jaster-7 Review of The Story of Seabiscuit

The Story of Seabiscuit (1949)

History on the outside, phoney romance up the inside

[4/10 · 1 September 2014]

I liked the casting, and the costumes of this movie and I love the story of Seabiscuit. Tomorrow I am picking up the book that the 2003 film was based on, which is one of my all time favourite films. A drag in this 1949 version is the embarrassing minority stereotyping and treatment. The pace is also tedious - at one point you are watching an entire race that Seabiscuit is not even running in. The authentic archival footage was great. I liked seeing Shirley Temple in her later years as an actress - still has those adorable dimples and she's holding her own even taking on a thick Irish accent. But the story gets tedious over this injected love story between what I assume are the fictional characters of Margaret O'Hara and Ted Knowles. It spends waaay too much time on that phoney back and forth. For the most part, the movie seemed to follow the facts in all but one odd way - these fictional characters and the forced conflict between Shirley's character and this jockey Ted Knowles, who it finally dawned on me was in place of the real major player in the story of Seabiscuit, John "Red" Pollard. I'm not sure why they took this liberty with the facts and eliminated Red Pollard from being mentioned in the film, but used his story. As a viewer I didn't care about Margaret and Ted too much, and certainly didn't buy into the romantic tension of would they or wouldn't they get together. And I didn't care about the tragedy in Margaret's life that made her 'skittish' on marrying a jockey. Every time they were doing a scene, I was wondering what Seabiscuit was doing.