Stallion Road ** (1947, Ronald Reagan, Alexis Smith, Zachary Scott) – Classic Movie Review 8375

Directors James V Kern and Raoul Walsh (uncredited)’s 1947 black and white love triangle movie Stallion Road is a very mundane and average Forties horse saga, in which a vet (veterinarian) called Larry Hanrahan (Ronald Reagan) battles an attack of anthrax in a herd of cows, while doing battle with a writer named Stephen Purcell (Zachary Scott) for the love affections of a feisty, handsome horse breeder Rory Teller (Alexis Smith).

Rory (Smith) really loves Larry (Reagan), but she dallies with Stephen (Scot)t when Larry (Reagan) is too busy to cure her sick horse.

Stallion Road is a merely adequate romantic drama, with dull performances and synthetic Warner Bros Burbank studio shots ineffectually intercut with pretty location filming in Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, and Hidden Valley, Thousand Oaks, California..

Stephen Longstreet writes his own screenplay from his novel.

Scott replaced Humphrey Bogart a few days before filming started, and Bogart was wise to get out. Rory Teller was intended for Lauren Bacall who turned it down (and was suspended by the studio) and so then did Eleanor Parker.

Also in the cast are Peggy Knudsen, Patti Brady, Harry Davenport, Angela Green, Frank Puglia, Ralph Byrd, Lloyd Corrigan, Fernando Alvarado, Matthew Boulton, Mary Gordon, Nina Campana, Dewey Robinson, Paul Panzer, Bobby Valentine, Ralph Littlefield, Tom Wilson, Oscar O’Shea, Monte Blue, Douglas Kennedy and Creighton Hale.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8375

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