In the second of his series celebrating his passion for the cinema, our new movie correspondent shares his love for a 1970s classic starring inveterate gambler Walter Matthau
Jay Hovdey is known for writing about horses – but he also fancies himself a movie critic. In fact, he can bore a listener to tears with opinions about the cinema, as he calls it, and his never-ending list of personal film favorites (do not get him started on Sam Peckinpah, or Barbara Stanwyck).
In an effort to channel his impulses, Thoroughbred Racing Commentary is offering Hovdey a chance to recall his favorite horse racing movies, with the promise he will provide added value from someone who had something to do with the subject at hand.
Casey’s Shadow (1978)
directed by Martin Ritt; starring Walter Matthau
If Casey’s Shadow is the first movie about horse racing someone watches, it might as well be the last, because every box is checked.
There is no getting beyond all the elements crammed into its running time. The kids are age-appropriately charming. Their dad the trainer is cranky but lovable. The horse is perfection on the hoof, the supporting characters are all variations on venality, and the ending offers just the right mix of the bitter and the sweet.
Casey’s Shadow made its debut in 1978. That same year moviegoers were treated to such light-hearted post-Vietnam entertainments as The Deer Hunter and Coming Home. For my money, the best flick released that year was The Last Waltz, when we said goodbye to The Band in a documentary awash with the greatest rock acts of the era.
Among cast and crew, the pedigree of Casey’s Shadow is populated by racing enthusiasts possessed of solid-gold movie credentials. The director, Martin Ritt, did Hud and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and owned stakes winners trained by Bobby Frankel.
The producer, Ray Stark, was responsible for Funny Girl and The Way We Were when he wasn’t breeding and racing major stakes winners. The writer, Carol Sobieski, was honored often for her work in television and was a Texan with deep roots in the equine world.
As for Walter Matthau, the Oscar-winning star, his death in 2000 was a blow not only to movie lovers but also to the pari-mutuel handle of racetracks far and wide. Legend has it that Matthau would demand $3 million to make a movie, destined to be divided equally among his own lifestyle, the taxman, and the betting windows. Matthau and Ritt were seen frequently at Hollywood Park, deep into the action.
Casey’s Shadow can be found on the short list of favorite racing movies for the majority of racing fans, even though Casey’s Shadow is a Quarter Horse, and the sport is not for everyone.
The variables are few – either you break or you don’t – but the demands of Quarter Horse care translate to any racing breed. And the business of owning, training, and racing horses never changes.
To its great credit, Casey’s Shadow gets into the details like few feature films – in the dialogue, the dynamics, and the actual handling of the horses. We’ve seen actors juggle, play piano, and work heavy machinery with aplomb. But the sight of Matthau squatting in a stall and putting a cold water bandage on a front leg with the same facility as Richard Mandella or Allen Jerkens is worth the price of admission.
With Casey’s Shadow you get the live birth of a foal (shocking for 1978), along with a whole lot of down-home Cajun family angst, and a fine pummeling of a very bad guy that did not last long enough. The bad guy was played by Robert Webber, a character actor of high regard who earlier was one of the 12 in 12 Angry Men and played a villain so cruel in Harper that people stood and cheered at his demise.
The horse was named for the youngest son of Matthau’s racing family, Casey Bourdelle. The kid was played by Michael Hershewe, who was eight when filming began.
Hershewe is the son of the late S.K. Hershewe, an actor, playwright, and theatrical producer who was well known in Hollywood film circles. Martin Ritt was a pal, but that’s not why young Michael got the job.
“I went through a cattle call for the part with maybe 1,500 boys my age,” said Hershewe, who today lives in Los Angeles and works in IT for a company servicing government contracts. “I had a stage father instead of a stage mother. He was right there with me through the whole movie.
“They were looking for kids who could be Walter’s kid, so that eliminated the blonds,” Hershewe said.
“About three interviews in there were about 15 of us still in the mix. One day on the set, my dad said he wanted to go say hi to a friend. It was Marty Ritt. He asked my dad, ‘Who’s the kid?’ and then asked me, ‘Do you know how to ride a horse?’ My dad said: ‘Do you have something to do with this Casey’s Shadow movie?’”
Michael still had to go through a screen test with Matthau to get the role. As for the horse part, his father had made sure young Michael was comfortable on and around horses before work on Casey’s Shadow even began. He learned the basics at a riding ranch in the hills above Hollywood, then received further experience from Emile Avery, a well-known wrangler, stunt man, and actor with dozens of uncredited appearances in Westerns and adventures.
“After about a month of lessons, one day Emile told my dad to drive down the road and park,” Hershewe said. “He put me on one of the high-strung horses I’d been riding and told me to let the horse go and ride past my dad. I was eight. I had no fear. But by the time we went past my dad’s car at full speed I was hanging on the horse’s neck, and my dad almost had a heart attack.”
In the film, Hershewe’s character must interact with several versions of the colt called Casey’s Shadow, from newborn foal to full-grown racehorse. Neither was Hershewe given a pass on the demands of acting.
“There were some emotionally charged scenes,” Hershewe said. “My dad was very helpful in talking me through what was going on in the family. And Walter kept it light. He wasn’t above wasting some film making me laugh, reducing the stress. It also helped that I knew my lines and everybody’s else’s lines as well.”
Hershewe was allowed to become a racetrack rat, exploring the backstretch at Ruidoso Downs on his own and witnessing all manner of behaviors not necessarily depicted in the film. He watched an unruly colt being castrated. He was present at the euthanasia of a horse who suffered serious injuries after running loose at the starting gate. Still, there was plenty of realism on screen.
“It was hard for a young kid to watch sometimes,” Hershewe said. “They didn’t really shy away from much of anything.”
The box office for Casey’s Shadow was slight and reviews were mixed. Vincent Canby in the New York Times described the film as “so decently tempered and its principal characters so surprising at important moments that, in the world of horse movies it seems rare indeed.”
On the other hand, Frank DeFord of Sports Illustrated treated it with thinly veiled contempt, suggesting the script squandered the “film's few fine authentic moments” in service of “an unassuming children's movie with pretensions to adult reality.”
Michael Hershewe continued in movies and TV into his teens, then backed away from acting. His last screen credit came as part of the regular cast for the early ’80s’ television drama, American Dream. He makes occasional forays to the races, and when he does the true fans of Casey’s Shadow come out of the woodwork.
But for the most part, Hershewe is content to have been a part of one of the best horse racing films ever made, with all the vivid memories to go along with the experience.
“They were filming some scenes at the old Hollywood Bar, just a stone’s throw from the main entrance to Ruidoso,” Hershewe said. “It was my ninth birthday, and I got a call for 9 o’clock in the bar, which was odd since I wasn’t scheduled to shoot, and certainly not in the bar.
“There were probably about two or three hundred fairly inebriated cowboys in there, plus the cast and crew, all of them wishing me a happy birthday. So I bellied up to the bar and had my birthday cake.”
• View all Jay Hovdey’s features in his Favorite Racehorses series
Horse racing at the movies: Champions was different from the maudlin crowd
Big Jag: ‘That’s a chunk of a horse – he put a lot of smiles on a lot of people’s faces’
Flightline: ‘A Halley’s Comet of a racehorse’ – Jay Hovdey pays homage to an equine great
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