Originally Tom began his film career with a horse named Old Blue, a blue roan of unknown breeding, but who likely carried some Morgan blood. Old Blue appeared with Tom through most of his Selig films, but as the horse began to age, Tom began to look for the right horse who would take his place. He found just what he was looking for in a horse owned and trained by well-known actor and horseman Pat Chrisman, who often took parts in his films. The year was 1917, and the horse named “Tony” was a sorrel, about five to seven years old, with a distinctive large diamond shaped star connecting to a long narrow blaze, small snip on the nose, and two white hind stockings. Tony soon became known as Tony the Wonder Horse, becoming the first movie horse to bear this designation, though many others would follow.
Tom Mix and Tony, Library of Congress
There are different accounts of his origin, but according to Helen Brunk Greenwalt, he was foaled on the Sellman ranch and was a son of Headlight Morgan. Helen, among the most knowledgeable experts on Morgans in the his- tory of the breed, wrote a letter to The Morgan Horse, published in the Feb-March-April 1943 issue, recalling seeing Tony when Tom exhibited him at Springfield, and the knots on his knees that had been broken in a fall while filming. Some old newspaper articles confused Tony with another son of Headlight Morgan who was also a well-known movie horse (to be discussed in a later part of this series) but these were two separate horses. Tony did bear a strong resemblance to Sellman breeding and to Headlight Morgan. At any rate, while most of the movies Tom Mix made with Tony were destroyed by a fire in 1937, a few of the early ones still exist. Tony’s Morgan heritage is clearly evident in these films. He had been well-trained by Pat Chrisman who taught him numerous tricks, and Tom paid $600 for the horse.
Tony quickly became nearly as popular and famous as Tom himself, partnering with him in dozens of films in which he was often listed as a co-star. Tom insisted on performing most of his stunts himself, and very often Tony did too. Other horses were used at times, but the original Tony truly was remarkable. He was about 15 hands tall, very deep-bodied and muscular, with the classic short back and very up-headed appearance. His neck was of good-length, well- crested, rising up from a powerful, sloping shoulder to a finely chiseled head of great beauty, large intelligent eyes, and short, sharp ears.
Dramatic scenes featured Tom and Tony jumping through glass windows, sliding and sometimes even rolling down precarious embankments, chasing trains, leaping across chasms, plunging into raging rivers, and much more. In acts of rescue Tom often pulled an additional rider up behind him while Tony tore on at a full gallop, seeming not in the least disturbed by the extra weight. During such getaway scenes he often made difficult jumps that would have been challenging carrying a single rider, let alone two. The movie The Great K & A Train Robbery is one of a handful featuring Tom and the original Tony which has been preserved and can still be seen on YouTube as the copyright is expired. It was filmed on location in the vicinity of Glenwood Spring, Colorado, and the scenic 12.5-mile-long Glenwood Canyon, which plunges 1,300 feet in places to the Colorado River. Early in the movie Tom, who is portraying an undercover detective hired to round up some train robbers by pretending to be one of them, is shown dangerously poised above the canyon clinging to a rope which he has somehow attached to the high side of the canyon on one side, and Tony who is waiting patiently for him on the other side. He slides down the rope, landing conveniently in Tony’s saddle in probably the first zip-line escape ever recorded, all the while shooting at the bandits. Tony manages to overtake the train while carrying both his master and the rescued heroine. He then has no problem keeping up with the train and following it for some distance while Tom takes care of business on the train, then is ready to carry him off again as soon as he is done. Later that night Tom sneaks into the home of the railroad president, instructing a friend to watch Tony, as the horse thinks he has to go wherever Tom does. Sure enough, after a time, Tony decides Tom has been in there long enough and must need help, and boldly trots up the steps and into the mansion to find him. He rescues Tom as well as the friend who was supposed to be watching him and couldn’t stop him from going in after his master, and with both riders aboard makes a startling leap from an upper balcony into the swimming pool below.
