Spotlight on Seabiscuit (NY Times, registration required)
OK, I have to admit, this is totally cool. In its coverage of the film being released nationally today, the Times has included not only its review of the film and original review of the book, but a few articles about Seabiscuit himself that were originally published back in the 1930s and 1940s. The older articles all require Adobe Acrobat for reading. But still, as product tie-ins go, this one is pretty cool.
The LA Times has a few human interest stories centered around the review, but peculiarly, they don't do anything like as comprehensive a package. Peculiar because Seabiscuit was based out of southern California; the big race that his owner always wanted to win, at least as much as the match race with War Admiral, was the Santa Anita Handicap. (As Santa Anita Park notes in its historical timeline, the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap was his last race, and they have a life sized statue of him erected in the Paddock Gardens.)
Then again, maybe the LA Times skipped it because the LA Daily News went hog wild. Or horse-wild, as the case may be.
(... They sawed off his hooves as memorabilia? And then turned them into ashtrays? Ew. People are just damn peculiar sometimes.)
And, of course, there was the earlier, less schmaltzy PBS special about Seabiscuit, including vintage racing broadcasts of some of his races.
Posted by iain at July 25, 2003 12:07 PMComments
