Florian #1 (From Eric Beheim)

In 1940, MGM released FLORIAN, a film based on Felix Saltan’s 1934 novel about a Lipizzan stallion from Vienna’s famous Spanish Riding School. (Saltan was also the author of BAMBI.)

FLORIAN was produced by Winfield Sheehan, whose wife, opera star Maria Jeritza, just happened to own the only two Lipizzans in the U.S. at that time. (They had been presented to her in appreciation for some benefit concerts she had performed in Vienna in the 1930s.)

No expense was spared in bringing FLORIAN to the screen. A second unit was sent over to Austria to obtain location shots at the Spanish Riding School’s breeding farm near Graz, Austria. (This must have occurred during the summer of 1939 and just prior to the start of World War II in Europe.) The School’s riding hall was faithfully reproduced on a M-G-M sound stage. Cinematography was by the famous cameraman Karl Freund, an exceptionally good music score was prepared by Franz Waxman, and the large cast included many old-time character actors from Hollywood’s “golden age.”