Harnessed Rhythm (1936)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Pete Smith narrates this MGM short about Dixie Dan, a horse that we see from the age of three months all the way up to three years as he becomes a champion harness racer. As you'd expect from a short narrated by Smith, there's quite a bit of comic tone thrown into this but for the most part you get a pretty good idea of what it takes to get a horse ready for racing. We see how they break the horse to get it prepared for racing and then we get to see what it takes to train him. We also get a slow motion look at the harness itself and how it's constructed to make sure the horse races the right way. I'm going to guess that some animal lovers might not agree with this but there's certainly nothing graphic or harmful here. For the most part I found this to be an entertaining entry in the Sports Parade series, which kept up a good pace for its 10-minutes. The film manages to have a couple good laughs, a great bit of educational purpose and the finale gives us a pretty exciting race.