General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Electric Horseman

The Electric Horseman is a 1979 American comedy-drama-western directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Robert Redford as a former rodeo champion who steals the drugged $12 million racehorse he is supposed to ride in a Las Vegas publicity show, with Jane Fonda as the television reporter who pursues him and joins his cause.¹ It was produced by Ray Stark for Rastar Films and Redford's Wildwood Enterprises, with Columbia Pictures and Universal sharing the financing and Columbia handling domestic distribution.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	21 December 1979 (United States), PG, 120 minutes¹
Director and stars	Sydney Pollack; Robert Redford (Sonny Steele), Jane Fonda (Hallie Martin), Valerie Perrine, Willie Nelson, John Saxon¹
Writers	Robert Garland (screenplay), Paul Gaer and Garland (screen story), from a story by Shelly Burton²
Pollack–Redford collaboration	Fifth of their pictures as director and actor; Redford's first feature after a three-year hiatus from acting³^•¹
Budget and gross	$14 million budget plus $6 million advertising; domestic gross of $61,801,971¹^•⁴
Recognition	Academy Award nomination for Best Sound; Cinema Writers Circle Award (Spain) for Best Foreign Film, 1981⁵
Filming	Began 1 November 1978 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas; about six weeks there and six weeks in southern Utah, based in St. George¹

Spoilers

Plot

Sonny Steele, a five-time world champion rodeo rider, has traded competition for advertising as national spokesman for Ranch breakfast cereal, touring in a jeweled cowboy costume braided with flashing lights for the conglomerate AMPCO Industries.¹ His manager Wendell (Willie Nelson) struggles to keep him sober, and the company grows disappointed in his performance.¹

During rehearsals for an AMPCO variety show at Caesars Palace, Sonny discovers that Rising Star, the champion racehorse he is to ride on stage and the company's new corporate symbol, has been drugged with tranquilizers.¹ He rides the horse off the stage, down the Las Vegas strip, and into the desert, intending to take it to the wild mustang country of Utah where it can recuperate and be freed.¹^•⁶ Hallie Martin, a New York television newscaster covering the convention, sniffs a good story, tracks Sonny down, and trades her loyalty for exclusive rights to the story as the corporation and police pursue the pair by helicopter into the Utah mountains.⁶^•⁷

Production

The story originated with writer Shelly Burton in the early 1970s. Pollack and Redford were approached early but were committed elsewhere; while the project developed at Columbia under Ray Stark, Martin Ritt was announced as director in 1977. After Pollack and Redford abandoned a planned film based on Robert Penn Warren's book A Place To Come To, they returned to this project, their fifth collaboration as director and actor.¹ It was Redford's first feature after a three-year hiatus from acting.¹

Robert Garland received final screenplay credit and shared screen story credit with Paul Gaer, but uncredited writers contributed: Carol Sobieski rewrote an earlier script by Gaer and Walter Bernstein, and Alvin Sargent revised the screenplay during production. Pollack said in early drafts Sonny kidnapped the horse for ransom rather than setting it free.¹ The role of Hallie Martin was written with Fonda in mind, though Jill Clayburgh and Diane Keaton were also considered.¹ Fonda, then the top female box office star, accepted the role because it matched her activist concerns about corporate power and because Wildwood paid her rate of a million dollars a picture.³

Principal photography began 1 November 1978 in Las Vegas, shooting primarily at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino; the crew spent about six weeks there and an equal time in southern Utah, based in St. George with locations at Snow Canyon and Ivins Reservoir, called "Cisco Falls" in the screenplay.¹ The original setting was New Mexico, but Redford was influential in relocating the story to southern Utah, where he had a residence.¹ The flashing-light ensemble worn by Redford and the horse was made by costume designer Bernie Pollack, Sydney Pollack's brother, at a cost of $35,000.¹ The horse was a five-year-old thoroughbred named "Let's Merge," chosen at a dressage school near Los Angeles for the speed, intelligence, and gentle temperament needed for casino and Las Vegas street scenes.¹ Redford did all his own riding stunts and reportedly kept the horse for the rest of its life.⁸ One mishap was expensive: thunderstorms repeatedly interrupted a Redford-Fonda kissing scene, and the 20-second bit required 48 takes at a cost of $280,000.³ Pollack makes a cameo as a Las Vegas man who makes a pass at Fonda's character.³

Marketing and box office

Columbia marketed the film through country music radio and press junkets featuring Willie Nelson, but did not want it perceived as a western, a genre that had proven unprofitable over the previous decade; producer Stark ran a "'Redford-Fonda-Electric'" campaign emphasizing the romance while diverting attention from the word "Horseman."¹

Studio executives were disappointed when the first week's box office came in just under $6.5 million, but word of mouth built and the picture became "the word-of-mouth film of the [holiday] season." After fourteen weeks in national release it had grossed over $50 million and was considered a blockbuster hit.¹ Box Office Mojo records a final domestic gross of $61,801,971.⁴ TCM describes it as the top-grossing movie of the 1979 fall season.³

Reception and legacy

The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound for Arthur Piantadosi, Les Fresholtz, Michael Minkler, and Al Overton, Jr., and won Spain's Cinema Writers Circle Award for Best Foreign Film in 1981.⁵ Critical response was mixed to positive: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it solid entertainment that was "so warm and cozy it can hardly be electrifying," noting its debt to It Happened One Night in the runaway-with-a-journalist premise.⁷ Vincent Canby of The New York Times later called it "the best American romantic comedy of 1979," while Variety found it overlong and talky.⁹ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 62% Tomatometer from 21 reviews and a 58% audience score; Metacritic records a Metascore of 64.⁹^•¹⁰ Commentators have read the film as a populist critique of corporate commercialism, with the celebrated racehorse and the washed-up champion both reduced to corporate commodities.⁶

Pollack and Redford made two more films together after this one, ending with Havana (1990).³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026