Black Gold was the first film produced by Allied Artists, an offshoot of Monogram Pictures founded by producer Walter Mirisch, who wanted the Poverty Row studio to move out of B pictures into higher-grade productions. Although initially the movies produced under this banner were really just B+ pictures, as a mark of Mirisch's goals, this was the first Monogram film to be made in color. The production ran into some problems when shooting had to stop for two weeks due to a shutdown at the Cinecolor plant, but when the studio saw the early rushes, executives were impressed enough to increase the film's budget significantly, making it one of the most expensive films made by the studio to that point.
The end title of the picture reads: "Suggested by the winning of the 1924 Kentucky Derby by the horse Black Gold", the offspring of a promising horse owned by Native Americans Al and Rosa Hoots. According to legend, it was Al's deathbed wish that Rosa train Black Gold for a Kentucky Derby victory. The horse exceeded Al's wishes by capturing both the Kentucky and Louisiana Derby crowns, the only horse to do so until 1996. The widowed Rosa became the second woman to ever own a horse that raced to victory in the "Run for the Roses."
Background footage for the Black Gold production was filmed at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY, home of the Kentucky Derby, at Hollywood Park racetrack in Los Angeles, and an unnamed track in Tijuana, Mexico. Other scenes were shot at the Vasquez Rocks Natural Area near Chatsworth, California.
In mid-June 1947, American Indians from nine tribes were invited to attend a special screening of the film in Los Angeles, as well as a "powwow" at the Los Angeles Farmers Market, which was proclaimed a temporary "Indian reservation." To promote Black Gold, an Indian village with five teepees and twelve Indians was set up at a drugstore near Beverly Hills.
An April 1, 1946 blurb in the Hollywood Reporter noted that the colt that played the title horse, which Monogram purchased and named Black Gold, was born on the last weekend of March 1946.
At the time of the film's release, Quinn had been married for ten years to the woman who played his wife, Katherine DeMille, producer-director Cecil B. DeMille's adopted daughter. The couple had five children, the oldest of whom, still a toddler, drowned in the swimming pool of the Quinn's neighbor, W.C. Fields. Katherine DeMille quit acting in 1956, and this is the only film she and Quinn made together. They were divorced in 1965.
Reviewers weren't particularly kind when Black Gold was released except to note an excellent performance by Quinn, one of many in a long and prolific career that would last until his death in 2001 and garner him two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and two nominations for Best Actor.
Besides Quinn, the most impressive credentials on Black Gold belong to director Phil Karlson. Although at the time of this production still only a lower echelon director earning $250 a week at a minor studio, Karlson would go on to much critical success in the 1950s with a series of realistic, violent crime films: Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), and The Phenix City Story (1955). Despite the acclaim for this work, Karlson never really achieved great commercial success until his penultimate film, Walking Tall (1973), a big box office hit and, because he owned a large part of it, the movie made him a wealthy man.
Director: Phil Karlson Producer: Jeffrey Bernerd
Screenplay: Agnes Christine Johnston, story by Caryl Coleman
Cinematography: Harry Neumann
Editing: Roy Livingston
Art Direction: E.R. Hickson, Dave Milton
Original Music: Laurence S. Russell
Cast: Anthony Quinn (Charley Eagle), Katherine DeMille (Sarah Eagle), "Ducky" Louie (Davey), Raymond Hatton (Bucky), Thurston Hall (Colonel Caldwell)
C-90m
by Rob Nixon
