Racing Lady is going to air on Turner Classic Movies on Friday, May 1st at 7:30am EST.

I have only seen Racing Lady once because my personal copy is like a 25th generation dupe, taped off of TN’T with bad commercial editing, and at one point the sound goes out for three minutes.

What I vaguely remember from the lone viewing (besides the horrible quality) is that Ann Dvorak never rides a horse in the film, she just owns and races them. Unless I am mistaken, she never rides a horse in any of her films which for some reason strikes me as very disappointing.  The other thing I remember from this film is Ann cheering on her horse as it practices by screaming “COME ON PEPPER MARY” with a little bit too mush gusto. No one can ever accuse Ann Dvorak of not giving 110% to every performance. One last recollection is the woodenness of Smith Ballew as he lays on the sweet romance.

Warner Bros and Ann had been battling each other in court for the first half of 1936 and once she came back from suspension,  they chose to loan her to RKO for Racing Lady and We Who Are About to Die. She would make only two more movies for Warner Bros before being released from her contract in December of 1939.

At this point, I realy don’t have much of an opinion on Racing Lady and am looking forward to viewing a copy that has sound throughout the entire film.