On an unseasonably cool May 4, 1940, Gallahadion caught previously unbeaten and odds-on favorite Bimelech in the homestretch to win the Derby at odds of more than 35-1 in one of the great upsets of Derby history. Gallahadion was owned by Ethel Mars, the widow of the founder of Mars Candies who raced under the name Milky Way Stables. The bedridden Mars, who netted the winner’s share of the largest purse in Derby history, called it “the happiest day of her life.”1 The stable had entered at least one horse in every Derby since 1935 with lackluster results.2 Among Milky Way’s previous Derby finishes were a fifteenth, a thirteenth, an eleventh, and two last-place finishes. In contrast, Bimelech was owned by four-time Derby winner E. R. Bradley, and was by Black Toney (sire of 1924 Derby winner Black Gold), out of one of the most influential American broodmares of the twentieth century, La Troienne. Bimelech, arguably the best horse Bradley had ever owned, would be his final Derby starter.
The 1940 Derby crowd of around ninety-five thousand is believed to have been an American record at the time. Though few actually won money on the bay colt, the spectators greeted Gallahadion with loud cheers as he entered the winner’s circle, a giant killer and a popular champion. The celebration of Gallahadion’s unlikely victory mirrored the popularity of other Depression-era underdog triumphs, including Seabiscuit’s over War Admiral, and boxer Jim “Cinderella Man” Braddock’s over world heavyweight champion Max Baer. But the resonance of victory by “the little guy” in the Great Depression would give way to celebrations of powerful racing stables and dominant equine champions at the Derby in the two decades that followed as Americans looked for examples and demonstrations of American strength and prosperity. The cultural climate of the Derby and the nation would be permanently altered in 1941 by the American entry into World War II, marking Gallahadion’s victory as the end of an era. The Derby would survive the war, as it had the Great Depression, becoming even further enmeshed in the American cultural fabric in the process.
1940 trophy presentation. Left to right: president of Standard Oil Co. William E. Smith, Postmaster General James A. Farley, Colonel Matt Winn, trainer Roy Waldron, jockey Carroll Bierman, Kentucky governor Keen Johnson. (Morgan Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
On the morning of the 1941 Derby, the last before the United States entered World War II, an advertisement appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal promoting the newspaper’s special Derby issue that would be on newsstands the following day. The ad included a cartoon Kentucky colonel saying, “Yes suh! It’ll be a great hoss race!”3 In the infield that year, the Indiana University marching band and drill team delighted fans as they had for years by spelling out “Dixie” while playing the tune. The Courier-Journal reported that the new entrance to the Churchill Downs clubhouse at the streetcar gate “represents a dignified beauty reminiscent of an old Southern mansion.”4
Since the end of World War I, journalists had publicized and perpetuated a perceived connection between the Kentucky Derby and the Old South. But with the onset of American involvement in World War II, references to “Dixie,” “darkies,” “colonels,” and “belles” in conjunction with the Derby would temporarily disappear. These connections would return by the 1950s, demonstrating that the Derby and its related imagery could be either “American” or “southern,” as the tastes of national culture required, in much the same way that Kentucky was simultaneously (and alternatively) “backward” and “refined.” The return of the “American” element of the Derby’s identity in the early 1940s reflected changes in the American cultural landscape that included a reduction in the divisive celebration of sectional identity and a desire to downplay America’s own racist past in order to distinguish itself from the racist Nazi enemy. This change also underscored the resiliency of the Derby, which could remain culturally relevant as an American event in a moment when the Old South was not an attractive element of popular historical memory or national identity.
When the United States became fully involved in World War II late in 1941, the immediate future of much frivolous activity like major sporting events was in serious jeopardy. But Colonel Winn, aware of the importance of continuity to the Derby’s image and popularity, eagerly reminded people that the Kentucky Derby was the oldest continuously contested sporting event in the United States and deserving of special consideration. Signs around Churchill Downs, then as now, informed Derby-goers that the Derby has been held every year on the same racetrack since 1875. Winn had seen other racing events, like the Preakness Stakes and the American Derby, decline in significance and popularity when they were moved to different racetracks or put on hiatus; thus he felt it was very important that the Derby’s continuity not be interrupted. In Winn’s words, “part of its glory was centered in the fact that it had never lapsed.”5
Because of restrictions on travel and consumption during World War II, Winn faced one of the toughest tests of his career in ensuring that the Derby was run in 1943. On February 6 of that year, American transportation administrator Joseph B. Eastman suggested that the Kentucky Derby might be cancelled. He admitted that his office had no direct control over sports, but threatened that his authority over transportation systems could be used to regulate or suspend some events. In the 1920s and 1930s the Derby had been the annual destination of dozens of special trains and private cars from across the country. This heavy Derby traffic fell in the category of unnecessary travel in the wartime environment, the kind of travel that Eastman was attempting to curb.
