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One Seabiscuit, hold the gravy
BY CHRIS WRIGHT
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At the end of the movie Seabiscuit, Tobey Maguire — who plays fabled jockey Red Pollard — gives a little philosophical speech, something along the lines of " Maybe that horse taught us all a thing or two. " While this homily may have had audiences across America sniffling into their popcorn, at least one viewer was moved to laughter. " I don’t think so, " says John Pollard with a smoky growl of amusement. " That doesn’t sound like my father at all. " In fact, Pollard, a 58-year-old retired truck driver from Providence, was not entirely happy with the filmmakers’ choice of leading man. " They should have got Ed Norton or Sean Penn, a tougher type of individual, " he says. " If you’d have known my father, you’d agree wholeheartedly. Tobey Maguire was not the one to play the part. My father had a deep voice, Tobey Maguire does not have a deep voice. I’m not going to say he’s a wimp — that would be going too far — but he’s just not my father. " Red Pollard had two children in all. His daughter, Norah Pollard, a 63-year-old secretary and poet who lives in Stratford, Connecticut, puts a slightly more positive spin on things. " Did Tobey Maguire do a good job as my father? " she says. " How could he? He didn’t know him. It’s like having a movie about the life of Jesus and people saying, ‘How did you feel such-and-such an actor did portraying Jesus?’ Well, no one clapped eyes on the fellow, so how do we know? " Unlike Jesus, people did clap eyes on Red Pollard — his kids among them — and Tobey Maguire, it seems, is way off the mark. " My father had a certain kind of walk, " says Norah. " He was much older-looking, very weather-beaten. And my father had been around — he wasn’t as innocent as Tobey portrayed him. My dad needed someone with an edge to him, someone who was witty and erudite and hilarious, who was just far more over the top than Tobey was. My father was a little larger than life. " Even though they’d have preferred a little more veracity from Seabiscuit, both Norah and John Pollard know that a Hollywood movie is a Hollywood movie. " The movie covered the Cinderella story, that sort of come-from-behind story, " says John. " It was entertaining, shall we say. " The real story of Red Pollard, meanwhile, is somewhat less blithe — that shattered leg may have made for a good plot twist, but it did nothing for the jockey’s subsequent career. " My father suffered for the rest of his life, " says John. " He was in a lot of pain. He could hardly walk, much less ride. " Though Red Pollard continued to ride until the age of 46, there was very little in the way of glamour — or wealth — about his later years. After retirement, he worked as an exercise boy, then as a jockey coach, then as a mail sorter at the track, then as a valet, shining the boots of jockeys. " He was not so impressed with himself that he wouldn’t do these things, " says Norah. " He loved the track. He loved being around jockeys. For all his wildness and so forth, he was a humble man. He used to say, ‘Fame is a food that dead men eat’ — it’s a line from a poem — ‘I have no stomach for such meat.’ " In 1981, at the age of 72, Red Pollard’s much-abused body gave out on him, and he died in a nursing home. Neither of his children expresses any regret that he didn’t live to see the hullabaloo surrounding Seabiscuit. " He always thought this was just a big deal about nothing, " says John. " I think he’d be laughing in his grave right now. "
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