“Forgotten Hollywood”- Hollywood Park Ends Its Run…
Manny P. here…
Betfair Hollywood Park in Inglewood closed after 75 years in operation. The race track is best known for the legendary Seabiscuit winning 1938’s inaugural running of Hollywood Gold Cup. Dick Van Patten, the 85-year-old actor who starred in Eight is Enough, was a longtime regular. He walked away a winner on Sunday when his horse Tanquerray won the $50,000 third race.
The track was opened in 1938 by the Hollywood Turf Club. The 600 original shareholders included many stars, directors, and producers of the film world, such as Al Jolson and Raoul Walsh (two of the original directors of the board), Joan Blondell, Ronald Colman, Walt Disney, Bing Crosby, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, George Jessel, Ralph Bellamy, Wallace Beery, Irene Dunne, Hal Wallis, and Mervyn LeRoy (director of Hollywood Park from 1941 until his death in 1986). Liz Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau were frequent visitors, among others.
Hollywood Park was used as a storage facility from 1942-44 in association with the war effort, opening only for a brief War Charities meeting in November, 1944. Other highlights:
- In 1951, Citation became the first million-dollar-winning horse by winning his final start, the Hollywood Gold Cup
- On July 3rd, 1977, Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew finished fourth in the Swaps Stakes, a major upset
- On December 10th, 1999, Laffit Pincay Jr. surpassed Bill Shoemaker’s all-time record for race wins by a jockey
The Hollywood Park Racing Association and the Los Angeles based subsidiary of Betfair Group that also owns Television Games Network completed a historic agreement on March 13, 2012, intended to transform the customer experience for fans at the venue, as well as, online and on cable. Hollywood Park’s 18 weeks of racing dates will be divided among Santa Anita, Los Alamitos and Del Mar. Over 1,900 horses, 470 full time employees, and 600 workers who reside in the track’s stable area must move on.
Betfair Hollywood Park is the second major California race track to close since 2008, when Bay Meadows near San Francisco was closed after 74 years for development.
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Son of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History has been added to its 43rd literary branch. It is now housed at Tidewater Community College – Virginia Beach Branch Library. TCC has five campuses throughout the Tidewater area in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is the 104th overall library that carries one of my works in the Forgotten Hollywood Book Series. It’s also the 4th worldwide college / university repository with one of my paperbacks, including UCLA and the University of Michigan.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Monday, December 23rd, 2013 at 2:43 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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