bkoganbing
The Look Of Eagles is what every great race horse has according to Walter Brennan in Kentucky. It's that gleam in the eye that you see in any athlete, human or equine, that tells you he's got heart. In the case of horses, heart enough to go the distance of a mile and a quarter, the set distance of the Kentucky Derby.The third Oscar for Best Supporting Actor went to Walter Brennan for Kentucky as the 34 year old Brennan made up with white hair plays unreconstructed rebel Peter Goodwin, grand uncle to Loretta Young. This film set a standard for Brennan who played very little, but old codgers after that.The leads in Kentucky are Loretta Young and Richard Greene who was no doubt brought to 20th Century Fox as a backup for Tyrone Power. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the film was developed as something for Power originally who co-starred with Young on a few occasions.The two are three generations removed from the Civil War which split the families apart. In a prologue to the modern story, the head of the Dillon family sides with the Union and the head of the Goodwin clan goes with the Confederacy. Later on Douglass Dumbrill head of the Dillon family now an officer in the Union Army raids the Goodwin farm and the head of the Goodwin family is shot and killed and the thoroughbred horses they were raising are taken as war contraband. Young Bobs Watson sees all this and he grows up to be Walter Brennan.When Greene speeds by in a car and catches sight of Loretta Young on a horse, it's love at first sight, but a forbidden love because of the family feud. Greene and Young have a rocky road ahead, not helped by the fact that he gives up the banking business and goes to work for the Goodwins under an alias because she won't give him the right time of a day if she knows he's one of the hated enemy.The 1938 Kentucky Derby is worked into the plot where Calumnet Farms Lawrin ridden by Eddie Arcaro wins and Arcaro also gets a line in the film. Lawrin stands in for the three year old colt owned by one of the feuding families. But the win is also clouded by tragedy.A lot of black players get into Kentucky, but sad to say in some truly stereotypical roles. It's probably why Kentucky is rarely seen these days. I hadn't seen it myself in about 35 years.Still for Brennan's dominating performance and Loretta Young at her prettiest you can't go wrong with Kentucky.
redhairedlad
I saw this advertised for the THIS network and seemed like it would be a horse-racing-genre movie. This is one of my favorite genres and I've come to expect gritty, fleshed out characters (even Runyonesque in the best ones), both on the owner/trainer side and (even more so) on the jockey/groom/gambler side. Here you will find none of that. First, they movie seems to be confused about which side of the Civil War Kentucky was on (They remained in the Union and fielded some of the finest units). Next, the cast in this movie is wonderful. It includes Walter Brennen, one of my all time favorites — I never saw a bad Brennen performance until now. And Loretta Young could be a fine actress — always ladylike but sexy and very subtle in her acting.But Butler's blocking for the scenes is sophomoric and wooden. The performances he gets from this fine cast comes across like a so-so high school drama club. If you love "Seabiscuit," "Black Stallion," "Let It Ride," "Broadway Bill," "Stablemates," don't get your hopes up for this one!
