horses were sired by Rex Peterson’s movie horse Doc’s Keepin Time. Used to pony the racehorses to the starting gate and for mounts as outriders (the ones who help pony particularly fractious racehorses and capture runaways), the quiet-tempered Quarter Horses were the supporting actors to the Thoroughbred stars.

  Director Ross, who grew up riding western on family vacations and spent a fair amount of time at the track in his youth, readily admits that recreating Seabiscuit’s famous races with historical accuracy was the film’s biggest challenge. From Lexington to Los Angeles, the action was carefully choreographed by the film’s consultant, jockey Chris McCarron, who planned every shot with the director and cinematographer John Schwartzman. With the help of graphic designers, the team created “race books,” huge maps laid out on the clubhouse floor that the jockeys could walk around to learn their moves. The meticulous planning proved invaluable, but there were still problems. Horses are not always the most cooperative actors. “It’s very hard to control nuances of speed,” said Ross after filming, “if a horse wants to go, you can only contain him so much.” McCarron readily agreed. “The most difficult challenge was dealing with horses not necessarily ready or willing to do what it is the director is looking for.”

  Although professional jockeys were hired to make the races look as realistic as possible, they sometimes had trouble rating their mounts. Even McCarron, cast as War Admiral’s jockey Charley Kurtsinger, had trouble holding on to the big black gelding Cobra Flight in a scene of the legendary match race between War Admiral and Seabiscuit. “That was a very embarrassing moment for me,” McCarron recalled after the fact. “I pretty much picked Cobra Flight to be one of the ones that would let Seabiscuit pull away from him. He showed me no speed in the morning workout. But when the cameras were rolling, he moved up head to head with Seabiscuit and then won by a nose.” In the end, another horse, Made to Space Jam, played the losing War Admiral.

  The horses were tested by long hours of shooting, but AHA monitors made sure the Thoroughbreds were not galloped longer than three furlongs three times a day and were given rest days in between races. The jockeys were even required to carry bats of foam rubber. Another co
ncern was the stress of travel between far-flung locations. Weight was carefully maintained with a high-calorie diet of alfalfa hay supplemented with beet pulp. Keeping the horses healthy and sound was ensured by a top-notch team of veterinarians and farriers. The diligence paid off: no horses were harmed during the making of Seabiscuit.

  After making the film, director Ross said that he has “a different understanding of the process of horse racing. It’s much less controllable than I thought.” He also came away from the film with a renewed admiration for horses and the people who ride them. “It’s an amazing fusion between man and animal. When you think that thousands of years ago man climbed on the back of an animal and became mobile in a way he had never known … you’re reconnected to that very elemental thing.”

  Jockey Ricky Frasier, doubling Tobey Maguire, rides Fighting Furrari’s Racing double Mountain Skier, as Verboom, with Cory Black aboard, loses ground on the inside as they head for the finish line.

  Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story

  John Gatins, the writer-director of the 2005 release Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, was moved by the near miraculous comeback of a filly named Mariah’s Storm who broke her canon bone—the long supporting bone below a horse’s knee —and healed to continue her racing career. In Dreamer, a chestnut filly named Sonador (Spanish for “dreamer”), fractures her canon bone in a spectacular fall during a race. Her owner, Prince Tariq (Antonio Badrani) wants her destroyed, but her trainer, Ben Crane (Kurt Russell), asks for the mare as part of his severance. Ben did not want the mare to run and is fired after butting heads with Tariq’s arrogant henchman, Palmer (David Morse). He is determined to rehabilitate Sonador and breed her in hopes of selling the foal for enough to revitalize his struggling business. His young daughter, Cale, longs to learn the horse business and forms a bond with the injured filly.