Gypsy Colt (1954)

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

For child star Donna Corcoran, it must have been nice and light and fluffy making this one, after doing "Don't Bother to Knock" with MM. That was SO dark and weird. In this one, family finances are making it impossible to keep her horse, so they will need to sell the horse to someone with a short-tempered trainer . Usually it's the child stars that are so precocious, but in this case, it's the (trained) horse that is the precocious one. Co-stars Ward Bond as "Dad". He was known for so many westerns over the years. This one is more for the kids. Everyone does a fine job, but it's pretty serious drama. Only 162 votes on imdb so far, so TCM must not show it very often. meh. It's ok. Directed by Andrew Marton, who had come from come over from Europe several times.

It seems almost required to mention that Gypsy Colt is not even a disguised remake of Lassie Come Home so I won't break tradition. Being that this is America with a lot more wide open spaces the horse Gypsy has a bigger journey to travel to get back to his little mistress young Donna Corcoran.Nothing original about this family picture. Donna has a thoroughbred colt and it's the most valuable asset on her dad's farm. Her parents are Ward Bond and Frances Dee. Economic necessity forces them to sell Gypsy to horse racing owner Larry Keating. But you can't separate a child and her horse any more than with a dog. You can take it from there you've seen it all before.Perennial western heavy Lee Van Cleef is the bad guy once again, a cruel trainer who does get his and the audience cheers accordingly.Gypsy Colt is a nice family film, one of the last MGM B film products, probably made as an afterthought at Leo the Lion's studio.

Yes, I thought I had seen this plot before. But it is minus the excessive sentiment of the first film. Here, little Donna Corcoran (a cute young actress with a very natural presence) is the proud pal of Gypsy, a horse that takes her to school (dropping her off right at the window), picks her up right at 3:00 (often to the amusement of the children as he greets the teacher with a kiss), and makes sure she gets safely home. He's also a bit of a prankster, taking her quilt in the wee hours of the morning, only because he's in the mood to play. They can't function without each other, and when her poor farmer father (Ward Bond) must sell him to racing horse owner Larry Keating, Ms. Corcoran is beside herself. But the rather cruel trainer Lee Van Cleef, who seems more interested in breaking Gypsy's spirit rather than training him, isn't good to Gypsy, who keeps running away. Finally, Gypsy escapes from a racetrack 500 miles away from where Bond and wife Frances Dee live, and must try and make his way back to the grieving little girl.This is truly an enjoyable film that while a re-tread of the famous "Lassie" film is entirely entertaining, sweet natured and very funny. There are moments when it appears Gypsy may not make it; There is a $1000 reward for his return, briefly attracting a "Wild Ones" group of bikers who chase him into the canyon desert where he collapses in exhaustion and finally the Mexicans who try to get their friend drunk to go down in the price from $80 to $35, not realizing that the little Mexican boy who discovered Gypsy in the first place has no intention of letting them get their hands on him. Then there is Van Cleef, long before his series of Spaghetti Westerns, and playing a character so mean spirited you can't wait until the payoff where Gypsy gets his revenge.The scene stealer's of this film are Corcoran, Bobby Dominguez as the sweet little Mexican boy and the titled Gypsy as himself, a horse so kind-hearted that you might be tempted to go out and buy a colt yourself. At just over 70 minutes, the film speeds along, and is filmed in beautiful color to show off Gypsy's beautiful coat and the lovely scenery. Corcoran, who stole scenes from Donald O'Connor in "I Love Melvin" and Esther Williams in "Dangerous When Wet", is an adorable, non-precocious child, and certainly not as weepy as some of the child stars who proceeded her.

I thought the horse looked awful familiar! I was also a "Fury" freak as a kid. "Beaut" was a gorgeous horse. He seemed to fill out quite a bit by the time he was in "Fury." Beaut was one of the talented animal actors I can recall. In some ways, his range was quite similar to the Lassies who have been with us over the years. The one scene were he was "obvious" was in the desert as he staggered along and finally dropped. A bit of the ham, there!! The theme of the youngster being able to relate to a horse in a special way was reinforced by the interaction between the young boy who found Gypsy in the desert. Like the young girl, the boy also felt that Gypsy shouldn't be sold to adults who didn't value him, which lead him to set Gypsy free. Seeing the young Cocoran was interesting. I recall seeing her as a teenager in some films. Her brother Kevin played in quite a few Disney films, as I recall.