I always imagined Alec as being 15-17, not around 10-ish. The description, “teenaged Alec Ramsay, returning from India after visiting his missionary uncle”, reads rather older than Kelly Reno (who was 13 at the time).
8 Likes
Kelly Reno looked like under 10 to me, but I really know nothing about aging kids. I always thought of Alec as about 15-16 too.
3 Likes
Probably just as well they went with Kelly, Peter would have held every scene up combing the horse’s tail and insisting on plaits.
2 Likes
Ditto. I certainly would never have guessed him to be 13.
But plenty of actors manage to pull off incredible age gaps. I don’t remember her name off the top of my head, but I think there’s at least one actress who’s been playing teenagers for about 20 years by now. Bianca Lawson, maybe? It’s pretty crazy.
1 Like
I always had the impression that Alec was in high school. Remember that he had a job at the golf course?
1 Like
Do you mean in the first book or in the movie?
I don’t remember that from either one, but I have not read those books for a really long time.
the book, had Alec as a teenager. Someone said about 13 but I was thinking 15-16ish. The boy in the movie was younger, but boy could he ride!
Yeah. The young boy climbs on the back of this wild horse. Instead of exploding bucking, instead of pitching him in a moonshot right into the ocean, the horse runs in a steady straight line down the edge of the surf … while the boy teaches himself how to stay on.
Horse does the same thing in a match race. First formal race ever in its life. Just keeps going straight along.
I kinda need that horse. Or maybe I did at a much, much earlier point in life.
One thing I did love about that movie is that it showed how crazy horses can be in a pressured, noisy, overwhelming environment. Just before the race, there were some horses acting like horses. Movies don’t usually like to go there but Francis Ford Coppola went there. 
It’s been a LONG time since I read The Black Stallion. Was he supposed to have been untrained? For some reason, since I have definitely watched the movie more recently, I assumed that he was a valuable, saddle-broke, horse. Just high-strung and not treated right when Alec met him.
5 Likes
Now that you say that, I think he was supposed to be valuable, because wasn’t there some plot line in a later book about how the original owner showed up and wanted him back or something?
I feel like I might have to look at my library app and see if I can find the books there. Lol.
1 Like
In the second book, the Arab sheik who bred the stallion shows up and claims him. Alec ends up following them to Arabia and riding in a race there.
4 Likes
That’s right.
And didn’t Alec get the horse back in part because he was the only one who could do anything with him? That’s my vague recollection, anyway.
If my memory serves, in the books the sheikh (ben Ishak) is killed while basically trying to manhandle the Black, after which his daughter Tabari sends Alec a letter to the effect of “come get your damn horse,” but I forget which book this happens in.
In the film version of The Black Stallion Returns, ben Ishak offers the stallion to Alec after they win the race against the other tribes. Alec decides the horse “belongs” in the desert, though, and goes home without him. Kid me liked that movie more than the first one, even though it’s not really faithful to the book at all.
I don’t remember ever seeing a second movie. I might have to look it up and see if it’s available to stream online somewhere.
I know I read every single one of those books, but many, many, many years ago by now.
I’m sure that whatever age I was at the time, it didn’t occur to me at all that it was a terrible idea for the horse to go back to a kid after it had killed the person who owned it.
1 Like
Well you made me look and since it’s free on Tubi and Pluto I think I know what I’m watching tonight. The score is FANTASTIC and the last time I watched it was on VHS at my parents’ house …
To be fair I think Alec got the Black back after Satan was done racing so he would have been at least 20 by then in the books. And with his majikal understanding of the horse what could possibly go wrong? 
3 Likes
Absolutely nothing, I’m sure. Lol.
I don’t remember if it was the last book he wrote in the series, but I think the last one I remember reading was when some random girl showed up at the farm and wanted to work there. And of course, she and Alec fell in love.
I seem to recall that one seemed a little new age-y to me, or whatever the term would have been at that time. Hippie-ish, maybe?
1 Like
I never read that one. I think it was called the Black Stallion and the girl. I read all the books, but it was 60 years ago.
2 Likes
Oh the series definitely jumped the shark in the later books. Walter Farley’s daughter died fairly young and I think he wrote his trauma into it. Alec’s fiancee ends up being killed in a car crash and he goes out west with the Black to lose himself and then something apocalyptic happens and I think the last book ends with Alec trying to call Henry and the line going dead?
There’s also a book where they escape a crazy shaman in the Everglades who is obsessed with the idea of breeding the Black to his ghost mare, then Alec spends a whole book with amnesia after he and the Black survive a plane crash and end up on a QH ranch.
Alec and the Black were like the pre-Tom Hanks of travel-related disasters.
(Now I’m wondering how many times DID I read these books in middle school? And where has my brain been keeping all of these details?)
8 Likes
I think I remember that one.
Didn’t the guy who found him realize he must have horse experience because Alec figured out that he should put the halter on the mule before he took the hobbles off?
Can I remember what I need at the grocery store without checking my list five times before I leave? Rarely, if ever.
But somehow that little nugget just popped into my brain after however many decades. Lol.
4 Likes
Didn’t they end up on another island later on with some chestnut stallion who lived there?
I might have to at least scroll through the descriptions of all these books on Amazon again to refresh my memory.
