"He was the first American equine idol. In the age when flickering black and white ten-inch television pictures were all the rage, Native Dancer stood alongside Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey as a television luminary in the mid 1950s. Blessed with power, speed and playful charisma, Native Dancer regularly mugged for cameras and waggled his ears to the delight of his admirers. But more importantly, his image was easily recognizable in those grainy television images when viewers often had trouble zeroing in on the field of browns and chestnuts that all looked alike."