Gamble on Racetrack Paid Off

When Santa Anita Park opened on Christmas Day in 1934, the occasion struck many Angelenos as a brazen social move and others as a downright reckless business venture.

The new racecourse was the brainchild of onetime minor league second baseman and San Francisco dentist Charles Henry “Doc” Strub, whose dream was to bring horse racing back after it had been banned in California for almost 25 years. Pulling teeth wasn’t enough for Strub, who also was active in many real estate dealings. In 1917, he became part owner and president of a minor league baseball team, the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, an office he held for 18 years.

Snubbed by Bay Area

When betting on horses was legalized again in 1933, Strub decided to build a racetrack. But San Franciscans fought tooth and nail to prevent him from erecting a track in their community.

Strub had financial backing, but no site. So he joined forces with comedy producer Hal Roach, who headed a group--the Los Angeles Turf Club--hoping to build a track in Culver City. They had the site, but not enough money.

Then the newly formed California Horse Racing Board insisted that a million dollars be in the bank before a license would be granted for a race meeting.

Many of Strub’s San Franciscan backers looked down their noses at anything south of the Tehachapis and began to pull out. “If you build a track down there, those hicks’ll step around it to get at a wrestling match,” he was told.

Strub came south anyway.

Roach’s knowledge of horses was limited to polo ponies, but he was able to get his polo-playing buddies and others in the movie industry to pony up a million dollars at $5,000 a head in the depths of the Great Depression.

But the Culver Track would never be. Carleton Burke, chairman of the racing board, had other ideas, and he was the man who had to give the OK.

Burke wanted the racetrack built in Arcadia--then a sleepy town of fewer than 5,000 people on Lucky Baldwin’s ranch--if only to carry on the tradition of racing Baldwin had begun.

Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, one of the state’s most prominent horse owners and breeders, had purchased Rancho Santa Anita in 1875 and built his own public racetrack in 1907, where the Santa Anita golf course is today. It was here that his splendid thoroughbreds carried their black and red Maltese Cross silks to victory time and again.

Baldwin had refined tastes in music, wine, racehorses and women. He survived four or five marriages--the historical record is unclear--and two murder attempts by jilted lovers, and left behind a reputation as a ruthless, lecherous, blasphemous scoundrel with 46,000 acres.

His mile-long oval track operated for two years before Baldwin died in 1909, the year horse racing was banned in the state.

Taxes were hurting Baldwin’s daughter, Anita, so it was easy to buy a huge parcel of the lush Baldwin land.

Strub hired architect Gordon Kaufman (who had built Caltech’s Athenaeum Club and would design The Times building) to build a racecourse with a park-like atmosphere. He sank a million into the most beautiful equine showpiece in the world.

It brought a well-dressed crowd of 30,777 on opening day, including Al Jolson, Clark Gable and Will Rogers. A total of $258,916 was wagered, and a filly named High Glee won the $5,000 Christmas Stakes.

A Record Prize

Strub was so in debt by opening day, he had to borrow the money to book the bets, and the bank was so skeptical, it sent armed guards to make sure the money was back by nightfall.

But as the crowds began to dwindle, Strub boldly posted an unheard-of $100,000 prize. Everyone thought he was crazy. With a loaf of bread selling for a nickel, and one-third of the nation out of work, this horse race was the shrewd dentist’s wildest gamble.

But Strub knew what he was doing. He put Santa Anita on the map.

Its stalls were like a Who’s Who of racing. The horses matched the men. Not only did Twenty Grand and Equipoise and Discovery show up, so did the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts and the Astors. Later, Citation, Seabiscuit, Affirmed, Round Table and Hill Prince would also race here, among others.

But it was a high-spirited horse named Azucar that won the world’s richest purse, which had grown to $108,400 with unexpected wagering. In the winner’s circle, it knocked down Anita Baldwin and slashed the radio cable, cutting off the broadcast to the nation. Ridden by George “the Iceman” Woolf, who would be killed in a racing accident at Santa Anita 11 years later, the winner paid $26.80 for a $2 ticket.

Luring the best European horses and Eastern riders to match the Longdens, Shoemakers and Arcaros, Strub took the reins and put in a grass track. While all other tracks were giving away free passes by the bushel, Strub wanted Santa Anita to maintain a haughty attitude and took the position that you were privileged to be allowed in to bet. He charged not only admission, but also for parking. Santa Anita was the first track in the nation to admit children to its infield, install a photo-finish camera and introduce “The Voice of Santa Anita”--Joe Hernandez--whose rich, resonant sound would boom across the infield for 15,587 consecutive races and more than four decades.

Closed in 1942, Santa Anita was briefly home to thousands of Japanese Americans who were rounded up and detained in horse stalls and the parking lot for several months until desert internment camps were built. Later, the buildings and grounds were turned into a massive Army ordnance center.

Though Strub died in the late 1950s, the horsepower of the history that he helped write continues, despite the dwindling crowds caused by satellite wagering, Las Vegas, state lotteries and the disappearing neighborhood bookies. Santa Anita still stands among America’s classic sporting venues.

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