- published: 28 Nov 2014
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Seabiscuit is a 2003 American biographical sports drama film based on the best-selling non-fiction book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand. The film is loosely based on the life and racing career of Seabiscuit, an undersized and overlooked thoroughbred race horse, whose unexpected successes made him a hugely popular media sensation in the United States near the end of the Great Depression.
Three men, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), Charles S. Howard (Jeff Bridges), and Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) come together as the principal jockey, owner, and trainer of the championship horse Seabiscuit, rising from troubled times to achieve fame and success through their association with the horse.
Red is the child of a wealthy family that is financially ruined by the Great Depression. In desperate need of money, the family leaves Red with a horse trainer. Red eventually becomes a jockey, but makes extra money through illegal boxing matches which leave him almost blind in one eye. Howard is a clerk in a bicycle shop who gets asked by a passing motorist to repair his automobile, a technology which has recently been introduced. As a result Howard becomes knowledgeable enough with automobiles to increase their performance and sell them as a dealer, eventually becoming the largest car dealer in California and one of the Bay Area's richest men. However, his son is killed in an automobile accident while driving the family car, which sends Howard into a bout of deep depression, which eventually results in his wife (Valerie Mahaffey) leaving him.
Actors: Donald Meek (actor), George Magrill (actor), Ralph Brooks (actor), Milton Berle (actor), Walter Brennan (actor), Donald MacBride (actor), Pat Flaherty (actor), William Haade (actor), Paul Harvey (actor), John Hiestand (actor), Robert Homans (actor), Sayre Dearing (actor), Charles Ferguson (actor), Sheldon Leonard (actor), George Murphy (actor),
Plot: Stupid football player is kidnapped by gangsters. Lunatics abound: former footballer now dancer, professor interested in magic, gangster who makes horse noises when excited.
Keywords: 1940s, archive-footage, big-game, campus, cigarette-smoking, civil-war, co-ed, coach, college, college-campusActors: Treg Brown (editor), Mel Blanc (actor), Leon Schlesinger (producer), Ben Hardaway (director), Mel Blanc (actor), Carl W. Stalling (composer), Melvin Millar (writer), Cal Dalton (director),
Plot: A man stops for gas on his way to dig for gold. The man at the station tells him what it was like back in 1849 in San Francisco, which we see. A sucker is hauled off the street and sat down at a card game; he dashes off as soon as someone shouts "they found gold in the hills" but others stake claims before he can. He ends up chopping off a cliff, falling down, and landing in the hospital. The doctor gives him news of another gold strike and he rushes out to begin panning. After some more mining gags and a song, we see a montage of more failed gold strikes. Back to the present day, where the storyteller claims to have sworn off gold, until a rider passes through with news of another strike, when he trades the station for the car and sets out after the gold.
Keywords: bar, card-game, gold-prospector, gold-rush, hospital, merrie-melodies, surrealism