The Red Pony (1973)

TV drama starring Henry Fonda
-Year: 1973
-Year in film: 1890s
-Country: USA
-Who in bibs: Jody ~13, other boy, men
-Available on DVD: yes *
-I own: no
-Bib occurrence: often
-Rating:  6/10 ?
-Rating: ******
-Comment: At least 13 or 14 yo Clint Howard in faded, stone washed, light blue appearing blue jeans bibs. Also wet scenes and sitting in overalls. And he also wears regular jeans.

During research for my western blog, I found a good b&w lobby card of the 1949 movie (9 yo boy sitting). I already had this entry but haven't checked the complete movie until now. Still rating 4. Updated entry at

/2011/03/19/the-red-pony-1949/

The setting of both movies are earlier than thought (in around the 1890s, so are ranch and real western movies).

The 1973 remake is very rare and I haven't seen the movie, just some pics. Maybe I even have some parts on a VHS recording but don't have the time to search for it. There are some snapshots, also showing Clint, but not in overalls. There's one very good pic at bfi.org.uk but it's strongly copyrighted as they sold prints of it. (can easily be found by a web image search). So I used a part of a different poster and colorized it.

It's available on a DVDr (MOD) in very good image quality and on an OOP German VHS (2nd alternate German title). I haven't found any (free) clip on the web. Not even a trailer. I wonder why.

The overalls and scenes seem very good (much better than in the 1949 version, and the boy is older), but somehow I don't like Clint Howard, otherwise I maybe would order the DVD.

So rating just 6-7 for now.

Update: Finally, I have seen the complete movie on YouTube. Even more scenes than first assumed. Also some few others in bibs.

/2017/09/06/update-the-red-pony-1973/