Main Cast: Shirley Temple, Barry Fitzgerald, Lon McCallister, Rosemary de Camp, Donald MacBride
Release Year: 1949
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
The racehorse Seabiscuit really existed, but this is not his true story -- this is a romance and centers on lovely Margaret O'Hara (Shirley Temple), an Irish lass who comes to cheer on her uncle Shawn O'Hara's (Barry Fitzgerald) horse during the big races and ends up falling in love with handsome jockey Ted Knowles (Lon McCallister). He asks for her hand, but she will only marry him if he gives up racing because she is still mourning the death of her brother, who was also a jockey. Ted is torn because he loves her, but he also wants to ride her uncle's horse Seabiscuit to victory. Her uncle convinces him to ride and then engineers matters so that his niece will still marry Ted. The film includes footage of the real Seabiscuit winning two different races during the 1940s. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
The only thing really wrong with The Story of Seabiscuit is that it simply isn't the story of Seabiscuit. One expects Hollywood to play fast and loose with the facts when it makes a biopic about a person, so it's probably no surprise that they play even faster and looser when filming the biography of a horse. But Seabiscuit would have been a much better film if the creators had simply told his real story rather than inventing a bit of distracting and not terribly believable fluff about a trainer, the trainer's niece, and her romantic interest in a jockey. This is really what the film is about, and it's an incredibly dull and uninteresting little tale. Fortunately, Seabiscuit has Barry Fitzgerald on hand to play the trainer, and his warm-but-ragged personality helps to push the film -- barely -- into the winner's circle. He's helped enormously by the use of actual archival footage of the famous horse in two of his most important races; these two sequences truly get the blood pounding and the pulse racing and demonstrate what the film might have been like if it had really been about the titular subject. There are a few other things of note in the film, such as Rosemary de Camp's performance and parts of grown-up Shirley Temple's (as well as all of Temple's grown-up beauty). But mostly it's Fitzgerald and the actual race footage (some of it causing the film to jump suddenly from color to black-and-white) that make Seabiscuit worth a look or two. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Douglas Bacon - Art Director, Leah Rhoads - Costume Designer, David Butler - Director, Irene Morra - Editor, David Buttolph - Composer (Music Score), David Buttolph - Musical Direction/Supervision, Wilfrid M. Cline - Cinematographer, William Jacobs - Producer, Lyle B. Reifsnider - Set Designer, John Taintor Foote - Screenwriter
The Story of Seabiscuit is a 1949 American drama film directed by David Butler. The screenplay was written by John Taintor Foote. The film is a fictionalized account of the career of the racehorse Seabiscuit (1933–1947) with a subplot involving the romance between the niece (Temple) of a horse trainer (Fitzgerald) and a jockey (McCallister). The role of Seabiscuit was played by one of his cousins. Though shot in Technicolor, the film incorporates actual black-and-white footage of Seabiscuit in races. The film was a flop.[citation needed]
