Sporting Chance on AllMovie

Sporting Chance is a prime example of how once-prominent silent screen personalities ended up grasping at straws on Poverty Row. The story is built around a championship steeplechase, on which the futures of jockey Terry Nolan (Buster Collier), his sweetheart Mary Bascombe (Claudia Dell) and his romantic rival Phillip Lawrence Jr. (James Hall) are hinged. Reportedly, this film represented the first time that a steeplechase was specially staged for the cameras, though this fact took second place in the ads to the film's theme song, Old Playmates, which is sung twice too often by Claudia Dell. Only former "Our Gang" member Eugene Jackson, cast as a stablehand, seems comfortable around his equestrian co-stars. Sporting Chance was written by King Baggott, who in better times had been an important actor/director/producer but who was largely limited to bit parts in the talkie era.