Ben Cooper plays jockey Ronnie Watson, who lies dying in a hospital bed, and is eager to share a peculiar story to a newspaper reporter(played by Sandy Kenyon). It seems that one day many years ago, he cheated his former friend and mentor Sam Berry(played by Walter Burke) out of a victory because the man had, in his view, stolen his girlfriend, thus advancing his career while ruining Sam's. Years later, he is convinced that Sam got even with him in similar fashion, but receives a shock when he finds out the truth, which he will not be able to handle... Reasonably good tale of spectral revenge set amongst the world of horse racing.
8 Reviews
"He came a long way to cut you off in today's race."
classicsoncall29 January 2015
Warning: Spoilers
For the benefit of anyone coming to this episode who might have been born after 1980 or so (maybe even sooner), it might be worthwhile to comment on that weird looking plastic enclosure the dying Ronnie Watson (Ben Cooper) was surrounded by on his hospital bed. That would have been an 'oxygen tent', a treatment used quite liberally back in the Fifties for patients in order to help them breathe. Sometimes these trips back in time are kind of interesting.
So anyway, this step beyond utilizes a theme that seemed to be recycled any number of times in these stories, that of guilt and vengeance from beyond the grave. It's reminiscent of an earlier episode, 'The Aerialist' in which the principal character Watson is affected by the presence of someone who couldn't have physically been present to decide an outcome that he experienced. Specifically, jockey Watson pulled up his horse in a race to avoid colliding with a former mentor (Walter Burke as Sam Barry), but a film of the race confirms that Barry wasn't there - he died earlier that day!
It's puzzling what to make of these stories from the series, as they are offered as real events without any plausible explanation. If the shows weren't already a half century old it might be a little easier to track down the source material, but the best one can do today is watch and wonder. Or maybe make up one of your own.
So anyway, this step beyond utilizes a theme that seemed to be recycled any number of times in these stories, that of guilt and vengeance from beyond the grave. It's reminiscent of an earlier episode, 'The Aerialist' in which the principal character Watson is affected by the presence of someone who couldn't have physically been present to decide an outcome that he experienced. Specifically, jockey Watson pulled up his horse in a race to avoid colliding with a former mentor (Walter Burke as Sam Barry), but a film of the race confirms that Barry wasn't there - he died earlier that day!
It's puzzling what to make of these stories from the series, as they are offered as real events without any plausible explanation. If the shows weren't already a half century old it might be a little easier to track down the source material, but the best one can do today is watch and wonder. Or maybe make up one of your own.
The Horse with white paws!!!
elo-equipamentos10 March 2020
Thru flashbacks a dying Jockey Ronnie Watson (Ben Cooper) at Hospital's bed asking for to tell your odd story to a pressman, at youth time he had a strong friendship with a skillful and mature jockey Sam Barry (Walter Burke) who was planning quit the horse races in high style, including betting a large amount of your save money on the own horse, to living an easy life together with his girlfriend Rita (Carmen Phillips) which Ronnie already dated and nourished hope to get her back again, thus Ronnie absorbed by jealousy on the racetrack he committed a trickery, avoiding Barry to be the winner, such happening took Sam lose all money, Carmen and throw him away to ostracism, running on South America for a few bucks only with a horse called Patas Blancas (White Paws), suddenly Sam appears from nowhere to run on Ronnie's race, who bet all his money on your horse, anyway on the same Sam's previous conditions, what's coming is really haunting!!!
Resume:
First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25
Resume:
First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25
It's theme involving guilty is very, very familiar
planktonrules6 March 2014
The theme to "Frontrunner" is a common one on "One Step Beyond"—a guilty conscience. The show begins with a ban in intensive care and he's dying. Despite this, he insists that the reporter be allowed to stay and the dying man wants to explain his story. It seems that he's a very famous jockey—perhaps the best jockey there ever was. However, when he was younger, he allowed his anger to destroy another jockey and he had to get it off his chest. Following the incident where he hurt this other man, he went on to greater and greater success. However, one day he saw the other jockey again and this meeting ending up being MEGA-creepy.
