I have so enjoyed that movie - still do, filtering the parts that drive me a little nuts. The role of women in riding and eventing has certainly come a long way since that movie, thank goodness.
But it was great drama. She fell off and still won the Olympic gold medal. I need to watch it again and find out her dressage score …
I was at Ledyard Horse Trials in South Hamilton, Mass. the cross country portion of the 3 day event when they filmed International Velvet. I bought the VHS tape of the movie but couldn’t get into it even though I was there. It was an awful rainy day. I forgot what color rain poncho I was wearing.
Was there for filming
Yeah ! That is how old I am.
I think you can spy me for .10 seconds at some point when they are doing the Wold Championship. In real life it was a wet and cold weekend in november and the take with the ponies with the flags had to be redone many times as the pony with the german flag kept running away with it’s rider as it was affraid of the flag.
I was on my first year as a groom for an international rider. What an experience!
I was greener than gras but I was not affraid of hard work and I learned the business. Experiences that live in me forever. 
My sister offered to help threw mud on Jeffrey Byron’s spotless breeches at Ledyard, but he declined the offer.
[QUOTE=mscapen;8892868]
Yeah ! That is how old I am.
I think you can spy me for .10 seconds at some point when they are doing the Wold Championship. In real life it was a wet and cold weekend in november and the take with the ponies with the flags had to be redone many times as the pony with the german flag kept running away with it’s rider as it was affraid of the flag.
I was on my first year as a groom for an international rider. What an experience!
I was greener than gras but I was not affraid of hard work and I learned the business. Experiences that live in me forever. :D[/QUOTE]
I guess I’m that old too, I’m also a blurred spectator in the background. It was the first big event I’d ever been to, and I’d dragged two fellow riders up from NY to watch. After the relentless rain that weekend, I’m surprised we were all still friends. It was October, I think, but it sure felt like November!
But that weekend, weather and all, was the moment I knew that photographing this crazy sport was what I wanted to do… and here I still am, almost forty (forty???) years later.
I just watched this movie for the first time- and agreed it’s sappy but reading that Tatum was jumping 3’6" within two months of learning how to ride was very impressive- and yes, I teared up too when she ran into the field crying “It’s the foal! It’s the foal!” Great bad movie!
Yes, and it is that - a bad movie, but “guilty pleasure” and all that.
I first saw it at a benefit for (then) USCTA. When she fell on cross-country at the Olympics, and remounted with her “broken arm,” and someone handed her her crop, the ENTIRE AUDIENCE yelled - “You’re eliminated!” Which was the rule at the time.
Of course also:
On a non-error issue, I was sitting with a H/J trainer and his boyfriend at the screening. Their reactions were (a) why is adult Velvet angsting about the kid not immediately returning from the Olympics when she has the then relatively youthful and quite attractive Christopher Plummer as a roomie, and (b) when they walk down the beach, Velvet with the girl and Plummer with his arm across the shoulders of the girl’s new and attractive boyfriend, my co-watchers both exclaimed, “Now that’s more like it!”
Sylvester also a guilty pleasure, and while it has errors, it’s not as bad as International Velvet. Love the little Appy she rides in the beginning.
That is very, very cool, Bearhunter. How nice for you! I can imagine how you must love it.
[B]Back in my eventing days I rode in a bunch of clinics with Kim Walnes, and she had some interesting stories about her stunt work on “Sylvester”.
For example, the crew/director etc would spend a couple of hours setting up a shot while she and Grey stood around waiting. Then they’d point to her and say "Ok, get on and go jump that. "
The Head of the Lake complex.
In cold blood with no warmup.
“Great, and can you do it again and pretend to almost fall off in the water? But don’t really fall off, get back up and jump out.”
Yikes.[/B]
Well, I didn’t bother with the fact that the horse in the book was piebald (I had a copy with marvelous illustrations by Paul Brown - lovely ink drawings), because I figured that ship sailed when the Elizabeth Taylor movie was made and that not that many people remembered the original book.
Ah, movie making, and the lack of understanding of the technical aspects of various things and disregard for their hired consultants. There’s a funny story in Alan Villiers’ book “The Way of a Ship,” where he talks about the “continuity girl” being the bane of his existence. There’s a lot more strange detail, but the end result was he got talked into sailing the ship for the John Huston version of “Moby Dick,” which was filmed in the Irish Sea (not the South Pacific as it should have been). The ship would be drifting towards the shore, and he’d be yelling “set (whatever) sail, etc.” and the continuity girl would be yelling “You can’t do that, it wasn’t like that in the previous scene!” while all the time they are about to shipwreck if he DOESN’T change the sails.
