This article first appeared in the September 2021 digital edition of Equestrian Life. To see what’s in the current issue, click here. 

The Black Stallion film.

© United Archives GmbH _ Alamy Stock Photo

The magic of The Black Stallion

By Suzy Jarratt

Quarter horses and unusual French Camargue swimming ponies were needed to act as doubles for the lead equine in ‘The Black Stallion’, but the Arabian stallion Cass-Olé made sure he stole the show with his star quality.

Based on Walter Farley’s 1941 novel, The Black Stallion depicts the story of two shipwreck survivors, an American boy (Alec Ramsey) and the Arabian stallion (‘The Black’), who saves his life. It was produced in 1979 by American Zoetrope and directed by Carroll Ballard, and made $40 million at the box office.

Leading film critic Pauline Kael said it was “maybe the greatest children’s movie ever made”. It appealed to adults as well as to young audiences and was selected for the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant.

The boy was played by 11-year-old Kelly Reno, a rancher’s son from Boulder, Colorado. He had never acted before but he could ride and did all his own action scenes in the movie, except for when he had to gallop a thoroughbred. “I was too small to hold him back,” he recalls. He learnt to ride bareback, do high-speed horse falls and swim…

Read the full article in the September 2021 issue of Equestrian Life magazine here.