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California Riding Magazine • June, 2009 Legendary Hollywood Horse Trainer Corky Randall Dies by Elizabeth Kaye McCall |
On Mon., April 20, the legendary Hollywood horse trainer Buford “Corky” Randall died in Southern California’s Newhall, at 80 after a prolonged illness with cancer. Born in 1929 in Gering, NE, Randall was diagnosed with polio as a child. Rather than following the prescribed treatments of the day (metal spikes in legs), his father insisted the boy exercise. By age 10, Randall was galloping Thoroughbred colts each morning before school for his father—Glenn Randall Sr., who earned fame training Roy Rogers’ Trigger (and even housebroke the horse) and for Ben Hur. Randall dove into the film business at Republic Studios during high school and never looked back. From his first major assignment on The Alamo, Randall’s half a century Hollywood career included dozens of feature films and television shows—from How the West Was Won, Soldier Blue, and The Misfits to Buffalo Girls, Hot to Trot, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. From classics like Spin & Marty and the Zorro TV series, Corky traveled the globe, winding up his career in Mexico on The Mask of Zorro starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Corky Randall on location with The Black Stallion. But it was the film adaptation of Walter Farley’s novel The Black Stallion that established Randall as a trainer in his own right. Released 30 years ago in 1979, the Carroll Ballard-directed production (executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola) contained some of the most challenging horse scenes ever filmed. Years later, Randall described the black Arabian stallion who starred in it as his all-time favorite horse actor. (The horse’s real name was Cass-olé). “He was so smart and such a character. He was almost human. Cass-olé loved to be around people and he loved to make pictures,” said Randall. For the TriStar film label’s animated feature logo Pegasus (which was filmed on the Randall Ranch in Newhall), Randall used the same grey (white on camera) Arabian horse that appeared in The Black Stallion Returns as the Black Stallion’s love interest. “Corky was a fantastic horseman with generations of knowledge and wonderful stories from a lifetime of working in the strange and demanding world of horse movies,” remarked Tim Farley, son of the late author and president of Florida-based Black Stallion, Inc. “All of us who love horses and have been carried away by the excitement and beauty we see on the screen, can think of Corky. He was one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.” A two-time winner of the Patsy Award (once the animal trainer’s Oscar) and recipient of the Humanitarian Award in 1982 from what was then the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles, Randall furthered legislation safeguarding animals. During one of his final interviews Randall reflected, “I think there are still a lot of successful pictures to be made with horses if you can capture the relationship between the animal and the person—like they did in The Black Stallion.
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