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Screen play
S C R E E N P L A Y
The golden age of cinema was also a heyday for polo in flm, says Nigel à Brassard
Many readers will have vivid memories of Julia Roberts, elegantly dressed in her brown silk polka-dot sun dress, treading in the divots with Richard Gere at the polo match in the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman. Some may also remember the polo action scenes in The Great Gatsby of 1974, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Not to mention the polo sequences of Steve McQueen in the 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair, in which he starred alongside Faye Dunaway, where the elaborate split-screen device maximises the visual impact and excitement of a match.
Of course, there is also that scene in the 1968 flm Carry On up the Khyber, in which Sir Sidney and Lady Ruff-Diamond (Sid James and Joan Sims) watch a polo match. At one point Sir Sidney shouts, ‘Well played, Philip! ’ and then, as an aside, ‘He’ll go far, that boy, if he makes the right marriage.’ Lady RuffDiamond – channelling the spirit of Eliza Doolittle at Ascot in My Fair Lady – exclaims in a mock posh accent, ‘Oh, I say! He did not ’alf crack that one, did he not? ’
But these feeting appearances of the sport pale into insignifcance when you consider its substantial presence in the movies during the golden age of cinema in the 1920s and 30s.
Clockwise from above Stills and publicity material from 1925’s A Thief in Paradise, of which only the trailer now remains. The polo match, between blondes and brunettes, is the highlight of a lavish wedding
A special match is put on between two t eams of women playing in swimsuits
in swimsuits without helmets is put on as part of the extravagant entertainment. During the wedding day, the jealous Carmino tells Helen she is Blake’s mistress. Blake, haunted by his conscience, confesses his deception to his new wife and ‘father’, then attempts to kill himself. Helen and Jardine Senior forgive Blake and, in true Hollywood style, the two newlyweds live happily ever after.
The gratuitous opulence is typical of the movies of the early 1920s, but after the Wall Street Crash in 1929, audiences no longer had patience for the antics of such characters.
A THIEF IN PARADISE
PRO D U C T I O N : G EO RG E FI T Z M AU RI CE , SA M U E L GO L DW Y N CO. R E L E AS E DAT E : 1925
The spectacular, if unlikely, round of chukkas in the 1925 silent flm A Thief in Paradise, starring Ronald Colman and Doris Kenyon, caused quite a stir at the time. Now offcially considered a lost movie, with only its trailer still in existence, it is loosely based on the novel The Worldlings by Leonard Merrick – a rags-to-riches tale of identity fraud.
Maurice Blake (Colman) and Philip Jardine (Claude Gillingwater) are beachcombers on a remote island. One day, on a dive, the two men fght over a precious pearl and Jardine is killed by a shark. His calculating lover, Rosa Carmino, has a letter from his wealthy father urging his son to return to San Francisco. Since the elder Jardine has never seen his son, Carmino convinces Blake to go and pretend to be Philip.
Blake is warmly welcomed into the Jardine household and soon falls in love with Helen Saville (Kenyon), the daughter of a neighbour. The couple marry in a lavish ceremony at which a special polo match between two teams of women – blondes versus brunettes – playing
THIS SPORTING AGE
PRO D U C T I O N : CO LU M B I A PI C T U R E S R E L E AS E DAT E : 1932
In 1932, polo took the spotlight again with This Sporting Age (subsequently retitled The Stronger Love), a flm starring Jack Holt and based on a story by JK McGuiness. This was Holt’s second appearance as a polo player on the silver screen. Four years earlier, he had played a US team captain battling for the Westchester Cup against Great Britain in This Smart Set (1928) – a silent comedy about an arrogant, aristocratic polo player, played by William Haines.
In This Sporting Age, John Steele (Holt) is the regional polo champion at a Western army post. Rising star Johnny Raeburn (Hardie Albright), on a visit from the fashionable Seabrook Polo Club of Long Island, persuades Steele to join the US team for a forthcoming match. During his visit, Raeburn begins a romance with Steele’s daughter Mickey (Evalyn Knapp), and they are soon engaged to be married.
Steele accepts the invitation and, on their arrival in Long Island, Raeburn takes father and daughter to a reception for the visiting international team but leaves without saying where he is going. Assuming the worst, Mickey drowns her sorrows, and falls prey to the seductive charms of visiting player Charles Morrell (Walter Byron). After the episode, Mickey is mortifed and, believing herself worthless, tries to kill herself. When Steele fnds out, he is determined to avenge his daughter, playing ferociously in the match, especially against Morrell. Eventually, his fatherly instincts prevail over his common sense and Morrell is killed when Steele aggressively rides him off. The dejected Steeles return home after Mickey has told Raeburn that she cannot marry him. The flm ends with Steele facing trial for manslaughter and Raeburn arriving and fnally convincing Mickey to marry him.
Right Joe E Brown, one of the most popular American actors of the 1930s and 40s and perhaps best remembered for his role as the ageing millionaire Osgood Fielding III in Some Like It Hot, performed all his own stunts in the slapstick comedy Polo Joe, which nevertheless failed to win over the flm’s critics
POLO JOE
PRO D U C T I O N : WA R N E R B ROT H E RS . R E L E AS E DAT E : 1936
It wasn’t long before a comic actor got hold of the subject and let rip on the feld. Polo Joe was a comedy starring the popular Joe E Brown as ‘Polo’ Joe Bolton. A review by Hal Erickson at Allmovie.com concluded that ‘the plot and comedy of the flm can be summed up easily. The hapless Joe is allergic to and terrifed of horses, but joins a polo club to impress his sweetheart Mary Hilton (Carol Hughes).’
Joe is helped in his endeavours by Haywood (Richard Gallagher), the Hiltons’ sympathetic butler. But Joe’s scheme backfres when Mary’s polo-playing brother is injured and Joe has to put his feet in the stirrups to prove himself. Haywood gives something to Joe to help his allergies and straps him on to his saddle with an elastic belt. Joe miraculously manages to score a few goals before the belt snaps and he goes fying. The flm ends with Mary declaring her intention to marry him anyway – after all, he is the hero of the game.
Upon its release in 1936, it was lambasted by critics as the worst ever Joe E Brown movie. Subsequent literature noted that Brown does all
his own stunts, which is ‘more impressive than amusing’. The New York Times called the flm ‘an unenterprising slapstick’ and ‘a faintly pathetic farewell gesture to the Warners’.
None of these flms – which have recurring themes of equestrian ineptitude or phobia, drunken misbehaviour and suicide attempts – appears to have troubled the judging panels for the Oscars. But it is perhaps signifcant that Walt Disney chose an animated version of Jack Holt (star of This Sporting Age and The Smart Set) as the umpire in his hilarious 1936 cartoon Mickey’s Polo Team.
Perhaps the reason polo has featured in so many flms is due to its associations with money and glamour – after all, it is known as the sport of royalty and playboys. It is interesting that in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, director John McTiernan replaced the polo scene, which had been in the original movie and script, with catamaran racing. McTiernan thought a polo match to be too much of a cliché, and wanted to convey a different kind of action and excitement that wasn’t so closely associated with wealth.
