As Velvet Brown, a twelve-year-old who dreams of the Grand National, Elizabeth Taylor gave her first great performance, and Hollywood never forgot it.
National Velvet (1944) follows Velvet and a drifting former jockey, played by Mickey Rooney, as they train a spirited horse called The Pie. Taylor, herself a skilled young rider, brings a natural, unforced earnestness to the role, and the film’s Technicolor countryside still looks fresh.
It was the role that turned a child actress into a star, and it remains the purest expression of Taylor’s early gift: sincerity without sentimentality.
Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.