Fury

Fury came from a farm in Missouri, where he was originally named Highland Dale. Ralph McCutcheon begain training him for film when Fury was 18 months old.

The famous television series "Fury" starred Peter Graves as "Jim" & Bobby Diamond as his son "Joey" and first ran on NBC Saturday mornings, from 1955 - 1960. It was syndicated from 1959 on, under the title "Brave Stallion", and then rerun on NBC 1960 - 1966.

During all this time, Fury played roles in other movies. Fury was 26 months old when he starred in "Black Beauty". He also starred in "Gypsy Colt", and in this film he had to perform many tricks. By that time, Mr. McCutcheon had him well trained, and he did very well indeed. His next role was as the black stallion in the movie "Giant".

Fury also starred in "Wild is the Wind" and "The Return of Wildfire", and had guest roles on the TV series "Lassie" and "My Friend Flicka".

Fury had quite a lively personality, and loved to be paid attention to. He liked to be hosed down after a particularly hard scene (it's hot in California!), and then he would immediately roll in the dust, getting himself all muddy. This, of course, meant that for his next scene, he'd have to be bathed all over again (and held on a lead line so he wouldn't roll!).

Fury had heaves for most of his life. Heaves is a lung condition in horses sort of like asthema. Fury's hay was always wet down before given to him, and this helped a lot.

Fury won Patsy Awards (the animal actors' Oscar) in 1958 for the movie "Wild is the Wind" as 2nd place winner. He won another in 1955 for "Gypsy Colt" as 1st place, then was 3rd place for the "Fury" series in 1960 & 1961.

Fury lived at the stables in Van Nuys, California then was moved to Sand Canyon an area in Santa Clarita, California. Fury and Mr. McCutcheon eventually retired at Sand Canyon ranch. Well, eventually Mr. McCutcheon died, and what happend to Fury after that is next:

In Toni Helfer's book The Gentle Jungle she tells of an old cowboy who wanted to breed his mare to their Appaloosa stallion. He offered a black stallion in trade. A day or two later the old cowboy shows up at their ranch and backs his trailer up, and out comes a beaten up, starved old stallion who immediately collapses. They take care of him and pull him through and keep him. Several months later when he was in better shape Toni got on him to see if he was broken to ride. Well he was, and then they discovered he was trained to do tricks. They had called this old black stallion King and said they ran out of things to ask him to do before he ran out of tricks. But they didn't know his history.

An old Hollywood stuntman came out to their ranch one day to visit and was wandering around with the horses and came running back in and asked where they'd gotten that black stallion. They told him and he said don't you kids recognize him, thats Fury. So, according to this account Fury did spend the last few years of his life happy, but went through some hard times somewhere to get there.