MARYLAND (1940)

After KENTUCKY/’38, a TechniColored horse racing drama (with romance) set among rival family stables, 20th/FOX tried double-dipping in MARYLAND, but with steeple horse races.  (Thankfully, this one such a dud, they skipped the other 46 States.)  Here, Fay Bainter’s horse fancier turns morbidly guilt-ridden after sending her horse shy hubby on a hunt where he promptly takes a spill and expires.  ‘Sell all the horses,’ she cries, ‘Shoot the new foal!’  Neither her character nor the film recovers from this unsympathetic order (what was producer Darryl F. Zanuck thinking?), but sure enough son John Payne grows up to ride the very horse the foal had years later and to win the big race.  You see, stable hand Ben Carter didn’t have the heart to shoot the animal, but raised her to sire the next champion! ( Payne also ticks Mom off falling for deadly dull Brenda Joyce, daughter of horse trainer Walter Brennan.)  Director Henry King, normally at his best with Americana, can’t do much with this one . . . and doesn’t much try.  Still, the film’s not without interest, largely from its large cast of Black supporting players that goes from recently Oscar’d Hattie McDaniel on down.  And while the staff (home & stable) hold to insulting stereotypes of ‘Darkie’ behavior and rolling craps for comic relief, the weird thing is that they get nearly half of the film’s running time.  One half-reel entirely set in an All-Black church service where Ben Carter, the tender-hearted stable hand who couldn’t shoot the foal or quit playing craps, gets religion and goes clean.  His new truthful persona leading to an appalling courtroom scene, meant to be comic, where his natural confusion (or is it all on purpose?) makes mincemeat of the proceedings.  Ah, the good old days of the Jim Crow South.  Undeniably fascinating/slightly horrifying.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Great character actor Clarence Muse, the preacher here, had his last role just before he died at 89 playing in a far better horse racing drama, THE BLACK STALLION/’79  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-black-stallion-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Great Hollywood orchestra builder & conductor, Alfred Newman (patriarch of the musical Newman dynasty) was never the most fecund of tunesmiths.  Here, largely phoning it in, like everyone else, he self-borrows his wonderful Ann Rutledge melody from YOUNG MR. LINCOLN/’39 for this film’s love motif.  The tune, a favorite of LINCOLN director John Ford was specifically requested for use by Ford as a wistful, lost love theme in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62.