Rolling Home (DVD)

Briar, a thoroughbred with promise, collapses with a leg injury during a race. His owner and rider, an aging rodeo man named Pop Miller, tearfully begs the track official not to shoot the horse. Intent on nursing the steed back to health, Pop and grandson Gary hitch up the horse trailer and hit the road in search of a veterinarian. Fortune soon brings them to a small town, where a sympathetic minister, Reverend David Owens, offers them food, shelter and a garage to use as a stable. The pastor's struggling church is spirit rich but cash poor, and his generosity to "those rodeo folk" doesn't sit well with rich, young widow Crawford. Normally that wouldn't cause any concern for the Reverend, but it complicates his efforts to woo a large charitable contribution from her for his congregation. Against his better judgment, Owens begins to see the recuperating racehorse as the key to his church's survival.

Rolling Home was written and directed by William A. Berke, a prolific B-movie master. Berke broke into film as actor (using the name William Lester) in fifteen silents made between 1918 and 1924. He began writing for films in 1922, penning over seventy scripts before turning to directing and producing in the sound era. He worked predominantly in the western genre but was no stranger to pulp detective yarns (1945's Dick Tracy) or jungle adventures (1948's Jungle Jim). His last film, The Lost Missile, was one of four he produced and directed in 1958 before his untimely death at age 55.

• drama