Hollywood Race Tracks

Santa Anita, the glorified race track opened in 1934 with an elegant clubhouse for members, twenty-five beautiful rooms, and twenty bars.

The opposition to horse racing from Los Angeles merchants, reformers, and church groups has never abated.

But the hotel, apartment, and restaurant people share in the bonanza when thousands arrive from all over America to attend the season. No other race track has so celebrated a clientèle.

On an afternoon in the Turf Club, the exclusive section atop the clubhouse, famous celebrities seen were Warner Baxter, the Walt Disneys, the Fred Astaires, the George Burnses, Cecil B. DeMille, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Pat O'Brien, Victor McLaglen, Basil Rathbone, Frank Capra, Florence Rice, Rupert Hughes, and dozens of others.

These celebrities scarcely begin to do justice to Hollywood's representation.

Del Mar, eighty miles from Los Angeles, is another race track in which the movie people figure prominently. Bing Crosby is president, guiding spirit, and chief owner of this shrine (in addition to his heavy holdings in Santa Anita); Pat O'Brien is vice-president.

The Hollywood Park Turf Club at Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, was organized by harry M. Warner, who pledged collateral for a $1,000,000 loan from the Bank of America and later lent the corporation $250,000 to pay off pressing debts.

Jack L. Warner, was made chairman of the board. The Hollywood Park track paid a twenty percent dividend for the first two years.

This added another ten percent in the third year repaid its original stockholders seventy percent of their outlay, has paid an excess profits tax of $500,000, and started the 1941 season with $100,000 in the bank and nary a debt or tax obligation outstanding.

Hal Roach resigned the presidency of Santa Anita, Jack L. Warner resigned as chairman of the board of Hollywood Park, movie directors Raoul Walsh and Alfred E. Green withdrew from the same board, and other film figures began to play down both their horses and their race-track investments.

The horse owners in Hollywood are a proud legion. The biggest and most famed were Bing Crosby, L.B. Mayer, Mervyn LeRoy and H.M. Warner, and the roster includes William Le Baron, Raoul Walsh, Zeppo Marx, Errol Flynn, Joe E. Brown (who paid for a South American horse) and William Goetz

Bing Crosby was one of the first and remains the most famous of Hollywood's horse owners. He owns a formidable stable and with the son of the owner of the celebrated Seabiscuit, possesses a profitable animal named Ligaroti.

Louis B. Mayer, a late convert, has plunged into racing with characteristic vigor, now owns over eighty horses and a stable estimated at almost half a million dollars, and nominated seven horses for the Santa Anita Handicap of 1939.

The Warners and Mervyn LeRoy jointly own a fine stable and practice track at the Warner Calabasas ranch, where some thirty thoroughbreds are groomed in faultless surroundings.