Tale of a Trotter

Tale of a Trotter (1956)

** (out of 4)

Mildly charming short about the life of a harness horse named Spunky. We see Spunky shortly after being born and then we see the various trainings he goes through before finally seeing his first race. TALE OF A TROTTER certainly isn't anything special but I'd imagine children would get a real kick out of it especially if they enjoy watching horses. Adults will probably find some of the material interesting but there's no question that this here is fairly poorly made and especially some of the cinematography. I'm going to guess that this isn't the same horse throughout the film and I'm also going to guess that this here was thrown together using some stock footage in certain spots. I say that because the short genre had pretty much dried up by 1956 and it's pretty obvious that not too much money went into the film. For some reason we have two people doing the narration but both do a nice job.

Here's a sweet little RKO Sportscope that covers the life of a harness racer from birth to through the end of his first race at Yonkers. All mammals are cute at birth, and seeing a newborn colt, all wobbly legs, is almost as cute as a basket filled with kittens..... or, if yu like dogs, puppies. The point is: cute

Like many of RKO's shorts during its waning days, this seems more like an industrial film, meant to be shown in non-theatrcal venues, than one intended for a show of a feature and selected short subjects.