Hollywood Track

The day after Christmas 1934, Los Angeles merchants furiously chewed their holiday cigars as they read their morning papers. A quarter of a million dollars had been poured into pari-mutuel betting machines at the opening of the nearby Santa Anita racetrack the day before--the first appearance of horseracing in Los Angeles County in 25 years. That was the beginning of the merchants' woes. For 50-odd days each winter for four succeeding winters, a half million of hard-earned Los Angeles dollars were wagered every day on horse races. The more the merchants tried to discourage betting (by newspaper campaigns and roadside billboards), the more entrenched it became as a major Los Angeles pastime.

Last winter when a syndicate of Hollywood bigwigs, headed by politically powerful Jack Warner, production chief of the $177,000,000 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., succeeded in getting permission to build a second racetrack in Los Angeles County (to operate during the summer), local businessmen suddenly went mum. They decided to wait until the community was saturated with year-round racing before attempting any organized crusade against it.

Last week at Inglewood, 25 minutes from Hollywood, the new track opened. In spite of petitions by churches and reform groups, a weekday crowd of 40,000 streamed into elegant Hollywood Park, wagered $512,000 on eight races.

Feature race was the $2,500 Hollywood Premiere Handicap which was won by Airman William Edward Boeing's Air Chute. Many of the day's racing fans, however, failed to watch the race. They were busy inspecting the $2,500,000 plant, its 315 acres, its stalls for 1,250 horses. It was all that they expected it to be. In the infield, three lakes in tiers gurgled at one another by means of connecting waterfalls, squadrons of swans were kept in line by a female swanherd dressed in yellow satin. A three-piece swing band furnished the proper notes in the clubhouse bar. Waiters in white jackets provided "curb service" to the boxes, seats were equipped with gadgets to hold glasses and plates right side up during the excitement of the races. There was even a soda fountain for teetotalers. But the paddock was the last word--a sound proof, roofed amphitheatre where 3,500 spectators chattered between races without disturbing the horses. Hollywood idea men had originally planned to have a revolving paddock, but the plan was abandoned when someone reminded them that the horses might get dizzy.

Outstanding races of the 33-day meet will be the $50,000 Hollywood Gold Cup Handicap (for three-year-olds and up), and a special $50,000 race between Herbert M. Woolf's Lawrin, Kentucky Derby winner, and William du Pont's Dauber, Preakness winner, for the "three-year-old championship" of the year. Missing from Hollywood Park's stalls last week were Charles S. Howard's Seabiscuit and Maxwell Howard's Stagehand, the two outstanding California performers last winter, who were both going to Suffolk Downs instead for next fortnight's $50,000 Massachusetts Handicap.

At the opening last week of William du Pont's Delaware Park, next to the youngest of the some 80 major racetracks now operating in the U. S., Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt's Airflame won the $4,000 Wilmington Handicap on the very day his 25-year-old owner was married to Socialite Manuela Hudson of San Francisco, first cousin of Mrs. Charles S. Howard, wife of Seabiscuit's owner.

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