Walt Disney seems to have been a little ahead of the curve when it came to Austria. Just a few years before The Sound of Music captured the hearts of the world, Disney went on location in Austria to make a pair of films with plots built around two ancient and beloved Viennese institutions: the Vienna Boys’ Choir in Almost Angels (1962) and the Spanish Riding School in Miracle of the White Stallions (1963). Both of these movies are quite different from the typical live-action Disney film of the period, with their Old World setting, more leisurely pace and somewhat less familiar casts—in fact, quite a lot of the crew and supporting players are European. I’d love to know what it was that sparked Disney’s interest in Vienna, and led to the creation of these movies.

I hadn’t seen Miracle of the White Stallions for quite a while before watching it in preparation for writing this post, and I was more impressed with it than I remember being before. Not necessarily of the acting, or even the technical aspects of the film. I think it’s the nuances of the wartime setting that intrigued me more than they did years ago. This is a glimpse of a different Austria, one that came after the events of The Sound of Music, a glimpse of what it was like for some of the people who could not leave—or chose not to leave—before it was too late. The supporting character of General Tellheim (Curt Jurgens) is the direct opposite of Georg von Trapp: an officer who acquiesced to German authority in spite of not being a Nazi by ideology—musing, in a meditative scene midway through the film, on his own weakness of character in doing so.
The film begins with a voiceover narration from star Robert Taylor, telling a little about the history of the Spanish Riding School and the training of the horses. Some lovely shots of mares and foals running through the pastures of the Lipizzaner stud at Piber, and then of the young stallions frolicking and sparring as they gradually grow to maturity, accompany the opening credits. And as the scene changes to Vienna, there’s an overhead shot of the stallions being led through the streets from the stables to the Riding School—this scene always reminds me of Marguerite Henry’s book White Stallion of Lipizza.

The story opens in the closing days of World War II—the Allies are approaching, Vienna is increasingly subject to air-raids, and the Spanish Riding School’s director, Colonel Alois Podhajsky (Taylor), is growing desperate to evacuate the Lippizaner stallions to safety. But German commanders refuse permission, on the grounds that evacuating such a prominent cultural institution would signal to the people of Vienna that the forecast for the city is bleak. Eventually, the sympathetic General Tellheim is able to offer a loophole of escape, and the Riding School embarks on the risky evacuation.

Strangely enough, the scene where Podhajsky and his wife Verene (Lilli Palmer) bid farewell to the dark and empty riding hall at the beginning of the journey almost foreshadows similar scenes in The Sound of Music—the Captain and Maria’s farewell look around their house, and their walk from the concert spotlight in another riding hall, Salzburg’s Felsenreitschule.

I’ve always thought this early section to be one of the most interesting parts of the movie, as Podhajsky and his staff struggle to get the horses safely out of the bombed city and through a perilous railway journey fraught with official red tape, refugee-crowded stations and air-raid strikes. “Until a few days ago,” says Verene as they wait in a half-deserted railway station, between air-raid sirens, “the war was just radio reports, and a few inconveniences. And suddenly, now! And it still seems unreal to me.”

The final days of the war are spent at refugee-filled St. Martin in the Austrian countryside. Here, too, eventually, come the occupying American forces. With the encouragement of a young American officer (James Franciscus), Podhajsky arranges a short-notice performance of the stallions for Third Army commander General George Patton, hoping to convince him to take the Riding School under American protection—and to help rescue the Lipizzaner mares, which are across the border in Czechoslovakia and likely to fall into the hands of the less sympathetic Russians. (The real Alois Podhajsky was still head of the Riding School when Miracle of the White Stallions was made, and he directed their performances in the film.)

From here on out the film follows the progress of “Operation Cowboy,” the expedition by the U.S. army to rescue Allied prisoners and retrieve the horses. As with many true stories adapted for film, Miracle of the White Stallions took considerable liberties with the facts. Although the evacuation to St. Martin, the performance for Patton and the rescue of the mares all took place, the sequence of events and the things that brought them about were considerably rearranged and adapted for the movie. In real life, “Operation Cowboy” had actually already taken place before the performance staged for Patton! The commander of the expedition, Colonel Reed, was consulted by the filmmakers, but said that they went with the fictionalized version as more compelling. If you’re interested in learning more about the true story, here’s an interesting set of articles on how it all really happened.