Sport: Richest Race

In the crowd were George Giannini, Clark Gable, Mrs. E. L. Doheny, Gene Tunney, Adolph Bernard Spreckels, Joe Di Maggio, Rupert Hughes. Comedian Joe E. Brown gave his guests a box lunch in the grand stand. Cinemagent Zeppo Marx, whose brothers spent the day working in a picture called A Day at the Races, bet $1,000 on Chanceview. Cinemactress Simone Simon bet $2 on Grand Manitou. Paulette Goddard wore the black hat which she considers lucky. There were 13,000 cars in the 85-acre parking lot.

Around the track slowly toured a curious contraption on wheels followed by harrows and a screen. It was a ‘”cooker,” like the ones used to melt asphalt on highways, with six blast torches to dry out the ground. At Santa Anita, called the world’s best racetrack, 18 miles northeast of Los Angeles, all this was part of the world’s richest horserace: the Santa Anita Handicap, for $100,000.

Covering the event from the press box on top of the grandstand, were the ablest reporters in the U. S. Wrote Grantland Rice, dean of U. S. sportswriters: “. . . Rosemont and Seabiscuit should lead the chase. . . .” Columnist Sidney Skolsky described the scene when the bugle blew for the parade to the post: “The . . . track was so crowded there almost wasn’t room enough for the horses. . . .” At the post, it took three and a half minutes to get the field of 18 in line. Then, in a sudden hush, the line began to move and the crowd to roar. What happened in the most important instant of the race was best recorded, not by a reporter, but by the $50,000 electric camera at the finish. It clicked when Mrs. C. S. Howard’s Seabiscuit, who had led the field coming into the stretch, and William du Pont’s Rosemont, who had come up fast in the last furlong, went under the wire together. Developed two minutes later, the photograph showed Rosemont leading by a nose (see cut). Third was Indian Broom. Odds against Rosemont, the favorite, were about 4-to-1. His share of the year’s biggest purse was $91,800.

Santa Anita’s Handicap last week was the climax of its third and best season.

In its first two seasons, the track, which cost $1,000,000, made $1,350,000 for its promoters, chief among whom are Cinema Producer Hal Roach and a onetime San Francisco chain-parlor dentist named Charles Strub. Last year, Santa Anita bettors wagered more than $25,000,000, of which the State took $1,000,000. Last week, bets on the Handicap alone were $396,553, a record. Santa Anita’s backers have put much of their profits into improvements. This year they are spending $25,000 on Peruvian olive trees in the paddock, Bird of Paradise plants on the terraces. Santa Anita’s $50,000 to the 1936 Los Angeles Community Chest was that charity’s biggest single contribution. The law allows a track to keep 8% of all mutuel bets and “breakage”—odd nickels and pennies when bets are paid off to a dime. Two years ago the Santa Anita management agreed to take only 6%. Last year, breakage at Santa Anita was $409,747.

If Santa Anita has been a bonanza for its backers, it has been even more spectacularly profitable, in the past week, for a young race horse owner whose stable has never before ranked high on the list of U. S. money-winners. A few days before Rosemont won the Handicap, William du Pont’s Fairy Hill won the third Santa Anita Derby, one of the second richest U. S. races, on Washington’s Birthday, for which the stake was $62,000 (TIME, March 1). It was the first time one owner had won both of Santa Anita’s major races. In addition, just a week before the Santa Anita Handicap, Rosemont had won the San Antonio Handicap (on the Santa Anita track), for which his reward was $6,825. Owner du Pont, 42, is President of Wilmington Trust Co., one of the backers of Wilmington’s new $1,500,000 Delaware Park race track which will open next June. His sister, Mariona du Pont Somerville Scott, is married to Cinemactor Randolph Scott. She watched five-year-old Rosemont climax the most profitable week ($144,050) any owner ever had in U. S. turf history. Her brother was at home “on business.”