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By MARGO HAMMOND, Times Staff WriterThe book on which the film Seabiscuit is based offers larger helpings of the warmth, wonder and nail-biting tension that are the movie's hallmarks.
Who could find fault with Seabiscuit, a feel-good movie that features a can-do jockey played by winsome Tobey Maguire and a little horse that could, and did, again and again? This time Hollywood didn't even have to make up a happy ending. Seabiscuit, the real, runty horse that gave people hope in the dark days of the Great Depression, handed Tinseltown not one, but two happy endings.
Still, I hope that those who haven't read Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend, the bestselling book that inspired the latest cinematic version of the quintessential American tale, will be compelled by the movie to do so. Nothing onscreen can match Hillenbrand's extraordinary prose. When she describes a race, you are panting, hanging on every word, straining against the guard rail to follow the thundering course of muscle and heart down the track.
That is how millions of people, living in an era of radio, experienced Seabiscuit's races in the 1930s: in their mind's eye.
Not that the movie adaptation isn't admirable. Screenwriter Gary Ross wisely chose to retain the winning structure of Hillenbrand's captivating account. The book and the movie begin by telling us the hard-luck stories of effusive Charles Howard, taciturn Tom Smith and scrappy Red Pollard, the horse's owner, trainer and jockey, respectively. Immediately we are primed to root for each one when they begin racing Seabiscuit, a horse that also had been knocked around by life.
The second part of Hillenbrand's book and of the movie covers Seabiscuit's phenomenal racing career and acclaim by millions of ordinary folk, culminating with the heart-stopping match race against War Admiral. And just when you think the story is over, the book and the movie hit you with Part Three: a comeback race that reunites Pollard and Seabiscuit, both of whom had sustained what most had considered career-ending injuries.
The movie also cleverly manages to echo Hillenbrand's memorable evocations of the '30s by using a voice-over that provides historical context. And that the voice is so familiar - it's that of David McCullough, the author of Truman and John Adams who is a frequent narrator of television documentaries - conveniently reinforces the story's parallels to our troubled times.
There is even a moment in the movie when we hear a snatch of one of the 1938 radio broadcasts of the David vs. Goliath race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral, a race that caused businesses to shut down early and had 40-million Americans glued to their radio sets to cheer on the long shot.
Hillenbrand's book, however, has the luxury of detail, and the author, who has been writing about thoroughbred racing since 1988, provides plenty. We see, feel and smell the world of racing at a time when the country desperately needed distraction. It was a world in which jockeys would sit in a pile of steaming manure to sweat down their weight and daily risk their lives to pilot what Hillenbrand calls "a half-ton catapult."
Hollywood naturally prefers to cast the tale as a very American one about the possibilities of second chances for all of us, and at times it overreaches to drive home that point. For example, the movie's addition of a black groomsman to the familial scene around Seabiscuit, while admirably suggesting inclusiveness, was highly unlikely in reality, given the segregation of the period. Reality almost always is messier than a happily-ever-after ending suggests.
In addition to telling the more dazzling public story, Hillenbrand offers the more bittersweet epilogue. After Seabiscuit's triumphs, Smith was tainted by a trumped-up scandal and died in obscurity. Pollard, an alcoholic who married the nurse who comforted him when he shattered a leg before the match race, went back to race riding, continued to suffer horrific injuries, never repeated the success he had with Seabiscuit and never taught his kids to ride.
Only Howard and Seabiscuit had a truly storybook ending, according to Hillenbrand. They grew old together until the latter died. The once flamboyant owner gave him a very private burial in a secret site marked only by an oak tree.