Word: homestretch
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...football game a certain pleasure may be derived from calling the plays beforehand, but in "The Homestretch," which happens to be about horse-racing, the average spectator will soon tire of matching wits with a plodding script-writer. Maureen O'Hara and Cornel Wilde join and separate as mechanically as two participants in a Virginia reel, with the much-abused backdrop of horse races and a stately Marlyland homestead. But there is nothing positively unpleasant about the picture: blushing technicolor is made the most of, especially in the newsreel shots of the English coronation, and the photography of the races...
...Homestretch (20th Century-Fox) canters in Technicolor through the not particularly fascinating vicissitudes of a raffish racing man (Cornel Wilde), his Back Bay bride (Maureen O'Hara) and his somewhat Bohemian girl friend (Helen Walker). Miss O'Hara wants Wilde to settle down and stop living out of Miss Walker's pocket; she also tends to misunderstand the free-&-easy way these old friends kiss each other...
Meanwhile, three horses, one for each principal, do a lot of running, over a plethora of courses in England, South America and the U.S. They are nobly beautiful animals and interesting to watch. But for all their running, they cannot parlay Homestretch into anything better than just another race-track picture...
...Homestretch. Lyter Donaldson, the likely primary victor, will have tougher going in November. His competition will be grey-haired Republican Simeon S. Willis, 63, a corporation lawyer and former judge. Republicans are hopeful that Kentucky is going G.O.P., that Willis will become the State's first Republican Governor since 1931. They are planning now to thrash Alben Barkley, the Senate's Majority Leader, next year. Even friends agree that White House Wheelhorse Barkley has jeopardized his narrow hold in Keutucky by blindly supporting unpopular administration proposals: the lid on farm prices, the fight against antistrike legislation...
Both literature and life (in which Upton Sinclair is more warmly interested) are crueler and more disenchanted than he knows. The time may come when Upton Sinclair's novel and history will foam down the homestretch neck & neck. Meanwhile, charging along a few lengths behind history (this volume ends in 1937), calling the fouls in a loud, clear voice, and always polite to his horse, Upton Sinclair is one of his century's most gallant losers...