Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE FILLIES OF PHILLY
IT’S an enthralling real-life cowboy story with a difference – not so much old Wild West as modern day Edgy East – and it stole Idris Elba’s heart.
Now an American inner-city riding club that helps keep black youngsters in a Philadelphita ghetto away from drugs and crime is set to gallop to worldwide fame on Netflix.
And Golden globe winner Idris, 48, today reveals he was so determined to learn to ride and star in Concrete Cowboy he battled through an allergy to horses.
“On the first full day of training, I was scoffing down antihistamines, because my eyes get swollen and my skin blotches out,” said the Luther star. “So that was the first learning curve for me, to be able to sit on a horse without crying my eyes out.”
Part of his determination to tell the story of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club – set up in Philly’s toughest neighbourhood by Ellis Ferrell in 1980 – is that it was recently threatened with closure.
“There has been a real miss-telling of history around black people, and horses and cowboys,” he said. “Now it feels apt to tell it.”
Idris stars as Harp, the ex-con dad of troubled teen Cole – played by Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin – who is going to the bad side until he discovers he shares his dad’s love of horse riding. The movie was filmed near the Fletcher Street club in the city’s Strawberry Mansion neighbourhood, with 10 of the 25 speaking roles based on real people – among them local hero Ellis.
Known as El Dog, the inspiration for the movie is now anxiously waiting to watch it. “Horses and kids keep me young,” says the 81-year-old. “As long as I got them, I’m successful.” Unlike Idris’s Harp, this “urban cowboy” has never been in trouble with the law – but his back story is just as colourful.
Raised by his gran on her farm in Tallahassee, Florida, he enjoyed their Saturday trips to the movies – especially to see Westerns. “I loved Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele, and Gene Autry – all that riding,” he says.
But when it came to his childhood dream of owning a horse, Gran put her foot down.
“She wouldn’t buy me one because she said she couldn’t eat it. She raised cows,” says Ellis.
“So in order for me to learn to ride I had to break the bulls. I was doing that at eight years old. Then my friend had a horse and let me ride it. Man, I wanted me a horse so bad.”
In 1954, at 14, he moved to Philadelphia to live with his mum and stepdad, round the corner from Strawberry Mansion. The city streets then were still full of horses pulling transport. His cousin had some and Ellis got
to ride them: “We would also go to the park and rent horses there as well.”
At 24 he bought his first horse, Kelly – and by now was well known in the local community for his ability to work with the animals.
His first club working with kids was Boulevard Stablemates. Then he set up Western Wranglers Riding Club, looking to help the city’s troubled youngsters. “The area was a tough one. Gangs and drugs were a problem. I wanted to give them an opportunity to stay out of that.”
But it was when one of his horses, OneEyed Dusty, threw him off one day that he became a local celebrity. “He was supposed to be a racehorse but they couldn’t get him to run,” said Ellis.
“He was a demon but we had a bond. When he bucked me off, he just walked behind me like he was saying, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Ellis had to go to hospital with a neck injury. “All the staff were coming in and saying ‘We didn’t know there were any horses left in Philadelphia now. We came to see the man who got thrown off one’.
“When we rode out in the streets people stopped and stared. They’d say they’s never seen horses on concrete.”
When Ellis set up his own stables in
Fletcher Street as a non-profit organisation reliant on donations, he started taking youngsters to sales to buy up horses past their prime.
“This was how I ended up owning 23. I’d work with the kids and take them to auction,” said Ellis. “When they saw a horse they liked, I’d buy it and they had to look after it. A lot of the time we’d save thoroughbreds from being sold to the killers ( for horse meat).
“We’d stop the kids from getting in with a bad crowd.
They had problems with truancy or fighting. Or violence at home.” More than 40 years on, Fletcher Street has kept hundreds of kids on the straight and narrow.
Concrete Cowboy premiered at the virtual Toronto Film Festival last year and is based on a book written about the club – Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri.
The club’s site was being eyed up by city developers but it was saved by a donation of land. It now needs around $20,000 (£14,500) to pay for badly needed repairs and upgrades.
Idris said the film’s father-and-son storyline gripped him: “I’m an only child, very close to my late dad, and it stole my heart.”
As for Ellis, he has no intention of retiring any time soon.
He has 12 children in his riding programme, which has been disrupted by the pandemic.
But he still puts in 11-hour days. “I’m 82 in March,” he says. “And I’m still going strong. I’m not the last of the Mohicans, I’m the last of the older generation.”
We’d save horses from killers and keep kids from the bad crowd
ELLIS FERRELL ON HIS AMAZING RIDING CLUB