While this is not among the best episodes for the series, it is solid and well acted. My only complaints are that like all the other shows, I really doubt the narrator (John Newland) when he insists the story is true and the other is that the actor playing the dying man was just too big to be believable as a jockey.
While this is not among the best episodes for the series, it is solid and well acted. My only complaints are that like all the other shows, I really doubt the narrator (John Newland) when he insists the story is true and the other is that the actor playing the dying man was just too big to be believable as a jockey.
Does Conscience Make Cowards of Us All?
theowinthrop14 October 2006
Warning: Spoilers
An interesting episode on this series which deals with the power of an apparition. Whether it is a ghost or the viewer's conscience is up to the viewer to decide, but it certainly evens the score.
Ben Cooper plays Ronnie Watson, an ambitious jockey who will stop at nothing to win a race (so long as he's not caught). The racetrack he is working at has an older jockey named Sam Barry (Walter Burke) who is well liked, and highly professional. Watson and Barry are in a close neck - to - neck race that Watson cheats on to win. Barry is aware of this, but the cheating is such that it is his behavior that is unfairly scrutinized.
That is the first part of the story. The second part is about five years later, and Watson has managed to achieve quite a public image as a winning jockey. He is in another important race, but in the days before the race he keeps seeing Barry at different spots, not all of them the race track. Each time Barry is smiling somewhat sardonically at Watson, and each time disappears before Watson can confront him.
SPOILER COMING UP: The race starts and Watson is in the lead for most of it, but in the last stretch he sees Barry on a horse approaching in such a way that the horse seems headed to collide with his horse. Watson pulls up his horse, thus throwing the race. When confronted by the judges, he insists he was in danger from the horse ridden by Barry and had no choice. This angers the judges even more, as Barry was not in the race on any horse. They review a film of the race, and on it you see Watson on his horse leading, and then pulling it to stop it for no reason. Finally, someone checks into Sam Barry's whereabouts, and finds he died only a couple of weeks earlier in a racing accident in South American, where he was still able to get jobs as a jockey. Watson is thrown out of racing for throwing the race.
Now, to me this episode was one that did not depend on whether or not one accepted the solution that a real apparition of the dead man made Watson behave as he did. Either way, as a real ghost of the dead man coming back to even a score, or as a mental effect from a belated, guilty conscience, the conclusion of the story was really very effective.
I also liked this episode because it touched on a subject that rarely is mentioned in movies or television. While films discussed heroes in sports like Rockne, Gipp, Piccolo (football), Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Alexander, Dean, Lewis, Pearsall (baseball), Thorpe (Olympics and professional baseball and football), Sullivan, Corbett, Johnson, Dempsey, Braddock, Louis & Schmeling (boxing), Hogan (golf), it rarely tried to touch on racing to honor any major jockey. If you think about it, NATIONAL VELVET and it's sequel INTERNATIONAL VELVET did look at the issue of training for a major race from a jockey's perspective, but the jockeys were fictitious in both cases (and of amateur standing). The only film that mentioned a real, famous jockey was YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, because George M. Cohan's first successful musical (LITTLE JOHNNY JONES) was based on the scandal that engulfed Tod Sloan, America's leading jockey in 1903, when he was disqualified in the English Derby. There was no film about say Eddie Arcaro, or about Fred Archer, 19th Century England's most successful jockey (known as "the Tin-man", because betting on his horse inevitably led to being a big winner)*.
(*After writing the above last night it dawned on me that the "heroes" or "heroines" of such films are the horses - they are beautiful animals, usually lovable, and magnificent pure speed machines. So we have films like PHAR LAP and SEABISCUIT.)
I bring this out because in actuality leading jockeys are well known, but seem to get short shrift in comparison to their counterparts in other sports. It is as though the glory of riding a horse to victory is besmirched because of the gambling involved (a fate that baseball almost shared until the aftermath of the Black Sox Scandal). Yet Watson manages to get some high degree of public notice by his successful racing. In fact, one of the interesting things about the tele-play here is that we see Watson in his apartment talking to another person about how really famous he's become. It seems they have just finished shooting a television show in his apartment, and it was some kind of interview, and only really famous are on that show. Of course, in 1959, the viewing audience would guess that Watson had just been on PERSON - TO - PERSON, being interviewed by Edward R. Murrow. It's a curious reference point, both in showing Watson's growing fame, but in reminding us of a contemporary television show.
