User Reviews

I suppose the person to blame for this concoction is Crane Wilbur, the screen writer (or possibly "hack" could be the better word) who wrote the script. Sybil Jason is an impossibly sweet young lady who is the daughter of a horse farm owner who has groomed a potentially champion horse that reacts well to the little girl. The mother of the girl is dead, so the girl has only her father, and (in one of those ironic twists loved by hacks) he is killed in an auto accident at the moment of the horse's first good showing at the track. The girl is brought up by the people who run the track, and the horse is now being readied for a large purse. It runs well when the little girl is there, but if she is absent the horse is sluggish. One of the less likable characters bets heavily against the horse, and then contacts the 1937 version of child welfare to make sure the girl is pulled away from the track before the big race. Got the picture of the plot now?

The film is in color, and it benefits from the appearances of various Warner Brothers stars as themselves. Interestingly three "biggies" (Eddie Robinson, Bette Davis - advertised as an "Academy Award" winner, and Olivia de Haviland) are shown but have no dialog. A fourth "biggy" (Al Jolson, with his then wife Ruby Keeler) does have a bit of dialog about his betting habits, and how they get no where). It is only the funny trio of Allan Jenkins, Frank McHugh, and Hugh Herbert who actually have some kind of running dialog in the script.

Ms Jason was an adorable young kid actress, and her singing voice was okay. Apparently her career did not flourish as it should - as many of her scenes in her last films was cut (she appeared opposite Shirley Temple in both THE LITTLE PRINCESS and THE BLUEBIRD). It's unfortunate, for she did have talent. For her and for the Warner stars in this I'll grade it a "6". The script should have been better.

A Day At Santa Anita was a way for Warner Brothers to briefly highlight some of its stars while trotting out an overly familiar story of a little girl's special connection with a race horse called "Wonder Boy". Child star Sybil Jason showcases her talent of acting and singing and being generally a poor man's Shirley Temple, as some of her scenes are a bit cutesy if not over-the-top, just like Temple was at times. In an avalanche of clichés, she's motherless when the film opens, fatherless as the film wears on, and back to having a mother by the fade out. Gee, what an ending and winning a horse race too! Along the way Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, and Olivia de Havilland make brief, non-speaking appearances along with several other lesser Warner's stars. It does look like these appearances were filmed in studio settings, not on location, because the lighting makes it appear so. The brief scene of Jason riding "Wonder Boy" is obviously done with rear screen projection. Fred "Snowflake" Toones provides comic relief as many black character actors did in those days. The jokes with Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and Frank McHugh are typical 1930's corny bits, but the film is in beautiful Technicolor and is a fine remembrance of the era.

Because of Al Jolson's appearance in this, this color short is in The Jazz Singer DVD set. He and his then-wife Ruby Keeler have some dialogue in the spectator scenes which have cameos of other stars in wordless scenes like those of Bette Davis and Edward G. Robinson among others. Sybil Jason is the real star as the little girl who ends up as the owner of the horse Wonder Boy after her father dies getting hit by a car. Despite that, this was meant to be a breezy short with Ms. Jason singing a song in the middle of it before the big race involving her horse and the celeb spectators I mentioned earlier. Overall, this wasn't a bad way to fill some time even though I thought A Day at Santa Anita was adequate at best...

. . . plague A DAY AT SANTA ANITA. About a minute after indebted horse owner "Tom Blackburn" tells his young daughter "Peaches," 7, that they'll be together "forever," Tom walks in front of a truck, and two shakes later he's telling Peaches that he's on his "homestretch." Somehow, Peaches inherits the prize thoroughbred "Wonderboy," even though it's the clear favorite in a $100,000 stakes race. (A hundred grand was quite a haul of Do Re Mi in 1937, when this live action short debuted.) Then unscrupulous racetrack weasel "Buzz Crayton" gets the bright idea of ratting out Peaches to social services, since he knows that Wonderboy's success depends upon Peaches being physically present at his practice runs and races. Therefore, a bribed government flunky (ironically named "Bogard," to echo Warner Bros.' #1 star) barges in upon Peaches as she's auditioning to become the next Shirley Temple in front of 50,000 Hollywood stars, such as Al Jolson and Bette Davis. Bogard begins carting Peaches toward some orphanage that doesn't even have tap dance classes. What with all these Tinsel Town A-Listers performing extended cameos here, along with the plethora of character actors playing out wildly digressing story lines, do you really think that there's any chance that A DAY AT SANTA ANITA will NOT have the proverbial "Hollywood ending"?

"--your daddy's on the homestretch." So says Tom Blackburn near the beginning of this 1937 short lasting just under 18 minutes to his young daughter Peaches (whom National Velvet should have had for her little sister) from his deathbed, after being run over by a truck near a horse track. Peaches inherits a thoroughbred which apparently shares a psychic connection with her, and will run like Secretariat if only Peaches is within shouting distance (which in this case seems to be several furlongs). The entire short is pretty much as hokey as my summary quote proves it to be, since Peaches' thoroughbred Wonderboy (wasn't that the name of Robert Redford's bat in THE NATURAL?) plods like a plow horse when the mean guy from child services drives off with the orphan. Unfortunately, director Bobby Connolly gives child actress Sybil Jason ample time to prove she's no Shirley Temple, with a cringe-worthy singing effort as Peaches. The happy ending is totally unearned, but hey, it's just a movie.