sol1218
***SPOILER ALERT*** The bad blood between Kentucky thoroughbred horse-breeders the Goodwins and Dillons date back to the early days of the Civil War. That's when the Dillons decided to join the Union against the Confederate South that the Goodwins fought and died for. In fact it was Thad Goodwin Sr., Russell Hicks, who was gunned down by Capt. John Dillon Sr, Douglas Dumbrille, a then officer in the Union Army as he, under order from President Lincoln, had Goodwin's prized thoroughbred horses forcibly taken away from him.Now some seventy five years later, in 1938, the feud was reignited when banker and horse breeder John Dillon Jr, Moroni Olsen, turned down a loan to Thad Goodwin Jr, Charles Wladron, who desperately needed the cash to saved his beloved Elmtree Farm. It's at Elmtree where Goodwin bred his champion, over the years, thoroughbreds. The loan was turned down after Goodwin won a gentleman's bet, rolling dice, over Dillon to have a choice to pick any three year old colt at the Dillion Whistle Ranch Farm. To make thing even more complicated Goodwin playing the commodities market heavily invested in cotton futures, hedging his bets, that crashed! This caused him to literally drop dead on the sidewalk from a massive heart-attack.It's when Dillon's son John, Richard Greene came back from England after studying to be a banker, like his dad, that things started to heat up in the Blue Grass of Kentucky. John wanting to be a horse trainer instead of a banker also got romantically involved with the late Thad Goodwin's daughter Sally, Loretta Young, whom he kept his identity, of being a Dillon, from to win her over.Using the name Mr. Bossman Jack talks Sally and her Uncle Peter Goodwin, Walter Brennan, into letting him stay at their horse farm and train their only racehorse Bessy's Boy to run in the upcoming Kentucky Derby. It turned out that Bessy's Boy broke down when Sally rode him, after her car broke down, to get help for her dying mom Grace, Leona Roberts, leaving the Goodwin's with no horses for Jack to train.Finding the note that Old Man Goodwin got from John Dillon, on their bet, about getting one of his prize Three Year Olds Sally together with her Uncle Peter picked up this jet black colt at the Dillon Farm whom they named Bluegrass; And the rest is movie horse-racing history. Great horse racing action sequences coupled with beautiful Technicolor photography makes "Kentucky" a stand out of a movie despite it's schmaltzy and predictable storyline.Jack's cover, as Mr. Bossman, is blown when Sally finds out he's actually a hated Dillon from the racing secretary as she tried to talk to him before the big race that Bluegress was entered in. It's when Bluegress won, on a foul, that Sally began to realize that Jack, despite being a Dillon, was on the up and up not like, in her mind, his greedy father who, which was a real stretch on Sally's part, drove her dad to his death.**MAJOR SPOILER** With the big race-the Kentucky Derby-next Jack who had by then confessed to Sally who he really is, a Dillon, tells her not to have Blurgrass hit by his jockey during the race. It will only have him quit and end up the track by the time the race is over. Going against her Uncle Peter's orders, who wanted Bluegrass whipped in the stretch run, both Bluegrass his jockey and Sally ended up in the Churchill Downs Winners Circle. But ironically the old frail, and having a bad ticker on top of all that, Uncle Peter who all his life dreamed in owning a Derby winner wasn't there with them! Uncle Peter left the scene, or this plane of existence, just as the big race ended with his heart, the excitement was just too much, giving out on him.Superior horse racing movie not only because of the great racing in it but because the acting of Academy Award winning Walter Brennan as Uncle Peter Goodwin as well as the rest of it's top flight cast. There' also the added attraction of having guest appearances in the film of such greats of the American Turf as Man O' War and his 1937 Triple Crown son the speedy War Admiral. There's also making a guest appearance in "Kentucky" the 1935 Triple Crown winner Omaha the only offspring of a Triple Crown winner in horse-racing history who's sire was 1930 Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox who's incidentally also in the movie!P.S At the start of "Kentucky" we see Uncle Peter asleep on his easy chair with the newspaper, that's covering his face, headline Seabiscuit, who also makes a guest appearance in the film, to face War Admiral at New York's Belmont Park in $100,000.00 Match Race. The Match Race between he two champion horses actually took place at Pimlico, known as Old Hilltop, outside of Baltimore Maryland not in New York's Belmont Park.
Michael
The Yankee ransacking prelude more or less spells out the eventuality that years later Young is going to fall for Greene and that their respective families are going to trample the path of true love. Quite literally, as the updated story is now played out against a bluegrass background.Get yourself into Hollywood mode and dispense with the logistics of script and story, and instead enjoy everything else. The performances, even though they embody strictly cliché and (predictably racial) caricature, are still marvellous for those who love a Fox-style wallow - Brennan won that year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The film is generally well and pacily edited, and the racing sequences are particularly exciting.The real star of this show though, for me, was the sublime photography which I can honestly say offered the most richest and well-preserved example of pre-40s 3-strip Technicolor I have so far seen. Even after more than 50 years, its luminescence (at least in this Channel 4 print) was breathtakingly striking and full of lustre, with yellow in particular registering far more strongly than I have previously seen in a 30s Technicolor movie, and natural outdoor verdance looking as if it had been sprayed with kiwi fruit dye. No doubt deployed deliberately to enhance the otherwise routine nature of the story, it would still take a considerable kick of horsepower to elevate the film to the grandeur of, say, 'Gone With The Wind', to which it bears more than a passing dramatic resemblance.
