MY FRIEND FLICKA: opening and closing theme

The harpstroke which begins this lush sentimental theme used to make me prick up my ears when I was a child. Though it's hard for me to believe, the show ran for only one season in 1957, and was in syndication when I saw it in the early '60s. It would come on almost randomly on Saturday, probably as a filler, so I never knew when the magic would happen. I'd usually be doing something else, such as making mice out of plasticine or cutting up cardboard with a steak knife to make a house for my trolls. Then I'd hear that "bling!" on the harpstrings and look up in delight. The show is a little sentimental, but beautifully shot and acted, particularly by the Arabian mare Flicka and the crack rider Johnny Westbrook. 

Of course. . . of course!

Mister Ed

Original name: Bamboo Harvester

Birth:

1949

El Monte

Los Angeles County

California, USA

Death:

Feb. 22, 1979

Burbank

Los Angeles County

California, USA

Animal Actor. Mister Ed, a Palomino horse officially named Bamboo Harvester, was a show and parade horse who was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, California. His parents were The Harvester (Sire), a Saddlebred owned by Edna and Jim Fagan; and Zetna, (Dam) who was sired by Antez, an Arabian imported from Poland. Bamboo Harvester was trained by Lester Hilton. Lester "Les" Hilton had been apprenticed under Will Rogers, and also worked with the mules in the "Francis the Talking Mule" movies. Due to old-age ailments, Bamboo Harvester was put to sleep in 1970. The producer of the Mister Ed series never would answer the question of how the horse's lips were made to move. There have been many theories over the years, including the use of peanut butter, but none have been authenticated. (bio by: Ronald Leon)

Cause of death: Euthanized

Burial:

Snodgrass Farm

Tahlequah

Cherokee County

Oklahoma, USA

Maintained by: Find A Grave

Record added: Jan 01, 2001

Find A Grave Memorial# 1551

This is a cobbling-together of a post I spent about four hours on this morning. Trying to fix the formatting, which I do for nearly every post, it suddenly disappeared.

ALL of it. It was just a blank.

I mean, no backup. Didn't even go into a recycle bin or anything.

I feel stabbed, ripped off and as if something has been snatched away from me (like four hours that I can never get back).  I don't know, all I can do to salvage this is put up some of the photos and whatever I remember of the text, though there were also three or four videos that were VERY hard to find, not to mention a gif that I can't recover.

Jesus.

Anyway, what I was GOING to say before the finished and polished post was ripped out of my hands, was something like this: as a little girl, I adored Mr. Ed, and I can see why. He was a character actor with a sweet face, and he was also a handsome palomino, a former parade horse, his shiny coat coming across well even in grainy black-and-white.

The show we saw on TV wasn't the original. There was a failed pilot starring the same horse, but a different Wilbur. This Wilbur was a clinker, and it didn't fly. But there was something about Ed. Network execs must have decided to give him another try.

(Now that I think of it, black lines kept appearing at the sides. Did that mean something? This version is awful, but I feel I must continue, damn it.)

Oh, what else? I wrote something about My Friend Flicka, a 1950s series which is now posted in its entirety on YouTube. At one point, I would have killed to see even one episode, but now I find I can't stomach Johnny Washbrook and the way he's always crying. He's a fairly good horseman, and the horse is beautiful (of course, of course!). But it was mainly that theme song I loved as a kid. It began with a little harp-stroke which isn't in most of the YouTube vids. It's cut off, probably because most people didn't notice it. But to me, it meant magic was about to begin. This video may or may not have it, because I don't remember which one I posted originally. Took me a while to find it, too.

There were others, National Velvet, Fury. . . Fury was, I have to admit, the best horse actor, and the handsomest of all. In fact, he was simply stunning. But the show involved a lot of shrill whistling and irritating yelling: "Fuuuuuuuuuu-reeeeeeeee!" . And NOWHERE in the YouTube videos does the announcer ever say, "Fury. The story of a horse. . . and the boy who loved him."It's probably something like "Play it again, Sam", a TV myth.

