Like his grandfather before him, Joey Steiner is a jockey.
Like his grandfather before him, Joey Steiner is a jockey who has played a jockey in a Seabiscuit movie.
That he followed in his grandfather's footsteps into horse racing is no coincidence. Born and raised in Renton, Wash., Steiner, 38, has racing in his blood.
His great-grandfather, Fred Uder, was a racehorse owner. His grandfather and his uncle, both named Jack Leonard, were jockeys. And his mother, Sally, and her husband, Joe, own a track restaurant.
While still in high school, Steiner left Washington to attend jockey school in Southern California. It was his grandfather who encouraged him to make the move and who signed him up for the coursework.
That Steiner landed a role as a stunt rider in "Seabiscuit," the eagerly anticipated film version of Laura Hillenbrand's 2001 best seller, which opens Friday, is no coincidence either. Luck, however, played a big part in his getting the role.
Steiner, a professional rider since 1981, happened to be in the jockey room at Santa Anita Park two years ago when Chris McCarron, a jockey he had known for 20 years, walked in with a stranger.
Word was out on the racing grapevine that McCarron was working on "Seabiscuit," and the stranger with McCarron that day was Gary Ross, "Seabiscuit's" writer-producer-director.
Ross hired McCarron as the film's racing consultant and to play the part of Charley Kurtsinger, the jockey who rode War Admiral in the 1938 match race with Seabiscuit that is widely regarded as one of the greatest horse races of all time.
Steiner said he approached McCarron and told him, "I sure would like to get something small in this movie," for sentimental reasons. His grandfather had worked as a stunt rider in "The Story of Seabiscuit," a highly fictionalized account of the great horse's exploits that was released in 1949.
One of Steiner's enduring memories is of a family photo showing his mother, Sally, then 3 1/2, sitting on Shirley Temple's lap on the set of the film.
Temple was the picture's star, playing the niece of Seabiscuit's trainer who falls in love with the horse's jockey. The photo was taken at the request of Sally's dad, Jack Leonard, who had done "Story's" stunt riding.
A jockey who raced at Longacres, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park among other well-known tracks, Leonard also worked for studio head Jack Warner as a horse trainer. He and his family lived on Warner's ranch in Southern California, and it was there that stunts for "The Story of Seabiscuit" were filmed.
His grandfather didn't talk much about his Hollywood experiences, Steiner said. But down through the years, the patriarch's work on "The Story of Seabiscuit" was a source of family pride. Steiner thought landing a part, however minor, in the new Seabiscuit movie would be a fine way to honor the memory of his grandfather, who died in 1988.
McCarron agreed, and Steiner was hired to do the same kind of stunt-riding work that his grandfather had done. And the work was hardly "something small."
He doubled for Gary Stevens, who stars as George Woolf. Woolf rode Seabiscuit to victory in the epic 1938 match race with War Admiral. Stevens is himself a jockey of great renown, having won the Kentucky Derby three times. But for his acting debut, Hollywood executives decreed that someone else would perform the hazardous racing scenes. In the match race sequence, that someone was Steiner.
Filmed on nine cold days last October at Keeneland Racetrack in Lexington, Ky. (standing in for Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore), the sequence is the picture's centerpiece. Temperatures hovered in the 30s, and "We were all freezing," Steiner recalled.
Over the course of shooting, up to 10 different horses played Seabiscuit, Steiner said. Each had a specialty. Some were good at running, others were good at walking, still others were good at standing calmly in the winner's circle.
Unlike the 1949 Shirley Temple movie, where the fictionalization extended even to Temple's character, who was invented out of whole cloth by the studio, authenticity was stressed in every aspect of "Seabiscuit."
The jockeys' specially tailored racing silks were made of real silk and their boots were made of real leather, just as they were in the '30s. Today, synthetic materials are used in outfits and boots worn by riders, Steiner said.
The movie itself will be a lasting reminder of what Steiner calls "a great experience" in his life. But a more meaningful memento is a photograph he had taken on the set one day. It's a picture of his 8-year-old daughter, Cole, sitting on the lap of actress Elizabeth Banks, who plays the the wife of Seabiscuit's owner, the main female character in the film. Deliberately posed to mimic that long-ago photo of a young Sally Steiner with Shirley Temple, it pays homage to Jack Leonard and the legacy he handed down to his grandson.
Soren Andersen writes for the Tacoma News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.