One of the most famous stunts said to be performed by Tom and Tony was from the movie Three Jumps Ahead, in which they are portrayed making a 20-foot leap across the 90-foot-deep chasm of Beale’s Cut. Tom insisted that he and Tony performed the jump themselves, not once, but five or six times to get it right for the camera. Tom was inclined to exaggerate his accomplishments, but when it came to his stunts, he really did perform most of them himself, and was injured more than 80 times. He suffered many broken bones, bullet and knife wounds, and once he and Tony both were badly injured by a dynamite explosion. Undoubtedly camera effects were also used to further dramatize such scenes. In the photo for the stunt of jumping Beale’s Cut, the horse and rider appear much smaller in proportion to the chasm than they should be, to make the chasm look bigger and more daunting. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Tom and Tony really did perform the stunt as Tom claimed, and even expert horse trainers admitted it was possible. The approach to the chasm is slightly downhill and a platform was built extending slightly over the edge ensuring that crumbling or slippery footing was not a concern. The record for a broad jump for a horse is 28 feet, a full eight feet further than this one, so Tony may well have been able to do it. Many experts believed Tom and Tony did the jump. Given Tom’s personality, it seems likely that trials were done with stunt men and when they succeeded, he was impatient to do it himself. At any rate, viewers were always impressed with the Tom and Tony movies and they were hugely popular.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to see this in my Facebook feed, and I laughed unreasonably hard. But, like-
1) The bridle (headstall, for those unfamiliar with the term bridle) is different one the horses.
2) I’m not convinced they’re even the same horse actor, but even if they are, spoiler land has revealed to me that the top rider’s horse was clearly shown to be d e a d.
The opening sequence for Episode 1. Black Beauty is apparently played by four different horses in this show: “Tramp, Ebony, Fury and Jet. Tramp was the lead horse and the others were touched up with make-up to give them an identical white blaze.” [x] It could be a reasonable assumption that this is Tramp.
I have to laugh, though, at the description of the facial marking being a white blaze, though, because, my dudes...
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I'm not sure which horse actor it was (if not multiple) but I have heard from what I consider a reliable source that at least one of the horses used for Shadowfax was trained with shock collars for LOTR. To me that is wildly inappropriate, especially for horses. I kind of think you should maybe disclaim that when posting about LOTR horses, perhaps? It also concerns me that Viggo can have been so in love with those horses and never raised concern about severely aversive training methods.
I had some concerns about publishing this, but I think I’m gonna go ahead and do just that, because there’s a few things that I wanna address:
00) For those wondering, there were two horses that played Shadowfax: the first was an Andalusian stallion named Demero, who had melanoma and was retired from the set before dying in 2003; and the second was the more-famously known Andalusian stallion named Blanco.
01) It is really hard to reliably trust an anonymous person’s claim that someone they know has insider information. Whether or not this is true, this is exactly the sort of claim that I wouldn’t even consider entertaining as true unless verified by other sources.
Like this one, Humane Hollywood as a part of the American Humane Association:
02) I am going to highlight this sentence from the above:
“During filming production has indicated that the use of the device was infrequent and monitored by production veterinarians. When production learned of AHA’s objection to the device, they prohibited further use.”
03) People can still love animals and do things that others might consider unethical or unfair. You can love something and be ignorant or misinformed about it (and horse lords knows this is true throughout the spectrum of equestrianism.) That is very definitely a thing. Anyone who has been an advocate for animals is confronted with this truth, and there’s a certain level of dogmaticism in condemning people for the things they think they are doing out of love or responsibility to their animals. I’ve done both before before, friends have done both before, and at the end of the day it’s not overly productive and doesn’t tend to make people receptive to change.
04) See above for Viggo: how do you know that he knew that shock collars were aversive? How do you know that he understood the language of behavioral science and behavior modification, and therefore understood the mechanics of how shock collars worked? How do you know that he recognized that it might have been unfair to the horses? How do you know that he didn’t just trust the horse trainer’s judgment, which is a valid assumption to make when you don’t know very much about something such as horse training?
Furthermore, how do you know that he didn’t raise concerns about the treatment of the horses? (nb: I couldn’t find anything on this any which way, so this is pretty firmly in the “Who even knows?” category for me.)
This is a pretty heady assumption to make, my dude. I have a tendency to give actors the benefit of the doubt because the overwhelmingly vast majority of them really have no concept of horses, behaviorism, or training of animals. It’s unfair to throw a “Your Fave Is Problematic” accusation at them like this.
05) I am absolutely not going to put a disclaimer on every single post.
06) I’m also not interested in getting into debates about behaviorism, what counts as aversive, or the implied aversive = abusive angle here. Frankly, the thing I’m most interested in is the training context for which the shock collars were used. The last movie (Return of the King) was released in 2003, and presumably filmed in 2002/2003, so we’re talking about animal handling that’s from nearly two decades ago, as well.
“Sometimes, however, shooting with the horses can be much more lighthearted, which is where Whelan's story comes in. While sitting between Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, she tells a story about filming a scene with "a really, really farty horse."
It wasn't just any scene with a farty horse. It was that scene — the one between Yara and her brother Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) when the two siblings reunited for the first time since childhood and lots of awkward and inappropriate touching ensues. Whelan even does an impression of a "farty horse" while sitting next to the very game Freeman who looks both amused and ever-so-slightly uncomfortable with the whole situation.”
