My Brother Talks to Horses

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day....

My Brother Talks to Horses (Fred Zinnemann, 1947) Oh now, THIS is a curiosity...Ten years after he'd immigrated to the U.S. from Austria and started making short films at M-G-M, five years after graduating to B-features and three years after his first hit for the studio, The Seventh Cross (starring Spencer Tracy), director Fred Zinnemann—who would go on to make High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons, The Nun's Story, The Day of the Jackal and other great films—made this odd one, his second film in a row to feature child-actor Jackie "Butch" Jenkins.

Jenkins had been a hit with audiences in roles in The Human Comedy and National Velvet, where he was a spunky little performer, far afield from the "perfect-looking" child stars that M-G-M usually trotted out in kid roles. Young Jenkins had lazy wide-set-apart eyes and splayed teeth and perpetually looked like that "phase" your parents hope you grow out of. But, he was just popular enough to graduate from playing Mickey Rooney's little brother to...Peter Lawford's little brother...? Well, at least he gets top billing.

Young Master Jenkins plays Lewie Penrose, an odd little boy from an odd little family just this side of Thornton Wilder, living in the Baltimore of 1909. Ma Penrose (Spring Byington) insists that her dinner guests practice yoga before saying pre-meal grace. Ma's boarder, Mr. Puddy (an inventor) is proud to offer the diners his latest invention for refreshment—beer...in an edible bottle. Ma's other son John (Lawford) is an inventor, as well, and he's courting Martha Sterling (Beverly Tyler) but his prospects are meager if his affections are ardent.

Lewie talks to horses, all kinds of them. His best equine friend is The Bart, a racehorse owned by Mr. Bledsoe (Edward Arnold), with whom he regularly converses on his way to school. The Bart's trainer, Mr. Mordechai (Ernest Whitman) confirms this. Complications ensue, especially when Mr. Bledsoe takes Lewie and John to the races, and after having a confab with the horses, confidently tells the party who's going to race...and that horse then does. Word gets around and pretty soon everybody, including some pretty shifty gamblers, see Lewie as a way to get rich quick. That's a lot of pressure to put on a kid.

It's lightweight stuff, and what the filmmakers do with it takes on some dark tones, especially when the gamblers start to rough little Lewie up. I'm not sure that a little darkness in a kid's movie is a bad thing, but if I were a gifted child and saw the complications that this movie described, I might want to act a little less gifted. Adults are creeps!

On the other hand, it is not too surprising to see Zimmermann's touch on this—especially once one has seen it. For a low-budget kid's movie, it looks very good and revels in its period details—so many straw hats and fascinators! It's not that much a leap to see how Zinnemann would leap into one of the great movie craftsmen, able to pick and choose his assignments—I mean, if he can make My Brother Talks to Horses look good...—and his next movie—also a kind of kid's movie—would provide the good transition from making entertainment for kids to entertainment for adults, without insulting the intelligence on anybody. Not even the horses.