One of the most unusual and unknown films in the Ford canon is Kentucky Pride, a lovely, unpretentious story about a racehorse. Ford said, “We went to Kentucky to do a little story about horse racing, and we put a lot of comedy into it.” He also put a lot of heart into it. This silent film is narrated by the horse (via intertitles) and draws from the essential Fordian themes of home, family, family breakup, and tradition. The lead human role is played by Henry B. Walthall, the “Little Colonel” from Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, who also plays a memorable role as an old Confederate veteran in Ford’s 1934 Judge Priest; here he is the improvident horse owner, Beaumont. Also prominent in the cast is one of Ford’s most ubiquitous character actors, the delightful J. Farrell MacDonald, as the Irish horse trainer, Mike Donovan. But the central character of this unjustly forgotten gem is a horse named Virginia’s Future, who is sold by Beaumont to become a drayhorse after she breaks her leg. Her colt, Confederacy, becomes a champion, and Virginia’s Future tells us, “When I saw my baby flying ahead, all the aching disappointment, the bitterness of my own life, seemed to melt away . . . Suddenly I knew that I had not failed, that I too had carried on . . . My darling baby . . . had paid my debts in full.” As Tag Gallagher writes, “This is the first extant appearance of the ‘Tradition & Duty’ theme that — prominent in early Universals also — will be found important in nearly all Ford’s subsequent films. And in this incipient vignette style lie seeds of Ford’s greatness. Through broad playing and multitudes of tics, somewhat in the manner of the British stage or commedia dell’arte, it characterizes instantly and narrates economically.” Ford even finds a moment to provide a thrilling cameo appearance for the greatest race horse of the day, Man o’ War.