Gallant Bess

Gallant Bess (1946)

See Bess do stunts you never saw a horse do before.

Marshall Thompson stars in this MGM drama about a young soldier's devotion to a horse he rescues during WWII. (Not to be confused with "Adventures of Gallant Bess", another film released two years later.)

Date of release
1946-12-05
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (3)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Andrew Marton

Casting

Interesting facts

Gallant Bess is a 1947 American drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is loosely based on the true story of U.S. Navy warrant officer Arthur Parker, who rescued an injured filly during World War II. Portions of the film were shot on the coast of Santa Barbara, California in October 1945. This was the first MGM motion picture made in Cinecolor.

Background

Art Parker was raised on a ranch in Montana in the early 1900s and worked with horses. At the age of 17, he lied to enlist in the U.S. Navy. During World War II, he was stationed in the Solomon Islands and befriended a local rancher. After a Japanese bombing raid, the rancher asked Parker for help rescuing an injured filly. Parker took the horse to the naval base and trained her.

Bess learned tricks, including to run to a sandbagged cave for protection whenever the air-raid siren sounded. She was given the nickname Foxhole Flicka after the horse in the 1941 children's book My Friend Flicka.

When Parker received his orders to return to the U.S., he was denied permission to take Bess with him. Eventually he was allowed to build a stall on a ship for Bess.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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