Hollywood Hoofbeats

by Petrine Day Mitchum

  Many other equines participated in the production of The Two Towers. Owned by local residents who worked as extras, approximately 350 horses were used for the battle charges. The breeds were varied. They included Thoroughbreds, Irish Cobs, Kaimanawa (New Zealand wild horses), Clydesdales, and Station Horses (Clydesdale/Kaimanawa crosses).

  For the main battle sequence between the Orcs and the Rohans, wrangler John Scott arranged the extras in four rows of one hundred horses each, with the quicker Thoroughbreds in the rear so they wouldn’t outdistance the other horses. The horses had been accustomed to the sights and sounds of battle prior to the shoot so they wouldn’t spook at such novelties as raised weapons and fallen bodies. Some horses were also trained to slide stop on voice command, allowing them to hit their marks with a flourish.

  At the climax of the charge, the audience sees horses running into the spears of the advancing Orcs. Though the galloping horses are real, the gruesome impalement images were computer generated—a technological advance since the use of animatronics for similar scenes in films such as Braveheart and The Patriot.

  At the end of the great battle, the scene is littered with the bodies of dead men and horses. Most of the equine bodies were prosthetics, with stuffed horses used for the close-up shots.

  The scarily costumed horses help create the frightening images of the evil Ringwraiths in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the first installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

  The Return of the King

  The final installment of Peter Jackson’s momentous undertaking, The Return of the King, swept the 2004 Academy Awards with eleven Oscars. The Return of the King features most of the characters from the prior films, including the swift Shadowfax, who continues to provide service to the wizard Gandalf. Again, Shadowfax (played by Domero and Blanco) performs without a bridle. In one scene, he runs up a set of stairs when he and Gandalf enter the fortress city of Minas Tirith. At first, Domero balked at taking the steps so the wranglers placed Blanco at the top of the stairs, out of frame. Sure enough, Domero eagerly raced up to his buddy and stopped when he saw his mark.

  Near the climax of the film, scores of horses carry the Rohan warriors into battle, against frightening creatures such as the monstrous multitusked Mûmakil and the flying dragonlike Nazguls. Thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery (CGI), the horses dodge the massive feet of the Mûmakil in a breathtaking sequence. With their hideous claws, ferocious shrieking Nazguls swoop down to pick up horses and riders, then drop them hundreds of feet to their deaths. Of course, all such action is computer generated. Not computer generated was the stunt action of twelve falling horses and five rearing horses trained by Graham Ware Jr. for the sequence. Doubling Shadowfax, Blanco does a spectacular rear as Gandolf, with Pippin riding double, is confronted by the Witch-king of Angmar.

  Sadly, Domero, who portrayed Shadowfax, was retired from show business as his preexisting condition of melanoma worsened. He was placed with caretakers in New Zealand to live out the rest of his life in comfort with ongoing veterinary care, instigated during production. He has since passed away from natural causes.

  Blanco and Brownie both found homes with wranglers who had bonded with the horses during the making of the trilogy. After working so closely with Uraeus during the long production of The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen could not walk away from his equine buddy. He purchased the big bay stallion. “Uraeus is my friend,” the actor stated, “and I am happy to ensure his well-being to the best of my abilities.” When asked what he planned to do with Uraeus off-screen, Mortenson humbly replied, “Hopefully continue to learn from him.” To keep Uraeus company, he also purchased Kenny, a highly intelligent, unflappable chestnut gelding who worked as the actor’s mount in some of the battle scenes in The Two Towers.

  Kenny, Tex, and Domero pose with their Lord of the Rings costars, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and sir Ian McKellen.

  Adventurers and Avengers

  Horses have added adrenaline-pumping excitement to the exploits of adventurers and avengers who have entertained generations of popcorn-munching audiences. Whether they are dashing across the desert in elaborate regalia or galloping through the moonlight with a masked swordsman astride, movie horses have been integral to the heroics of our heroes. In fact, if it weren’t for a horse, there would have been no Indiana Jones.

