A Day at Santa Anita

Day at Santa Anita, A (1937)

* (out of 4)

A race horse only responds to a small child (Sybil Jason) who recently lost her father. Al Jolson, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Olivia de Havilland make cameos in this short and that the only reason to catch this. I really wanted to poke my eyes out while watching this because it's so damn annoying. I understand they were going for a cute movies about a little girl fighting back to win it all but this child star was so damn annoying that I didn't care what happened to her.

You can view this on disc 3 of Warner's The Jazz Singer set.

A little girl and a racehorse. That's all you need to know, so it should come as no surprise this -minute-short is very predictable. Along the way it is filled with the familiar characters: a young girl who can relate to a horse as no one else can; a kindhearted father who is killed in an auto accident at the track, leaving her the owner of the horse "Wonder Boy." There are other good people on her side and a greedy couple who are out to sabotage the Peach's horse so their nag can win the big prize. The big prize is first-place earnings in the $100,000 race at Santa Anita. Back in the 1930s, the era of "Seabiscuit," the "hundred grander," as they called it, was always the big race of the Santa Anita season.

Sybil Jason as "Peaches," yes even the names are corny, gives it her all in a Shirley Temple- like performance. She even sings a song. The South African-born little actress did play in a couple of Shirley's films in the following two years but then called it a career in 1940

A shock came halfway through this when we saw celebrities enter their box seats at the track and most of them actually delivered lines. This wasn't stock footage. First there was the couple of Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler, then Olivia de Havilland with Edward G. Robinson, followed by Frank McHugh, Bette Davis, Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins and others.

This short feature can be seen as on the DVD, "Each Dawn I Die," a film that starred James Cagney and George Raft.

SYBIL JASON is the girl whose father dies and leaves her the owner of "Wonder Horse". The rest of the short film has Sybil in full Shirley Temple mode--laughing, crying, singing--but all to no avail. Let's just say it's best to remember her in the two Technicolor films she made with Shirley Temple in the late thirties.

As for the all-star cast, you get a fleeting glimpse of EDWARD G. ROBINSON and OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, a bit of humor from FRANK McHUGH and HUGH HERBERT, some attempts at humor from AL JOLSON and RUBY KEELER, and an altogether sappy racetrack story that has been done in better films a hundred times over. Every cliché imaginable has been trotted out in the space of 18 minutes.

Summing up: No kudos for this one.

This is just a short film about a cute little Shirley Temple doppelgänger who has a unique bond with her racehorse. Of course there is a greedy bad guy who stoops low enough to seperate little Peaches Blackburn (Sybil Jason) from her racehorse who is the early favorite to win the $100,000 Santa Anita Stakes race.

Peaches is told the race track is no place for a little girl like her and so she is whisked away by a civil servant under family services until her caregiver comes up with her own plan to reunite Peaches with her racehorse just in time to save the day.

It is short and sweet film that I can watch and enjoy a few more times for its sheer innocence and my love for the racetrack. There are also more than a dozen cameos by film stars of the 1930's which also make this light fair worth seeing.

I give it an 8 out of 10 rating