By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the engaging based-on-fact heartland drama Rodeo Girl, starring Katharine Ross, Bo Hopkins, Candy Clark, Wilford Brimley and Jacqueline Brookes.
82-year-old, now retired Katharine Ross was one of the great female movie stars of the late 1960s, appearing in two of that seismic decade’s most epochal films with 1969’s Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and 1967’s The Graduate. Ross featured in more hits through the 1970s (1975’s The Stepford Wives, 1976’s The Voyage Of The Damned), and then in the 1980s shifted her game impressively to the small screen.
As well as being a cast regular on the popular soap The Colbys (a high-profile spin-off from the even bigger TV titan Dynasty), Ross also became something of a telemovie queen, with excellent roles in strong small screen flicks like Murder In Texas (1981), Wait Until Dark (1982), Marian Rose White (1982), The Shadow Riders (1982) and more.
One of Ross’s best telemovies is unquestionably 1980’s Rodeo Girl, a heartland drama which feels more like a film from the previous decade. Written by prolific television vet Katharyn Powers (a Star Trek regular who has also written for classic series like Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels) and directed by one-time child star (1931’s The Champ), adult actor (he was Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman flicks), and prolific TV director Jackie Cooper (who helmed much episodic television and many telemovies), Rodeo Girl is loosely based on the true story of pioneering female rodeo champ Sue Pirtle.
Katharine Ross is the much more coolly named Sammy Garrett, the supportive wife of rodeo champ Will Garrett (Bo Hopkins). Sammy, however, is also an accomplished barrel racer, and harbours ambitions to rise through the burgeoning ranks of more male-oriented rodeo events like steer wrestling and bronc riding. Though Sammy has an instant mentor in free-thinking top-gamer J.R Patterson (Candy Clark), her decidedly unreconstructed husband is less enthused. Nursing an injury, Will pisses and moans about having no clean shirts and scant food on the table while Sammy is out honing her rodeo skills. Showing great ability, Sammy starts to nudge at champion status herself, which places increasing pressure on her marriage.
Though strongly feminist in tone, Rodeo Girl remains even-handed and refuses to narratively paint anyone into a corner. Traditional rural American woman Sammy is no soap-boxer: she just loves to ride, and is energised by the success she finds on the rodeo circuit, and wants to excel at it. Will, meanwhile, is certainly no free-thinker, but he’s not exactly a neanderthal either. He loves and respects his wife, and is faithful to her, but just has trouble changing with the times. Rodeo Girl represents a gentle, heartland-style approach to feminism, but it’s a powerful one regardless.
The film also feels wholly authentic, with director Jackie Cooper filming the movie’s many rodeo and cowboying scenes in an almost documentary fashion. Cooper shot the film on location at various real-life rodeos, and captures much of the action as it unfolds. Real riders and support teams are caught on camera going about their work, and you can practically smell the sweat, sawdust and equine aroma. It also helps no end that Katharine Ross (the longtime wife of famed screen cowboy Sam Elliott) is a keen rider and lifetime lover of horses herself.
“I first fell in love with horses at the age of seven on a pony ride, going around in circles, grinning from ear to ear as I was jumping about on this very uncomfortable ride,” Katharine Ross told Cowboys And Indians Magazine in 2016. “I rode in the films Rodeo Girl, The Legacy, and Shadow Riders. My own horse was the first thing I bought after I did my first movie, Shenandoah, in 1965. Being on horseback kind of takes you away from your problems or whatever is bothering you. I feel very fortunate that I can get away into nature and take a great ride, and always come back feeling much better than when I started out.”
Rodeo Girl is also supremely well cast and performed. Katharine Ross looks wholly natural and at ease on a horse in her western gear, and she’s engagingly sweet and plucky as the headstrong but never strident Sammy Garrett. Down-home character actor extraordinaire and cult figure Bo Hopkins (The Wild Bunch, Midnight Express) injects his often sullen and sour character with as much charm as he can, while the actor’s American Graffiti co-star and fellow cult fave Candy Clark (Q: The Winged Serpent, The Man Who Fell To Earth) is all sass and sauce as Sammy’s no-bullshit rodeo champ mentor. Wilford Brimley is solid in support as a thoughtful rodeo clown and Jacqueline Brookes is excellent as Sammy’s soulful, plain-talking mother.
A great showcase for the delightful and somewhat underrated Katharine Ross, and a fascinating look inside the rodeo world with a well-steered feminist kick to boot, Rodeo Girl rides tall and rates as a modest charmer.
Availability: Rodeo Girl is fairly easy to find online in acceptably good audio and visual form.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies Citizen X, Relentless, The Connection, Zuma Beach, The Third Girl From The Left, Snowbeast, Stagecoach, Terror On The Beach, Strange Homecoming, The Possessed, Memorial Day, That Certain Summer, Elvis And The Beauty Queen, Scandal In A Small Town, Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, The Seduction Of Gina, Blue Murder, The Brotherhood Of Justice, The Wave, The California Kid, The Cracker Factory, Night Terror, Inmates: A Love Story, The Shadow Riders, CHiPs: Roller Disco, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway, Young Love, First Love, Escape From Bogen County, The Death Squad, Hit Lady, Brian’s Song, The Defiant Ones, A Cry For Help, Trilogy Of Terror, Policewoman Centerfold, Smash-Up On Interstate 5, Something Evil, Savage, A Step Out Of Line, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