  Indiana Jones

  The image of a rugged hero jumping from his horse to a truck inspired George Lucas to write Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). That bit of action kicks off one of the film’s most memorable sequences, in which Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) commandeers a Nazi truck containing the legendary Ark of the Covenant. The scene, shot in Tunisia, was coordinated by Glenn Randall Jr., who worked closely with director Steven Spielberg. Jones rides a beautiful dappled gray through a desert encampment and down a steep hill to intercept the truck. Once alongside the vehicle, he leaps from the saddle to the truck. Veteran stuntman Terry Leonard doubled Harrison Ford from the top of the hill. Glenn Randall drove the truck as that stuntman made his leap from horse to truck, a maneuver known as a transfer in stunt parlance. The transfer went smoothly, and the image that inspired George Lucas was recreated in one of the most loved adventure films of our time.

  The image of a rider jumping from horse to truck, as seen in this drawing, inspired George Lucas to write Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  The muscular gray stunt horse keeps an eye on the camera as Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) searches for the lost ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

  The Sheik and the Kellogg Arabians

  Long before Indiana Jones made his famous transfer, another adventurer, played by silent-film star Rudolph Valentino, displayed his horsemanship in the 1921 film The Sheik. As the seductive Arabian chieftain Ahmed Ben Hassan, Valentino rode a voluptuous gray mare named Anna. Anna also appeared in the Marion Davies vehicle When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). Produced at the staggering cost—for a silent film—of $1.5 million, the extravagant drama centers on the love life of King Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor (Davies). Costumed in medieval bard, Anna carries an admirer of Mary Tudor’s to victory in a jousting tournament. The unflappable, sturdy mare went on to star on Broadway, pulling a chariot in the opera Aida for twenty-five years at the Old Metropolitan Opera House. A starry-eyed fan, when asked what he thought of the opera, said, “That’s the swellest looking horse I’ve ever seen.” Appearing with famous tenors, including the illustrious Enrico Caruso, Anna achieved such fame that when she died at age thirty-nine in March 1940, the New York Times ran her obituary.

  Catapulted to superstardom by The Sheik, Valentino appeared in its even more popular sequel, The Son of the Sheik, released in 1926. Playing dual roles as an older Skeik Ahmed Ben Hassan and his handsome namesake son, Ahmed, Valentino was outfitted in extravagant costumes. As the young Ahmed, Valentino rode an outstanding black trick horse with white hind socks. The black, elaborately costumed in Arabian regalia, was trained to rear and spin on command and was used for leaping mounts and galloping scenes across sand dunes. For the older sheik, Valentino wanted a special Arabian steed. He lobbied cereal king W. K. Kellogg, who had recently established his Arabian Horse Ranch in Pomona, California, for the use of his fine dappled gray stallion Jadaan. In writing to Kellogg, Valentino praised Jadaan as “the finest Arab from every standpoint.” He vowed to pay all of Jadaan’s expenses during filming and insure him for $25,000. After some negotiation, Kellogg acquiesced, and Jadaan was shipped to the desert location near Yuma, Arizona. Reportedly incensed when Valentino kept the stallion four days longer than promised, Kellogg eventually calmed down and enjoyed the fame Jadaan’s movie appearance brought to his ranch. Valentino’s own enjoyment of his success was sadly short lived, as he died of a ruptured ulcer while touring to promote the film.

  Jadaan’s film career continued, with appearances in The Desert Song (1929), Beau Ideal (1931), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Garden of Allah (1936), and Under Two Flags (1936). As Jadaan aged,
his steel gray dapple faded, and he turned white. In 1945, at age twenty-nine, Jadaan was euthanized at the University of California College of Agriculture at Davis. His skeleton is still used for classroom instruction at UC Davis, and his saddle from The Sheik is on display at the Arabian Horse Center—the former Kellogg ranch—on the California State Polytechnic University campus in Pomona.

  Another Kellogg Arabian, the gray racing stallion King John, also became a movie star. Imported from Egypt by Herman W. Frank in 1929, King John was a champion show horse before W. K. Kellogg purchased him. After many public appearances as one of the renowned Kellogg Arabians, the stallion joined his stablemate Jadaan in the 1934 film The Scarlet Empress, a romanticized biography of Russia’s Catherine the Great, starring Marlene Dietrich. King John appears in the finale when the triumphant Catherine leads her mounted supporters into the royal palace. Riding King John, Dietrich runs him up a marble staircase and strikes a regal pose. THe following year, the stallion appeared with Gary Cooper in the swashbuckler Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and the following spring he again worked with Jadaan in Garden of Allah. His likeness can also be seen in the animated Disney classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), as King John served as the model for Prince Charming’s archetypal white steed. The real stallion lived to be twenty-four years old.

  Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great with King John as they appeared in The Scarlet Empress (1934).

  Rudolph Valentino had to have W. K. Kellogg’s Arabian stallion Jadaan as his mount in The Son of the Sheik.

  Z for Zorro

  The character of Diego de la Vega, the Spanish educated Mexican-Californian nobleman who pretended to be a fop to protect his alter ego, the masked avenger Zorro, first appeared in the 1919 novel The Curse of Capistrano, by Johnston McCulley. The cinematic potential of the Hispanic Robin Hood character and his exploits was not lost on silent-film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who snapped up the movie rights for a 1922 silent film, The Mark of Zorro. Thus began a long franchise of the character, who defended his turf against Spanish invaders in two American remakes of The Mark of Zorro (1940 and 1974), thirty-some other features produced both domestically and internationally, several serials, a long-running television series, comic books, and most recently, spectacular films starring Antonio Banderas and some stunning Friesian horses.

  Horse trainer Corky Randall came out of semi-retirement to coordinate the livestock for The Mask of Zorro (1998), starring Antonio Banderas. Three black Friesians and one Mexican Mustang played the part of Zorro’s horse, Tornado. Trainers Gordon Spencer and Bob Lovgren, a protégé of the late Glenn Randall, were assigned to work with the actors and the four Tornados. The main Tornado was a Friesian stallion named Casey, owned by Sled Reynolds, whose company, Gentle Jungle, supplies horses and exotic animals for film. Reynolds taught Casey to rear, but Lovgren worked with the stallion to perfect the near vertical rear that was his mentor’s trademark. The athletic Banderas was able to sit the rearing Friesian after lessons with Gordon Spencer. The star particularly liked the spirited Casey, who did 90 percent of the work as Tornado in the film. His main double, a young Friesian named Duke, went on to become a dressage show horse while Casey remained in “the biz.”

  The star’s leading lady, Catherine Zeta-Jones, as Elena Montero, was a novice equestrienne. Fortunately, her dance background helped her find her horse’s rhythm in daily riding lessons during preproduction. Her mount in the film is a Mexican palomino owned by Chico Hernandez. A former kid’s horse, the palomino had the perfect qualities for a leading lady’s cast horse: beauty and a quiet temperament.

  Stuntmen Casey O’Neill and Tad Griffith doubled Antonio Banderas for the most demanding and dangerous scenes. In the movie’s wildest sequence, Zorro makes a transfer from the galloping Tornado onto the back of a villain’s horse. After disposing of another villain, Zorro straddles the two horses in a fabulous display of Roman riding, which climaxes in a jump over a fallen tree branch. Zorro’s black mask and wardrobe made it easy for Tad Griffith to double the star.

  Born into a family of champion trick riders, Griffith learned the art of Roman riding at an early age. The compatibility of the horses’ gaits and temperaments is of paramount importance in mastering the trick. The other crucial ingredient is trust. As Tad Griffith stated in a 2002 interview about trick riding horses, “They have to almost work with you like a dance partner.” For The Mask of Zorro, he used his own horses, a matched pair of black Morgan/Thoroughbred sisters named Black and Blue. Originally from Montana, the 15.2-hand mares were three and four years old when Tad Griffith acquired them. Having grown up wild in a pasture, they were not even halter broken. He worked them as a team from the beginning. Years of training and many trick-riding exhibitions later, the mares had become the perfect dance partners.

  Like the folkloric tales of the American West, the world’s great stories and legends bear retelling, again and again. Technological advances such as CGI make the many facets of movies safer for horses, but still, Tad Griffith has a point when he said, “What made The Mask Of Zorro is the fact that people know that they’re getting the real thing. This is real men, riding real horses.”

  Corky Randall trained Diamond, the Quarter Horse who portrayed Tornado in the television series Zorro (1957–1959), starring Guy Williams.

