‘Black Stallion’ Author Walter Farley Dies

Walter Farley, a city boy whose 20 books about boys and a “Black Stallion” sold 12 million copies in 14 countries and became the source of two films, died Monday night after suffering a heart attack.

He was 73 and died in Sarasota, Fla., Memorial Hospital.

He had lived in nearby Venice, Fla., and also maintained a farm near Earlville, Pa., where he raised and bred the Arabian horses that had made him a literary success.

Farley, whose books have been translated into 20 languages, recently completed his 21st novel in the “Black Stallion” series, said Jenny Fanelli, a Random House editor who worked with Farley on two of his books.

The author’s last novel, “The Young Black Stallion,” written with his son Steven, is set for release in December, Fanelli said.

“My great love was, and still is, horses,” Farley said in an interview last year. “I wanted a pony as much as any boy or girl could possibly want anything, but I never owned one.”

He did begin writing stories about them when he was still a boy in Syracuse, N.Y. He had worked at his uncle’s riding academy there and continued to write about those and other experiences when he was studying at a Syracuse high school and later at Columbia University.

It was then he first conceived the “Black Stallion,” series the first of which appeared in 1941 and featured the Arabian horse and a 17-year-old protagonist, Alec Ramsay.

Farley’s tale about the boy stranded on a desert island with a spirited horse brought him $1,000.

In 1979 Francis Ford Coppola made the story into a film which traced the saga from the desolate island off the coast of Africa to Santa Anita where Kelly Reno, portraying Ramsay, rides the horse to victory.

A sequel, “The Black Stallion Returns,” was released in 1983 with Reno again in the starring role.

Farley wrote a dozen other books, most of them involving children and animals.