Salty O'Rourke

Paramount celebrated Alan Ladd's return from military service by giving him this racetrack story which got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Ladd plays the title character of Salty O'Rourke who is a racetrack character of sorts and a guy who is no better than he ought to be.

In fact he's got himself in a real jackpot with bookie Bruce Cabot. Ladd's former partner ran up a really big debt and skipped out and Ladd is holding the bag. He negotiates a deal with Cabot for a month's extension.

What he comes up with is a complicated scheme to obtain a spirited, but unrideable race horse and then to get a talented jockey who's been banned for gambling. Ladd and trainer William Demarest buy the horse and then go to Mexico to get jockey Stanley Clements who is leading a dissolute life south of the border.

Ladd and Demarest use the name of Stan's younger brother who is still a juvenile. But because of that the law requires he attend the school run at the racetrack. Clements balks at first, in fact he balks at just about everything. But one look at schoolteacher Gail Russell and he changes his mind. In fact Ladd takes an interest as well and therein lies the problem.

In a role where someone like Tyrone Power who specialized in playing hero/heels like Salty O'Rourke could have been the best casting, Alan Ladd does pretty well by the part. Standing out in the film though is Stanley Clements who was playing a character not too different from what he was in real life. Clements was the wild child and later wilder adult if tales are true. Spring Byington is also in the cast playing Russell's vapid and clueless mother.

Director Raoul Walsh got some racetrack atmospherics in the film and no doubt use of nearby Santa Anita or Hollywood Park was made to the limit. Salty O'Rourke proved that Alan Ladd still had box office appeal and was a good film to return from military service with.

When the story begins, you learn that Salty (Alan Ladd) is in a fix. His partner absconded with $20,000 and the man that loaned Salty and his partner wants his money...or he'll make Salty pay one way or another! So, the fast-thinking gambler Salty hatches a plan. He knows of an incredibly fast race horse that is bound to be a big winner...but it's also supposedly unrideable. But Salty knows of a disgraces jockey who would control the beast...and so he buys the horse and plans on giving Johnny (Stanley Clements) a fake birth certificate and having him pose as a much younger jockey without a past! But an unforeseen problem arises when the birth certificate says the 22 year-old jockey is 17....and the racing officials won't let Johnny ride unless he enrolls in school!

The schooling offers some major problems....the biggest of which is Johnny is a larcenous jerk. Keeping him in school is practically full-time work for Salty, as Johnny seems to do his best to do his worst. In addition, Johnny is smitten with his school teacher (Gail Russell) and wants Salty to help him win the girl...no doubt a problem because she thinks he's only 17! But Johnny is a dope and he doesn't seem to understand that no woman would want a lunkhead like him. He's uncouth and tough to love....plus how will he explain the truth to her?! Plus, she seems much more interested in Salty than his hot-headed protege. And what about the $20,000...and the thug who seems more than ready to wrap Salty's legs around his head like a pretzel!?

So is this worth seeing? Yes....though I should point out that the story is pretty hard to believe. It's a 'turn off your brain and enjoy' sort of film....a lot of fun and well acted but very lightweight when it comes to the story and the finale.



By the way, based on performances like Clements had in this film, it's certainly understandable why he would be picked to replace Leo Gorcey in the Bowery Boys films when Gorcey quit the series in the late 1950s. In "Salty O'Rourke" he essentially plays a Leo Gorcey type character...though a much more larcenous one.

Alan Ladd's partner has run out on him, leaving him owing bookie Bruce Cabot $20,000. Cabot gives him a month to pay -- dead men can't pay. Ladd and his trainer, William Demarest, buy a horse no one can ride, and find the jockey who can: Stanley Clements, a barred jockey. They use Clements' brother's birth certificate to get him accredited. However, because he is officially 17, he has to go to school, and the teacher is buttoned-down Gail Russell. Clements is in love with her, but his crude behavior means that Ladd has be polite to her, and she falls in love with him. Convinced that Ladd is cheating him, Clements decides to sell him out to Cabot.

Everyone acts in low-affect hoodlum style, and director Raoul Walsh takes advantage of this for his loud, crude humor -- he liked to quote Jack Pickford that his idea of light humor was to burn down the brothel.

The movie has a constant subtext of the crookedness of the racing world -- gangster bookies, jockeys ready to throw a race - that comes close to overwhelming the drama. Walsh keeps things balanced, and the movie has a constant air of tension, from the beginning, when Ladd thinks he's going to be killed, to the end. Spring Byington as Miss Russell's mother and Demarest work hard to give the movie a mildly comic, yet grounded air.

Alan Ladd never understood his own stardom. He once said "I have the face of an aging choirboy and the build of an undernourished featherweight. If you can figure out my success on the screen you're a better man than I." Yet it was that combination of fading good looks and mildly bewildered determination that sustained his career. It's used very well here.

Salty O'Rourke was a different Alan Ladd performance. Here he was a Steve McQueen type anti-hero , a character I never saw before from Ladd. I have seen him as villains like in This Gun For Hire, and usually he is an action hero but not here. He actually does well with the role. The best one in the movie was Gail Russell ( Barbara Brooks ( or as Ladd called her"Brooksie.")). She is the "Good Girl" here and like in Angel In The Badman, where she reforms John Wayne, she does the same here. Oddly enough like Quirt Evens in Angel and The Badman, Salty's best friend is his gun and he throws it away for her. There is one problem with this movie: Stanley Clements. I could not stand him as Jockey Johnny, he was a punk and acted like a bad version of James Cagney. To be honest this is not the best movie of Ladd's career. Shane, The Glass Key and The Badlanders come to mind. But it is worth watching ( especially for the beautiful Gail Russell). 7/10 stars.

Raoul Walsh's Academy Award-nominated "Salty O'Rourke" looks at the seedy side of horse racing, with the title character (Alan Ladd) having to pay a gangster (Bruce Cabot) $20,000. The title character hires a jockey to ride one of the horses, but when they both fall in love with a teacher (Gail Russell), some unpleasant complications arise.

The movie is a clever mix of film noir and athletics. It's not a combo that most people would imagine, but Walsh pulls it off. It's a shame that the movie isn't more well known. This offers a fine contrast to the average movie depicting horse racing as something nice and wholesome. If there's money to get made, then there's gonna be something ugly happening. It's not a masterpiece, but still a good one.