The Horse with the Human Mind

Here's a short subject that introduces us to Bess who, we are informed has a lot of personality.

She's a trouble maker all right, but the purpose of this movie is not simply to entertain the audience. It's to show us the star of MGM's release of the year, GALLANT BESS. We get to look at the MGM menagerie, where this horse is kept, along with Lassie, a couple of elephants, Leo the Lion -- Leo's in a cage -- and what looks to be a random gorilla for the Tarzan movies.

Bess is a handsome horse, with a lot of cute tricks.

Horse with the Human Mind, The (1946)

*** (out of 4)

This is a pretty fun MGM short where they show off their horse Bess who is suppose to be the smartest horse in the business. We see her work out with her trainer Joe Adkinson and I think anyone is going to be impressed with her. We see the two do countless tricks together but in the scenes where she plays dead and "falls down" you can't help but feel floored by her. I've seen quite a few documentaries in my day but I never really stopped to think about the actual horses in these movies I watch. Seeing Bess in action certainly opened my eyes and I'll have to admit that this documentary made me want to check out some of the films she was in. There's another funny bit where Bess is walking though a MGM zoo where she teases Leo the Lion and Lassie. This is certainly nothing ground breaking but I'm sure most will find themselves entertained.

I just watched the last half of this short film on turner classic movies. Amazing - best horse and trainer bit I've seen, although cutting in the film may have made the horse out to be smarter than it actually is. The horse seems to follow any command the trainer gives her with almost no cues other than his voice. I saw the horse calmly stand on a small platform 4x4 feet or so on command, then neigh, rear up get angry and snap on command. Then it laid down on the ground on command, acted wounded and sick and then on command it would try to get up and fall back down. At the end, she let herself back into her stall on her own - lifting the latch herself. Definitely at the very least a very well-trained horse. The end voice-over claimed she understood upwards of 400 commands.

This is an amusing short subject showing off the zoo that MGM had on its lot. You may wonder why elephants were there. It wasn't that long ago that MGM was doing the Tarzan series and I'm sure a few jungle animals were needed. Probably Cheta went along to RKO along with Johnny Weissmuller. Lassie was there though with a star on the dog house.

But the main subject was a horse named Bessie who had a bag full of tricks taught here by trainer Joe Adkisson. Adkisson put her through her paces and she got horse and human laughs.

Even MGM's fabled Leo the Lion got in an extra roar or two. Nothing beats a good animal act.