User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Nice little sport & romance flick involving 25 year old, she must have been a child prodigy, full collage physics professor former New York GIant running back and later TV personality Frank's big sister Frances Gifford as Dr. Ann Wotters. Ann gets herself involved with the horses in order to win $20,000.00 with the help of her brain-trust colleagues professors Gorke Permbroke & Collyer, Sig Ruman Reginald Owens & Charles Hotton. This all comes about when the kindly old and a bit nutty Dr. Homer Pecke, Edmund Gwenn, an expert in aerial aeronautics and rocket research was kicked out of the collage he's been teaching at for wanting more money for a grant of $20,000.00 for his work in space age technology.

Trying to figure out how to get Dr.Pecke back his job as well as find him after he just dropped out of sight Ann & the professors learn from the collage janitor Tony, Frank Austin, that there's money to be made at the race track just as long as you pick the right horse. Tony had just come back from the race track happily giving out cigars in the fact that he just cashed in a ticket that he had bet on a 10 to 1 shot!

Ann & the professors feel with their super human intelligence they can do the same thing, by figuring out the horses, that a high-school drop out like Tony can do! The three eggheads together with Ann get their life savings, $2,000,00, and get straight to work in them picking winners at the race track to parlay the $2,000.00 into a $20,000.00 win-fall. Enough to get the now missing in the wild Dr. Homer Pecke's job back.

We have the usual complications you would expect in a movie like this with Ann getting involved with horse owner the young hansom and dashing Steve Canfield, James Craig, in talking him into letting her together with her professor friend to share his cramped hotel room with when all the rooms in all he hotels in Pasadena, where the race track is, are all filled up. It's when the big race came up that Steve tells Ann to bet the ranch on the favorite that she instead bet the horse that the professors picked, scientifically, to win the race Steve's horse Mr. McGillicutty. Not listing to Steve Ann blows the money by betting Mr.McGillicutty who loses to the favorite that Steve told her to put the money on; the eventual winner Migrater.

Instead of feeling sorry in not listening to Steve on who to bet on Ann get very angry at him by hearing a rumor that he himself put $50,000.00 on his own Mr. McGillicutty just before the race went off and kept it from her. When you think about all this which in fact Ann and her brain-trust of super human intelligent professors didn't if $50,000.00 was bet to win on Steve's horse he would have gone off at 1 to 10 not 10 to 1 like he did!

It's when Steve's fiancée the pretty and rich Maryland horse breeder Hilda Spotts, Ava Gardner, shows up that sparks really start flying in the movie. The fighting between the two women Ann & Hilda over who eventually gets to marry the handsome and lucky,in having those two gorgeous dames fighting over him, Steve was by far the biggest plus in the film! Far more then the horse racing sequences in it! It's only fair that Hilda should be the one to tie the knot with Steve since she's known him since kindergarten. But were supposed to sympathize with the hot under the collar Ann who just got the know the guy a little less the two or three days ago! Also it's Ann who had Steve thrown out of his own hotel room that he gracefully shared with Ann and her professor friends and thus had no, if he he any any in the first place, romantic commitments to her at all!

***SPOILERS*** In the end it's not what horse wins big race "The Baldwin" Cup to get Dr. Pecke's, who had since returned and was reinstated, job back but what horse wins for the woman who bet him, Ann or Hilda, so she she can get to marry the by now confused,in whats going on in the movie, Steve Craig! Predictable ending with no real surprises at all but Ann trying to take center stage at the end of the big race to announce to the world that she and Steve are, as they say in the gossip pages, "an item"! As for the gorgeous Hilda she seemed more then happy to have the big handsome jerk Steve Craig drop her since like they say in horse racing he wasn't up in her class anyway.

SYNOPSIS: A group of professors discover what they hope is a foolproof betting system.

COMMENT: Here's an early Ava Gardner (early? - it was her twentieth film) that shows glamorous photography equals star status.

Miss Frances Gifford is the star. She is always so attractively and lovingly photographed by Charles Salerno, the film is a constant pleasure to the eye (even though its slight and mindless story often insults the brain).

Miss Gardner, on the other hand, is put firmly in the shade. Even her most rabid fan would be forced to concede that on the evidence of this film Frances is by far the more alluring lass! Photography is everything, the star is supreme - at least at MGM.

As for the rest of the players, it is slightly painful to watch such talented character actors as Gwen, Owen, Ruman and Halton often losing out in their constant battle against such thin material. They receive no assistance whatever from a totally disinterested, pedestrian director.

Ah! but Miss Gifford's fans: this is a film to have them rejoice, sound their trumpets and make merry. Never has their heroine looked so lovely!

This will be of particular historical interest as one of the first major film roles of the beautiful Ava Gardner, here cast as the femme fatal, the former girlfriend of horse owner James Craig who comes between him and research scientist Frances Gifford. Along with several aging professor co-workers (shades of the professors in "Ball of Fire"), Gifford is out to scientifically prove a theory of what makes a horse a sure winner in the races. She's out to win the big race so she can fund fired professor Edmund Gwenn's laboratory and bring him back after the trustees ended his research. Somehow, Gifford and the men end up in Craig's hotel room and of course, romantic sparks fly, with comical misunderstandings brought in when Gardner pops up to reclaim him. Sig Ruman and Reginald Owen are two of the other professors and add a droll flavor to the otherwise staid situation.

A passable time-filler but no classic, it really has little to offer other than the presence of a rising screen beauty who was already getting her name in the papers thanks to her off-screen romantic exploits. It would take a few film noir roles and a marriage to a certain skinny crooner to propel her into legendary status, but here, other than sharing a few wisecracks towards Gifford, she has really nothing substantial to do.

In She Went to the Races, scientists in need of money in order to fund further research, develop a method for winning at the race track.

It's a rather silly sort of Christmassy-type film, with no substance, in either the horse racing or the romance aspect. Similar to "Ball of Fire" in ways as others having already stated, but not close in terms of the quality. Frances Gifford's fine as lead, James Craig a poor man's Clark Gable. As scientists they say they won't take into account the human element, but that's simply not possible in this field, which Ann does. It's not all bad, but far from an engaging film.