So for all these reasons, I enjoyed this episode of ONE STEP BEYOND, and recommend it to the viewers.
Ben Cooper plays Ronnie Watson, an ambitious jockey who will stop at nothing to win a race (so long as he's not caught). The racetrack he is working at has an older jockey named Sam Barry (Walter Burke) who is well liked, and highly professional. Watson and Barry are in a close neck - to - neck race that Watson cheats on to win. Barry is aware of this, but the cheating is such that it is his behavior that is unfairly scrutinized.
That is the first part of the story. The second part is about five years later, and Watson has managed to achieve quite a public image as a winning jockey. He is in another important race, but in the days before the race he keeps seeing Barry at different spots, not all of them the race track. Each time Barry is smiling somewhat sardonically at Watson, and each time disappears before Watson can confront him.
SPOILER COMING UP: The race starts and Watson is in the lead for most of it, but in the last stretch he sees Barry on a horse approaching in such a way that the horse seems headed to collide with his horse. Watson pulls up his horse, thus throwing the race. When confronted by the judges, he insists he was in danger from the horse ridden by Barry and had no choice. This angers the judges even more, as Barry was not in the race on any horse. They review a film of the race, and on it you see Watson on his horse leading, and then pulling it to stop it for no reason. Finally, someone checks into Sam Barry's whereabouts, and finds he died only a couple of weeks earlier in a racing accident in South American, where he was still able to get jobs as a jockey. Watson is thrown out of racing for throwing the race.
Now, to me this episode was one that did not depend on whether or not one accepted the solution that a real apparition of the dead man made Watson behave as he did. Either way, as a real ghost of the dead man coming back to even a score, or as a mental effect from a belated, guilty conscience, the conclusion of the story was really very effective.
I also liked this episode because it touched on a subject that rarely is mentioned in movies or television. While films discussed heroes in sports like Rockne, Gipp, Piccolo (football), Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Alexander, Dean, Lewis, Pearsall (baseball), Thorpe (Olympics and professional baseball and football), Sullivan, Corbett, Johnson, Dempsey, Braddock, Louis & Schmeling (boxing), Hogan (golf), it rarely tried to touch on racing to honor any major jockey. If you think about it, NATIONAL VELVET and it's sequel INTERNATIONAL VELVET did look at the issue of training for a major race from a jockey's perspective, but the jockeys were fictitious in both cases (and of amateur standing). The only film that mentioned a real, famous jockey was YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, because George M. Cohan's first successful musical (LITTLE JOHNNY JONES) was based on the scandal that engulfed Tod Sloan, America's leading jockey in 1903, when he was disqualified in the English Derby. There was no film about say Eddie Arcaro, or about Fred Archer, 19th Century England's most successful jockey (known as "the Tin-man", because betting on his horse inevitably led to being a big winner)*.
(*After writing the above last night it dawned on me that the "heroes" or "heroines" of such films are the horses - they are beautiful animals, usually lovable, and magnificent pure speed machines. So we have films like PHAR LAP and SEABISCUIT.)
I bring this out because in actuality leading jockeys are well known, but seem to get short shrift in comparison to their counterparts in other sports. It is as though the glory of riding a horse to victory is besmirched because of the gambling involved (a fate that baseball almost shared until the aftermath of the Black Sox Scandal). Yet Watson manages to get some high degree of public notice by his successful racing. In fact, one of the interesting things about the tele-play here is that we see Watson in his apartment talking to another person about how really famous he's become. It seems they have just finished shooting a television show in his apartment, and it was some kind of interview, and only really famous are on that show. Of course, in 1959, the viewing audience would guess that Watson had just been on PERSON - TO - PERSON, being interviewed by Edward R. Murrow. It's a curious reference point, both in showing Watson's growing fame, but in reminding us of a contemporary television show.
So for all these reasons, I enjoyed this episode of ONE STEP BEYOND, and recommend it to the viewers.
