Word: capra
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Riding High. Frank Capra's shrewdly effective comedy about horse racing, with Bing Crosby and a full stable of able character actors (TIME...
Riding High. Frank Capra's shrewdly effective comedy about horse racing; with Bing Crosby (TIME...
Riding High. Bing Crosby and a full stable of character actors, in Frank Capra's craftily contrived comedy about a race horse (TIME...
...most part, Capra clings so faithfully to Broadway Bill that in one sequence he appears to have lifted scenes bodily out of the old picture without bothering to reshoot them. Among the performers playing a return engagement: Raymond Walburn as a gentlemanly tout, Clarence Muse as a trainer, Douglas Dumbrille as a big-time gambler, Frankie Darro as a crooked jockey. As extra dividends, Capra has plumped out the cast with some new players who are a match for them, especially William Demarest, who plays Walburn's sidekick, Charles Bickford as a dyspeptic millionaire, Percy Kilbride as a hayseed...
...material is unabashedly artificial and sentimental, Riding High is still probably the most shrewdly effective show ever put together about horse racing. It is a smooth combination of comedy and pathos, romance and excitement, plus some pleasant Crosby crooning (notably, Let's Bake a Sunshine Cake). Like all Capra pictures, it is also calculated to delight the largest possible audience by taking potshots at the greedy and the pompous, while letting the meek inherit the earth...