King of the Lancers

The horses were running at Agua Caliente. To a tall, spare, compulsive horseplayer named Ernest Havemann, that was reason enough to abandon temporarily the mission that had brought him cross-country to Los Angeles. He caught the next plane south. He had been to the Mexican race track many times before, usually in the same noble cause: a crack at the track's 5-10 pool, a lush bale of lettuce divided among bettors who have picked the most winners in the fifth through the tenth races.* Havemann invested $96 in an array of 48 likely combinations, and kissed his money goodbye. But it was Ernie Havemann day at Caliente. One of his combinations contained five winners. No one else at Caliente had done as well, and Havemann's handicapping earned him a $61,908 payoff.

Most horseplayers would have been overjoyed to settle for such a stupendous take. But Havemann is more than just a horseplayer. Back home in Glen Rock, N.J., he dashed off an exuberant 6,700-word account of his Caliente triumph and submitted it to LIFE, where it appears this week. For this consideration, Havemann received a handsome additional reward. It was no more than his due. In the world of freelance magazine journalism, Horseplayer Havemann is the prolific, prosperous king of the corral. A few others, who never seem to stop writing at breakneck speed, may earn more money. King Ernie earns all he desires with regal ease.

Shrinking Market. Of the hundreds who freelance for a living, only a fortunate few succeed. Havemann's annual in come has exceeded $50,000. During the last twelve months, his byline appeared 13 times in five magazines. He also published his fourth book, Men, Women, and Marriage.

Most freelancers are made anxious by a market that is steadily wasting away. A dozen magazines, among them Collier's, American Magazine, Coronet and Woman's Home Companion, have folded in the past seven years. Last month the Saturday Evening Post, which used to receive 100,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year, announced that henceforth all of them would be sent back unopened. Havemann's reputation insulates him from such vicissitudes. He does not have to solicit magazines; they solicit him. Of every four articles he writes, three stem from some editor's suggestion. "I can't imagine a story I'd turn down," he says.

His literary gamut is unlimited. He has written with equal facility on insurance, taxes, psychology, Novelist J. D. Salinger and the late Federal Judge Learned Hand, marriage and divorce, gag writers, capital punishment, Wall Street, greyhounds and, of course, horse racing. In partnership with a couple of friends, he owns, races and breeds thoroughbreds; one of them, a three-year-old filly named Nubile, won $18,000 in prize money last year.

Gentleman's Agreement. Born in St. Louis 50 years ago, Havemann aspired at first to replace his father as the world's greatest handicapper, a title that Havemann pere claimed with total spuriousness for most of his 82 years. "My father was a bum," says Havemann affectionately. "The best job he ever had was driving a laundry truck." In his skinnier days, however, Father Havemann jockeyed horses and, when he put on too much weight to ride, cultivated a passion for losing money at tracks. Like father, like son. Young Ernie bought his first Daily Racing Form at the tender age of twelve.

But he had also been bitten by another bug. In 1935, after earning a Phi Beta Kappa key and an M.A. in psychology at St. Louis' Washington University, he made a beeline for the newsroom of the St. Louis Star-Times, which was even then mortally ill (it died in 1951). "I picked the Star-Times because it was the lowest-paying place and seemed most likely to hire a kid," says Havemann. He was taken on as a $15-a-week baseball and football writer, two sports that he knew nothing about. Shifted to rewrite man, Havemann ground out 3,000 to 4,000 words a day. "It was great training,'' he says. "I wrote so much that going home on the streetcar I would read a story, find it interesting, and then suddenly remember that I had written it."

Although Havemann rose to better jobs and better publications, the conviction grew that harness was for horses and not for him. In 1956, after nine years as an articles writer for LIFE, Havemann moved off the masthead. Before leaving, he suggested that he go on producing at least four LIFE articles a year, a gentleman's agreement that has since ripened into a contract.

Improving the Breed. As a freelancer, Havemann is thoroughly atypical. His LIFE retainer, along with his articulate typewriter, shelters him from the premonitions of disaster that assail so many of his colleagues. So avid are magazine publishers for Havemann work that he does not even deal through an agent, except for his books.

Freelancers say that theirs is a spartan life. Havemann agrees. But by his own confession he spends half his life at the track, improving the breed and defending his self-endowed title of world's champion handicapper. Nor does he regard writing as a chore. "I write when I feel like it. I do a lot of gardening while thinking about the story. When I get an idea of the form or how to start, I go in the house and write." Then it comes quickly: he once produced 5,000 words for LIFE in just under seven hours.

* Three-fourths of the pool goes to the player or players who have picked the most winners. Second best divides the remaining 25%.

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