  Roman riding stuntman Tad Griffith, doubling Antonio Banderas, leaps over a fallen tree branch and back onto sisters Black and Blue in this spectacular stunt for 1998’s The Mask of Zorro.

  War Horse

  Like Richard III’s doomed mount, horses conscripted to combat have faced death alongside the men who led them into battle. But while human warriors have often been lionized in the arts, with few exceptions their equine counterparts have largely served unheralded. Although horses have been essential to movies like Ben-Hur, Gladiator, and King Arthur, only Comanche, the sole equine survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn, has merited a Hollywood biography: Disney’s Tonka in 1958.

  Steven Spielberg’s 2011 movie War Horse, chronicles a bay horse’s journey from gentle foal to unwitting participant in the brutal conflict that was World War I. While the title character of Joey is fictional, he represents thousands of unsung heroes who, like the winsome bay, were wrested from green pastures to serve on bloody battlefields.

  Uniquely poised to tell a story of war from the equine perspective, director Spielberg was drawn to original author Michael Morpugo’s tale of War Horse by “…both the historical backdrop and emotional depth of this story.” Personally attracted to horses through his wife Kate Capshaw’s devotion to dressage and the ten horses they own, Spielberg felt especially qualified to direct the poignant story of the bond between a horse and the boy who loves him during wartime. Although he admits that he is not a rider, Spielberg has quipped that he certainly knows how to muck a stall. His up-close and personal experience of horses afforded him the insight into the equine spirit that informs War Horse.

  The Great War, ironically known as “the war to end all wars,” was the first conflict to be mechanized on a grand scale. Horses were no match for tanks, aerial bombers, machine guns, flamethrowers, and poisoned gas. Innocents primed by instinct to flee danger were forced to run into the fray unprotected, and they perished in vast numbers. Nearly a million equines, including mules, were lost during the war, and those that survived suffered from shell shock, bullet wounds, and other maladies. They were abandoned by the thousands to starve or wound up in slaughterhouses. It was against this grim tapestry that Michael Morpugo wove the haunting tale of Joey, a farm-raised colt wrenched from his young owner, Albert, and sold to the British cavalry. Too young to enlist, Albert vows to find his horse and bring him home to the English countryside. But before they can be reunited, Joey must endure the horrors of war, including the death of his equine comrade, the impressive black Topthorn.

  As Albert, Jeremy Irvine enjoys riding Joey (Civilon) freely across the countryside before the horrors of war rob them of their innocence.

>   First a children’s novel, War Horse found resounding success as a play at London’s National Theatre, debuting in 2007, before galloping on to win five Tony Awards on Broadway in 2011, and on to a twenty-city American tour. On stage, marvelous life-sized puppets, designed by the amazing Handspring Puppet Company of Cape Town, South Africa, portrayed the horses. It was a fitting coincidence then that a South African native, Bobby Lovgren, was chosen as horse master and head trainer for the film version of War Horse. Having worked as a trainer on The Mask of Zorro, Running Free, Racing Stripes, Seabiscuit and Cowboys and Aliens, Lovgren was no stranger to challenging productions, but working with an undisputed master like Spielberg was at first intimidating. Luckily, Lovgren found Spielberg to be very approachable, and in turn, Spielberg found the trainer’s expertise and dedication to the horses’ safety to be invaluable. “Bobby and his team literally performed miracles with the horses on this film,” says Spielberg.

  However, the production’s relatively short schedule of approximately three months was daunting for the trainer. Arriving in England just a month before shooting began, Lovgren dug in for seven-day work weeks, overseeing a crew of fifteen and the multiple horses it took to portray the lead equine character of Joey, the four European warmbloods required for Topthorn, and the dozens of other horses required for the farm and cavalry scenes.

  “At first it was mind-boggling to even think about,” Lovgren confessed. “The horses had so many different kinds of interactions with so many different kinds of people in war scenarios that would be difficult for any animal, including a human being,” he said. “But we set out to be very conscientious about safety, and our trainers were exceptional at what they did.” The horses, of course, were exceptional too, but none had more to do than the ones who portrayed Joey.