The Hollywood Park racetrack — which is not and never was anywhere near Hollywood — will be closing forever shortly before Christmas. They'll tear it down and build condos and retail stores and other things on which people can lose money. It was a pretty old, shabby place in Inglewood that I gather will not be too missed. Horse Racing ain't what it used to be and Santa Anita Racetrack, which is still up and running 'em, is only about 30 miles away.
Hollywood Park was opened in 1938 by a bevy of stars and movie studio execs. Jack L. Warner was the first chairman and then Mervyn LeRoy took over and presided for the next 45 years. Al Jolson and Raoul Walsh were on the original board of directors and shareholders included Joan Blondell, Ronald Colman, Walt Disney, Bing Crosby, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, George Jessel, Ralph Bellamy, Hal Wallis, Anatole Litvak, Hunt Stromberg, Wallace Beery and Irene Dunne. I don't think a lot of movie people have frequented the place since most of those folks passed away.
One who frequented the track for a long time was Joe Frisco, a now forgotten stuttering comedian who was cast in a lot of movies because he was funny in front of the camera and even funnier off-camera. Denizens of Show Business loved having Frisco around for the anecdotes that resulted. He was always broke and always complaining in a hilarious (albeit, stammered) manner. One time at Hollywood Park, Bing Crosby was holding court with friends in a private box and Frisco wandered by and borrowed $100 which Bing figured he'd never see again.
A few races later, someone told Bing that Frisco had bet on a big longshot that had come in and had made a fortune. Mostly for amusement, Crosby told his pals, "I'm going to see if I can get my hundred back." He went into the clubhouse and found Frisco, who could never hold onto money long, buying drinks for everyone. He tapped his debtor on the shoulder and said, "Hey, what about the hundred, pal?" Nonchalantly, Mr. Frisco pulled out a C-note, waved it in Crosby's direction and said, "N-n-n-not so f-f-fast, B-B-Bing. F-first, give us a ch-ch-ch-chorus of 'W-W-W-White Christmas!'"
I have been to Hollywood Park, most recently when I was twelve. My Uncle Nathan never married and seemed more interested in horse racing than in women. And isn't that a premise for an entire Alan King monologue? Depending on the season, you'd find my uncle on the weekends at either Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, or down south at Del Mar.
One Saturday, he took me with him to Hollywood Park. On our way in, we passed through a mob of vendors selling mimeographed tip sheets. My uncle purchased certain ones he believed to be of help and also bought a copy of that day's special Hollywood Park edition of a local newspaper that existed then, the Herald-Examiner. Inside, it was the regular Herald-Examiner for that date but wrapped around it was a special four-page section containing horse tips and articles for that day's races.
Once inside, we hunkered down in two seats with no one near us and he studied all this paperwork, made notes, did math, etc. I think we'd missed the first two races but he placed a $20 wager — not a small amount of money then or for a guy with his income — on a certain horse running in the third. He told me to pick a horse, any horse, and he'd place a two-dollar bet on it for me.
Well, what did I know from horse racing? The only horse in the whole world I really liked was Quick Draw McGraw and he wasn't running. But I scanned all the papers Uncle Nathan had accrued and decided arbitrarily to go with the tips of one particular columnist in the Herald-Examiner. But I didn't tell Uncle Nathan that's what I was doing. I made like I'd invented some sort of system and that I'd studied all the stats before making my selection.
He placed the bet on my behalf…and you can guess how it went. My horse won. His horse lost.
The next race went exactly the same way. I pretended, like some handicapper savant, I had a formula for picking a horse…but really all I was doing was following the advice of this one guy in the Herald-Examiner. My uncle bet two bucks on that horse for me and another twenty bucks on the horse he'd figured would win. And of course, I won and he lost.
The fifth race went the same way and so did the sixth. My uncle, the expert horse player, was losing. The kid who'd never been to a racetrack before was winning…but really, the guy in the Herald-Examiner was winning. Still, despite the fact that I was making nothing but money, I couldn't conceal from Uncle Nathan that I found the whole experience utterly boring. The races themselves were kind of interesting but the periods between them each seemed to go on for hours. There was nothing to do but study for the next race, place bets and eat hot dogs. I had enough hot dogs that day to last me well into the Nixon Administration. If I'd cut myself, I would have bled French's Mustard.
Uncle Nathan decided we'd leave after the seventh race and by then, he couldn't resist discarding decades of horse-betting experience and putting it all on one of his nephew's (so far) infallible hunches. His own methods told him to pick Horse "A." I, consulting my source, picked Horse "B." He put nothing on "A" and a big bet — I think it was a hundred dollars — on Horse "B." The odds were such that if "B" won, Uncle Nathan would leave well ahead for the day.
And of course, you can guess how this one went. "A" finished first. "B" should be crossing the finish line right about now.
I felt bad for him and on the way out, I told him how I'd picked all those winners. He was a good sport about it. He'd lost about $250 total — that was probably close to a week's pay for him then — and I'd made about $40…or as I figured things in those days, 333 comic books off the rack or 960 at the second-hand bookstore. He did say to me, "Maybe I ought to pay more attention to that guy in the Herald-Examiner." After the following week's sojourn to Hollywood Park, he told me he'd consulted that pony-picker and had more than won back all he'd lost on our outing.
Maybe that's true. Who knows? It sounds like the kind of thing you'd say to your nephew to make him feel good…and Uncle Nathan would do anything to make me feel good. He had trouble showing affection so he did it via gifts. My father (his brother) and my mother told me how proud he was of my career but he never really said a word of it to me.
When he died in 1994, he was residing in a small apartment about eight blocks from my house. He lived alone, as he lived his entire adulthood, and one of the few friends he had, who also lived in the building, found him dead on his bathroom floor. He was 82.
It fell to me to be in charge of Uncle Nathan's funeral and his affairs and belongings…and my mother and I, together, cleaned out that apartment. We found a whole shelf full of comic books I'd written — I'm not sure where he got them — and tattered news clippings that mentioned my name, mostly in connection with TV work. We found a letter he'd written to an acquaintance in another state that had been returned to him because the acquaintance had just passed away. It was all about how his nephews Mark and David were doing so well as professional writers. My Cousin David was the son of another of Nathan's brothers and there were copies of his books next to my comics.
We also found a ton of horse racing forms and tip sheets and little toys that would randomly pick a "sure winner" for you. It all prompted me to tell my mother the story of that day at Hollywood Park. Uncle Nathan had asked me to keep the story of our wagering "our little secret" and at the time, I did. My mother laughed when she heard it then said, "Now I understand why he asked us every week for years after that, 'Do you think Mark would like to go to the races with me again?'" Maybe he liked being around me but maybe some of it was that I'd picked four winners out of five that day.