This is from one of those very old-format TV sites set up in about the year 2000:

But the true star of the show was Fury himself. Known as Highland Dale when he lived on a farm in Missouri, he was 18 months old when he was discovered by well-known movie horse trainer Ralph McCutcheon who first used him in “Return of Wildfire” in ‘48. Series producer Leon Fromkess hired McCutcheon to deliver a horse for the series. By this time, McCutcheon had changed the horse’s name to Beauty (often called Beaut) and had worked him in “Lone Star” (‘52), “Johnny Guitar” (‘54) and “Gypsy Colt” (‘54). He was cast as the black stallion in “Giant” (‘56); and several other shows after “Fury” ended.

Can't find where I got this info, but Highland Dale was an American Saddlebred, long and rangy compared to the rather dinky Ed. Flicka was somewhere in the middle. William Shatner breeds Saddlebreds. Lesson for the day.

Elizabeth Taylor on Highland Dale/Fury was a sight to behold. His size can be gauged by how tiny she looks on him, almost like a girl. She was a magnificent horsewoman who did not need a double, not even in National Velvet when she was 13. I've tried to make a gif of my favorite scene from Giant, very poorly cropped for some reason (to avoid a letterbox effect, no doubt).

And that's all I can salvage of this post. I'm sorry, but I'll bet I feel a whole lot worse about it than you do.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Flicka!

http://tvclassicshows.com/free-tv-shows/category/my-friend-flicka/

http://www.myfriendflicka.com/home.html

Oh, how I remember this:  I'd be crouched on the floor in the den in our old house in Chatham, probably working on some project, plasticine or construction paper and glue. The TV would be on in the background, and I'd barely be paying attention to it: Fury was over, along with Sky King and Sea Hunt and all those other things that came on every Saturday morning.

Then I'd hear a familiar glissando on a harp, and a lavishly sentimental theme played by a schmaltzy orchestra. The title would flash on the screen, and I would be in ecstasy.

MY FRIEND FLICKA!

Flicka didn't seem to come on according to any sort of schedule. She was probably shoehorned in whenever there was a half-hour not accounted for by Bozo the Clown, Jingles the Jester, or Captain Jolly (the bizarre lineup of local kids' shows we watched from nearby Detroit). So that made her all the more special. I felt a kind of bliss when Flicka came on, and even though it was in black and white I could see the magnificent mare's sorrel coat burnished in the sun.

The show was all about Flicka, of course (in real life, a prize Arabian named Wahana), but it went deeper than that. This was a psychological Western, much soppier and more sentimental than Have Gun, Will Travel, but still full of significance. It was far more than just the story of a horse and the boy who loved her: it was a coming-of-age tale, sometimes painful, sometimes a little maudlin, but always fascinating to a horse-crazy girl like me.

Johnny Washbrook played Ken McLaughlin, a freckle-faced kid with an irritatingly high voice and a tendency to burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Since something awful was always happening to Flicka (she'd go blind, be stolen, run away, develop colic from a bad apple, or be wrongly accused of assault and battery), he cried a lot. His mother (Anita Louise, I think: a sort of cut-rate Dorothy McGuire) was constantly patting his shoulder and reasuring him, while his Dad, a sort of Dan Blocker stand-in who had played in too many generic Westerns, wanted to make a man out of him by subjecting him to all sorts of brutal trials.

Johnny may have been a soppy character, but he could ride, and he seemed as natural on that horse as a centaur. Flicka was one of those hypersensitive creatures who seems to know what you want before you do. Arabians can be mighty flaky, but also deeply devoted, an ancient trait from those nomadic desert days when a horse didn't dare lose track of its master (or vice-versa).

I knew this show wasn't recent: it had that muddy quality of something made in the mid-'50s. I sort of let it wash over me: I longed for horse shows, for horse books, for horse anything. And while I did finally own a horse for several years, a game and eccentric little trail horse named Rocky, the truth about horses never quite matched the dream.