That movie was directly responsible for my ill-fated Olympic dreams as a child. 
…and movies like Danny, Sylvester, and Run Appaloosa Run led to my unrealistic belief that Average Me on my Average Pony would be wildly successful international competitors.
Perhaps because we were missing key plot points (no one ever kidnapped my pony and beat her in silhouette, I was never forced to sell her to save the family farm, and never had to steal her back from a villain and hide her in an abandoned shed, nor was she ever discarded by a spoiled Rich Girl following unexplained lameness only I could nurse back to soundness), my dreams never became a reality and I remain, to this very day, Average.
PS: was International Velvet the one where the Bad Boys chased the heroine and her horse across a field in their car?
For me, the highlight of International Velvet is Anthony Hopkins, who was pretty fabulous and commanding in his role, no matter how silly things became. And the horses. It always perplexes me why Hollywood makes fictional horses so ridiculous, since anyone who spends any time with horses knows that what happens in reality is far crazier than a script writer could dream up, and far more interesting (and moving).
National Velvet is a nice Golden Age of Hollywood production, but I’ve always wished the BBC would adapt the original book in a one or two-part miniseries. The book is a much more interesting and grittier portrait of working class life, but still a lovely story about a girl following her dreams. And Velvet has more horses, so obviously better for that reason alone.
There actually is a tiny bit of reasoning for The Pie being used at stud in Enid Bagnold’s book: p49 of my Scholastic disintegrating paperback:
“…Shilling for a mad piebald gelding. Or is it a stallion, Mr. Croom? Not clean gelded, eh? Thought as much. Mr. Ede done it on the cheap an’ left a chip.” Of course, I doubt the writers of International Velvet even looked into it that much, but I always remember the references to The Pie’s gelding not being clean (it’s mentioned more than once to explain his wildness in the book) when people bring up the issue re: Int’l Velvet.
As Hej said, the color of The Pie in International Velvet doesn’t bother me because the chestnut in the original movie is hardly a color match for The Piebald of the original book. I.e., the color was already wrong, so I can’t get worked up over whether the non-piebald The Pie is chestnut or bay. Just me.
Re: Sylvester, the novelization of the movie (pretty good, written by A.C. Crispin) has the qualifying for the Rolex scenes/competitions, and a big obstacle to qualifying was Sylvester’s balking about water complexes, which was fleshed out more than the few (one?) scenes of him refusing water that were shown in the theatrical release.
None of this is to say either movie is fantastic, but I do love them, and there are far worse, like Lightning or the newer Flicka. Those are so ridiculous as to be unwatchable imo.
It’s been so long since I read the book, that I didn’t remember about the idea The Pi was possibly proud cut, but…how likely to be fertile and at 32, at that?!?I
As for the color, like the several differently marked “Hidalgos,” I totally understand movie makers being wary of differently colored horses, but my comment was more based on the idea that most people (who are not horse obsessed like us) remember the chestnut from the.movie, so the change to black/ bay was a little odd. It’s not like chestnuts with blazes are rare.
Is the book adaptation book re Sylvester young adult, or is it a decent t read for all?
I think that’s Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken
: was International Velvet the one where the Bad Boys chased the heroine and her horse across a field in their car?
Yes. I always fast -forward that part, and tha airplane scene.
I had to fly with a shipment of horses a few years ago — and was totally terrified because of the scene in International Velvet.
Thankfully all my kiddos behaved beautifully 😂
I assume that was probably based on the incident where Mike Plumb’s horse had to be killed after it went crazy on the flight to the Tokyo Olympics - I think, 1964? And the horse sent to replace him was Bold Minstrel, who finished individually 9th and helped them get the silver medal, and later was on other winning Olympic teams as a show jumper, ridden by Bill Steinkraus. Bold Minstrel’s owner, Mr. Haggard, said that he truly believed that had the horse lived long enough he could have won an Olympic medal as a GP dressage horse! ;0)
And the car chasing scene was in International Velvet.
She threw fits in the movie, her spouse threw fits in real life.
The Pie was proud cut (I always assumed from the I.V. movie he was assumed to be monorchid by the vet) and the other dropped later when the coast was clear.
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