Imperial Valley Press

HOLLYWOOD - Horses come higher in Hollywood now than pretty girls. A studio will pay a starlet $75 a week to start. The other day 20th Century-Fox signed a four-year-old stallion to a long-term contract which begins at $300 a week, plus stardom right off the bat.

Pretty girls are plentiful but the best horses have gone to war. Hollywood is crazy over horses. More millions went to do "Thunderhead Son of Flicka," than some of movietown's pretentious epics made at several times the cost Son of Flicka turned out to be the Van Johnson of horses So another horse story, Will James' Smoky, will be filmed in technicolor in Utah, providing Smoky is willing. Fred MacMurray and Anne Baxter are, but you never can tell about a horse.

Any producer or director who has tackled horse story, or a movie featuring a horse will tell you that Ichabod Crane modernized would be a movie about the wide open spaces, only instead of the headless rider throwing his head at you, the horse would.

SOME NAGS ARE JAMS

There was an actress once who objected to the breath of her leading man's horse, and the trainers sprayed his tonsils before every close up, The poor horse couldn't eat his hay nights he was so saturated with a popular brand of halitosis remedy.

There's another problem

According to normal plot routine, Fred MacMurray would marry Miss Baxter in the picture. Ten million youngsters will not permit such an ending, however, because that would leave Smoky all by himself out on the cold lonesome prairie. Being of an age that considers love slightly ridiculous, they would consider MacMurray a drip.

No one expects Betty Grable to sing grand opera or walk a tight rope. As long as she's beautiful people are happy. But it is not so with a horse.

People expect a horse to do absolutely everything but cook. If he can't stampede with a wild horse herd, jump off a cliff into the river below, plunge down a steep incline, kill cougars and rattlers with his paws, fight other horses and do some fancy bucking, the customer will decide he's a plug.

VOICE IS IMPORTANT

So Smoky went to a regular dramatic school for horses before starting work in the picture. Jack Lindell, an equine expert, is dean.

The equine dramatic school also keeps on the lookout for good voices, Any old whinny is just not good enough for the movies A stallion must not sound off in a falsetto voice, any more than a leading man may Right now the studio is looking for a horse that has the timbre and depth of John Charles Thomas for a bit role Lindell has tested a few but they wheeze like an actress in a passionate love scene.