Burke's Law
wes-connors4 July 2009
Famed jockey Ben Cooper (as Ronnie Watson) is in intensive care, at Memorial Hospital, after a horse-racing mishap. Believing death is near, the gasping Mr. Cooper tells his amazing story to "Chronicle" reporter Sandy Kenyon (as Tim Berryman). A flashback to his career begins with mentor jockey Walter Burke (as Sam Barry) announcing his impending retirement and marriage - to Cooper's girlfriend. Shocked, Cooper makes his name in the sport by cheating Mr. Burke out of a final racetrack win. Years later, Burke seems to enact a fantastical and terrifying revenge
**** Front Runner (6/9/59) Don Mankiewicz ~ Ben Cooper, Walter Burke, Sandy Kenyon
**** Front Runner (6/9/59) Don Mankiewicz ~ Ben Cooper, Walter Burke, Sandy Kenyon
Astral Vengeance
Goingbegging20 October 2021
A top jockey, Sam Barry, plans to quit while he's ahead, betting a huge sum on winning his final race, in friendly competition with a promising youngster, Ronnie Watson, whom he has been training up, but whose girlfriend has just rejected him in favour of Barry.
In the confusion, Watson appears to commit a serious breach of the rules ("clawing"), which pushes Barry into fourth place. A tribunal debates whether to disallow Watson's title, but when he reveals that Barry had been betting on his own performance ("not done" in racing), they give him the benefit of the doubt. This launches Watson's career, and Barry angrily vows revenge.
A few years later, Watson has attained his own high peak, while Barry is a forgotten man, relegated to small-time contests in South America. One day, Watson enters for a major championship in California, where he is startled to recognise Barry as one of the riders. But in the course of the race, Barry's vow turns out to be more than mere bluster, and what goes round comes round...
A splendid, muscular performance by Ben Cooper as Watson, and Carmen Phillips sultry, sulky and dangerously glamorous as the disputed girl. As always, our host John Newland assures us that the story is "a matter of human record", meaning a real-life story give-or-take a few details. As always, it's mighty hard to believe.
In the confusion, Watson appears to commit a serious breach of the rules ("clawing"), which pushes Barry into fourth place. A tribunal debates whether to disallow Watson's title, but when he reveals that Barry had been betting on his own performance ("not done" in racing), they give him the benefit of the doubt. This launches Watson's career, and Barry angrily vows revenge.
A few years later, Watson has attained his own high peak, while Barry is a forgotten man, relegated to small-time contests in South America. One day, Watson enters for a major championship in California, where he is startled to recognise Barry as one of the riders. But in the course of the race, Barry's vow turns out to be more than mere bluster, and what goes round comes round...
A splendid, muscular performance by Ben Cooper as Watson, and Carmen Phillips sultry, sulky and dangerously glamorous as the disputed girl. As always, our host John Newland assures us that the story is "a matter of human record", meaning a real-life story give-or-take a few details. As always, it's mighty hard to believe.
Front Runne
Prismark1020 May 2022
Ronnie Watson is a once famous jockey now in intensive care. He has one final story to tell to a journalist from his deathbed.
As a young man, Ronnie let his anger get the better of him when a famed jockey Sam Barry stole his girlfriend.
Ronnie ruined his career by telling the authorities that Sam placed a bet on himself. He was planning to retire on the winnings.
Years later Ronnie planned to do something similar. Only for a veteran Sam Barry showed up out of nowhere and ruined Ronnie's race.
Only the race footage showed that there was no Sam Barry in the race.
It was always likely that there would be no happy ending for Ronnie Watson. Like Sam he should had kept quiet about his sidebets.
As a young man, Ronnie let his anger get the better of him when a famed jockey Sam Barry stole his girlfriend.
Ronnie ruined his career by telling the authorities that Sam placed a bet on himself. He was planning to retire on the winnings.
Years later Ronnie planned to do something similar. Only for a veteran Sam Barry showed up out of nowhere and ruined Ronnie's race.
Only the race footage showed that there was no Sam Barry in the race.
It was always likely that there would be no happy ending for Ronnie Watson. Like Sam he should had kept quiet about his sidebets.
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