National Velvet (film) - Plot

Plot

National Velvet is the story of a twelve-year old girl, Velvet Brown (Elizabeth Taylor), in Sewels, Sussex, England, who wins a spirited gelding in a raffle and trains him for the Grand National steeplechase aided by her father's (Donald Crisp) hired hand: a young drifter, Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney), who claims to have found Mrs. Brown's name and address among his late father's effects. Mi loathes horses; when he was a jockey in Manchester, he caused a collision which resulted in the death of another jockey. Velvet's horse is named "The Pie" (short for "Pirate", the epithet given him by his previous owner due to his misbehavior). She wins The Pie in a raffle, and convinces Mi to train them both for the Grand National. The night before the race, Velvet senses that the Latvian jockey hired to ride The Pie doesn't believe he can win. Rather than give up the race, Mi imagines he will overcome his fears and ride in the Latvian's place. Velvet has other ideas; she masquerades as the jockey and rides The Pie to victory. Elated by her win of the race, Velvet faints and falls from The Pie just after the finish. An objection is raised for the jockey's not staying in the saddle until reaching the winner's enclosure. A doctor discovers the fallen jockey is "an adolescent female"; Velvet becomes a media sensation, declining an offer of £5,000 to travel to Hollywood with The Pie to be filmed because "he wouldn't like being looked at." In the final scene of the film, Velvet rides off to reveal to a departing Mi that his father was Mrs. Brown's coach in her swim across the English Channel as a young woman.

The film differs from the book in many respects, from the colour of the horse and its name (in the book the horse is a piebald, named "The Piebald") to the appearance of Velvet and her mother, both of whom have been glamourised into very different people. Velvet, in the book, is plain, pale and sickly; her mother weighs 16 stone—224 pounds (102 kg).