Fast Company (1953) User Reviews

Horse Laughs

[boblipton · 6/10 · 4 January 2006]

This is a pretty good comedy drama about how Polly Bergen inherited one horse, had all the smart guys in racing take her for a sucker but still managed to triumph -- at least to the extent of snaring Howard Keel.

Polly Bergen is a little too one-note in her role, one that seems to have been tailor-made for Jane Wyman -- but that was another studio. Howard Keel is wonderful in his laid back role, which seems to have been written for Clark Gable. There's an excellent supporting cast, including Nina Foch -- who is a wonderful scene stealer here -- and Marjorie Main and John Sturges shows a good command of his cast and crew, moving surefootedly from comedy to drama.

The issue with the film is that it's all a little too familiar, both the polite love triangle and the horse story. It all results in a pleasant waste of time.

Music Moves The Horse

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 5 May 2011]

Fast Company is exactly what Polly Bergen finds herself in when she inherits her late father's stable. She also inherits trainer Howard Keel who has ideas about going out on his own with one of her horses with whom he sees potential champion. This horse responds to the dulcet singing tones of jockey Joaquin Garay and when Garay breaks into song, the horse kicks it into high gear.

Keel's also been romancing rich rival owner Nina Foch who does know her racehorse flesh. Despite them both rivals for Keel, the women do bond on a certain level. Will romance or sisterhood win out?

MGM like all the rest of the big studios never liked keeping their contract stars idle. So if there was no musical project for Howard Keel or Polly Bergen, they got to do something like Fast Company. Poor Polly she never did get to sing in one of those splashy MGM musicals. Dore Schary was in charge when this film was made and he was into the business of social significance. No one would say Fast Company had any messages though.

Interesting though with both Keel and Bergen in the film, the only singing was to the horse by Joaquin Garay. Maybe Keel and Bergen could have gotten more out of him with a couple of notes.

Fast Company certainly was nothing for anyone to have been ashamed of. It has quite a few amusing moments around Bergen learning the horse racing business the hard way and romance interfering all around.

Down in Texas where I come from we don't let anyone swindle our woman folks

[sol-kay · 5/10 · 16 December 2011]

(Some Spoilers) Predictable horse opera of a movie with the fit and handsome and wearing costume tailor made clothes, by the MGM studio, Howard Keel in a non singing role as racetrack con artist Rick Grayton. Rick is planning to make it big in the big race, the 34th running of the Santa Lisa Handicap, coming up with his winless nag Gay Fleet. Gay Fleet not only never won a race but finished last in the last half dozen or so races he was entered in! Under handicap conditions he's expected to be given a from 50 to 75 pounds less weight advantage, or bug, over his competition! Which was obviously Rick's plan in having him being pulled in all his previous races!

What spoils Rick's future plans on the race track in the sudden appearance of Gay Fleet's owner pretty and a bit naive of the horse racing business Carol Maldon, Polly Bergen. Carol wants to take control of Gay Fleet which would leave out Rick in any future wins, and paydays, that the horse would have! Trying to juggle romance with horse racing has Rick getting himself all confused in exactly what he's supposed to be in the film. Either a Cary Grant like leading man or as the gambler Nathan Detroit, in "Guys & Dolls", Sam Levine.

***SPOILERS*** Like in most horse racing flicks the best part is saved for last. That's when Gay Fleet's jockey Manny Morales, Jaquin Garay, who despite having Broadway singers Keel & Bergen in the cast has the only singing part in the movie. It's Manny's awful singing voice that spurs Gay Fleet to run like the wind in order to break the sound barrier so that Manny's voice can't catch up with him. That despite being given orders by his boss Rick Grayton to pull the horse and lose the race. It's a a good thing that Manny didn't because in the end in winning with her horse it brought both Rick and Carol, who were on the out at the time, together which gave the film a happy and predictable ending.

P.S Check out the very New York City sounding Horace McMahon who became famous playing tough NYPD Let. Detective Mike Parker in the TV "Naked City" police drama trying to talk with a Texas drawl. McMahon's corny Texas like delivery almost brings the roof down on him, as crooked con man and bottom of the deck dealing poker player "Two Pair" Buford, every time he opens his mouth.

Did you say Fast Company? Fast? You've got to be kidding!

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 26 September 2016]

Rather than fast company, this little film provides us with some of the slowest action we have sat through in years. I know it's supposed to be a comedy, but believe me, it's not the least bit funny either! In fact, it's sad to see talents like Polly Bergen and Howard Keel and Nina Foch (pronounced FAWSH, not FOSH or FOCSH), wasted on a "B"-grade bomb like this one. The direction by John Sturges is so totally and disinterestedly routine, we are not a bit surprised that M-G-M failed to renew his contract as, according to a studio spokesman, "we felt he wasn't going any place." But just how wrong can you be? Sturges was actually headed for the big time. And, oddly enough, as it turned out, it was M-G-M that had second thoughts and put him there! But, getting back to "Fast Company", it's not only the direction that has no edge, the script is a write-off also, and the movie's extremely limited budget is always painfully obvious.

Fast Company not so much, like 2011 Kentucky Derby

[charlytully · 6/10 · 10 May 2011]

Since men invented the "Triple Crown," their enslaved and purposely-inbred "undersides" have never racked up this many consecutive losses in a row. With the most recent winners' names going down in famy (the opposite of infamy, of course) along the lines of dictaphone, infirm, and Spokane slow-foot, it's no wonder these apparently more intelligent mammals have become increasingly prone to throw a monkey wrench into the machinations of man. Why else would all the favorites for the 2011 "fastest two minutes in sports" let a nag with such an apt moniker as ANIMAL KINGDOM (not the movie with Jackie Weaver, by the way) triumph (poking along at well over 120 seconds, one might note)? Is it any wonder that a protagonist dubbed "GAY FLEET" easily steals the show from the stable of also-rans MGM chose as Mr. Anonymous Horse's human co-stars?

Given the pre-code treatment of our equine brothers by Hollywood circa the 1950s, it is likely that the unbilled real stars of FAST COMPANY (1953) were ground up for dog chow more than half a century ago. Nowadays, the Tinseltown publicity kazoos have given Kai, the de-pluralized title critter star of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, equal billing with Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson--under her REAL name and age (a level of veracity nearly absent among her bi-pedal top-billed peers). Forget the funny hats and silly love triangles: as with the Derby, if you want to get something out of FAST COMPANY, you'd better be in it just for the horses.

The California horse murders are never old news . . .

[pixrox1 · 7/10 · 22 August 2020]

. . . as America learned yet again in the past year or so. And ever since Balboa swindled Montezuma on the fifth race at Santa Anita, this not-so-"Golden" State has been rife with equestrian corruption, FAST COMPANY reminds viewers. An "honest handicap horse race" is about as likely to occur in Real Life as a bloodless 15-round heavyweight championship bout, as owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms and exercise lads (or lasses) conspire to create a cynical crime cartel. In the end, the only shred of Honesty that sticks is when the slain nags ooze out from the Glue Factory. (But when I was a secretary, I swore by Secretariat for those hard-to-mend jobs.)