For horses represented absolute freedom. Freedom from a family system that could be loving, then turn on a dime and be devastatingly abusive. Horses were a refuge for me, and I loved the sound of them, the whinnying and chuffing, the smell of their sweaty hides, the creaking of leather on a Western saddle.

There are strange gaps in my memory about all this, for I don't remember ever receiving any instruction in riding. To be honest, I had to pick it up myself. I was never told how to saddle or bridle a horse, how to curry it or look after its feet, but I don't remember not knowing. For a couple of years I went trail riding at a ranch called the Lazy J, and whenever I had the chance I rode a special horse who seemed to somehow teach me the basics. I never fell off, though Rocky had a tendency to dawdle on the way out and gallop on the way home.

This was a completely unguided trail. You were set loose after paying maybe $5.00. You could, in all honesty, spend hours on it, exploring its twists and turns, except that after a half hour or so the horses got fed up with all that and took off for the barn.

I suppose Rocky was no Flicka, but we knew each other well and were good companions. In truth, he was a replacement for the first horse my Dad bought me, a three-year-old mare who had no training at all. If I tried to mount her, she took off. She pulled like a train, and seemed to hate to have anything on her back. Dad knew nothing about horses and bought the mare for looks and status (his chief business rival had just bought HIS daughter a horse, a real looker named Apache). I was tearful and frustrated, my parents blamed me for not knowing enough about riding, it was touch and go as to whether I'd get a horse at all, and then. . .

"Mom, Dad, can I have Rocky?"

I suppose the story should end with me winning all sorts of prizes and ribbons and stuff like that. I didn't. Rocky loved walking through mud, he pranced ridiculously around the pasture when I tried to put his halter on, he stuck his head in the grain bucket (and wouldn't take it out), making that coffee-grinder sound horses make when they eat.  A few years later he was slowing down - he must have been ten years old, at least, and had been ridden so much before I owned him, it was surprising he had any good humor left in him at all. The place where we boarded him with a lot of rangy Standardbreds closed shop, and everywhere else was far too expensive. My own interest was beginning to thin out as I entered high school and worried about a popularity that eluded me (and still does, I might add).

So we had to sell Rocky. Weirdly, I don't remember a tearful farewell, or any kind of farewell at all. Was that the end of my horse phase? Not really, for I still feel that kinship, and though I ride only occasionally, I always have a feeling of homecoming. A couple of years ago, feeling nostalgic, I tried to find some trace of My Friend Flicka on the net, and came up pretty much empty. There was some information about the lovely novel by Mary O'Hara, and a bit about the movies that were based on it. Nothing about the show. Even now, YouTube only has a horribly grainy, distorted picture of the opening theme, obviously taken by crudely filming a TV screen.

But magic things happen on the net. Suddenly there are entire sites devoted to this show, detailed lists of episodes (39 of them in one year: that was back when a "season" was more than 13 weeks), and all sorts of backstory, including what Johnny Washbrook is doing now (who cares??). Considering the show originally ran 55 years ago, it's amazing anyone's still alive. I found a site that offers streaming video of whole episodes, and that sudsy theme with the sliding strings gives me the same old feeling.

But I have to tell you, the show's a little slow. OK, a lot slow. When you watch so-called "classic" TV, you really do have to slow your brain down to a different pace of storytelling. There appears to be ten minutes or so of plot stretched over the 24 minutes or whatever it was. There's always at least one shot of Flicka galloping furiously, maybe to warn Ken that the mine has caved in (oops, that's Lassie), or to get away from the ubiquitous Bad Guys. There are also a lot of shots of said bad guys galloping furiously toward the bank, or away from the sherriff.

In other words, it's a normal Western except for that gorgeous Arabian, and the little boy with the irritating voice who never stops crying. But I'd watch it endlessly. It was a diamond unexpectedly dropped into my lap. It was my Saturday bliss. It was Flicka.