Colonel Winn responded to Eastman’s threat a week later, promising to comply with the letter and intent of the Office of Defense Transportation’s regulations. Winn told Eastman that “the track would not honor the requests for reservations from persons outside the Louisville area, would not ask for any sort of special transportation, and would run the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, May 1.”6 He pointed out that special Derby trains had not run to Louisville since 1941 anyway, because of the wartime restrictions. Administrator Eastman approved Winn’s plans the same day.
In his memoirs, Winn recalled telling doubters that “the Kentucky Derby will be run in 1943, even if there are only two horses in the race, and only a half dozen people in the stands.”7 Approximately fifty thousand spectators attended and watched Johnny Longden ride heavily favored Count Fleet to an easy wire-to-wire victory for his owners, taxicab and rental car magnate John D. Hertz and his wife, who had previously entered the Derby winner’s circle in 1928 with Count Fleet’s sire, Reigh Count.8 Count Fleet would capture the Triple Crown that year, with a victory in the Withers Stakes sandwiched in for good measure. His twenty-five-length margin of victory in the Belmont Stakes would not be bettered until Secretariat’s famous 1973 performance. Count Fleet would eventually earn a spot in racing’s Hall of Fame and a place on the lists of greatest American racehorses of the twentieth century. Despite his relative star power, attendance at Count Fleet’s Derby was not as large as in previous years—but still a successful showing under the circumstances of wartime travel restrictions. Churchill Downs provided American servicemen with many of the out-of-town box owners’ tickets for the Derby, and other soldiers were admitted at reduced rates, giving Churchill Downs a patriotic feel on Derby Day and garnering positive publicity.9
The 1943 Derby would be remembered as the “Streetcar Derby” because of the mode of transportation a great number of spectators used to arrive at the track that day. Even descriptions of the race itself included references to the war, which influenced nearly every aspect of American life by 1943. “It was as if the horses in the Derby captured the military spirit of the times. They marched around the track almost exactly according to their rank, as indicated on the mutual boards on the infield,” the Blood-Horse reported.10 Winn’s ability to keep the Derby afloat during the war years is among his greatest accomplishments at Churchill Downs, and Winn himself called the Streetcar Derby the “greatest Derby of them all.”11
In 1944, travel restrictions again affected Derby attendance—but not enthusiasm—as the downtown hotels were jammed and the city possessed a “festival air.”12 Streetcars began arriving at Churchill Downs at 4:00 on a chilly morning with the first load of Derby patrons. A group of navy students from the University of Louisville performed their daily drills on the grounds of Churchill Downs at dawn so that they would be free to watch the races in the afternoon. Their military brethren stationed overseas were also able to follow the action. An Associated Press report from Naples, Italy, explained that American “G.I.’s had no mint juleps and no blue grass here in Italy today, but they were distinctly Derby conscious on this Kentucky Derby Day—so Derby conscious, in fact, that they had their own bookmaker handle wagers of a quarter or two on their choices.”13 A Derby Day cartoon in the Courier-Journal depicted a frustrated Adolf Hitler trying to spy on American radio transmissions, but unable to find anything but a broadcast of the Kentucky Derby.14 The crowd of sixty-five thousand bet more on that year’s race than any since 1929, and a $2 win ticket on Pensive returned $16.20 to his backers.
The Derby had been called an American institution before the war, and its survival in the face of wartime restrictions only helped to further its national reputation.15 But at the end of 1944 James F. Byrnes, director of War Mobilization, shut down all American racing effective January 3, 1945, justifying his action thus: “The operation of race tracks not only requires the employment of more essential operations, but also manpower, railroad transportation, as well as tires and gasoline in the movement of patrons to and from the track, and in the movement of the horses. . . . The existing war situation demands the utmost effort that the people of the United States can give. . . . The Operation of race tracks is not conducive to this all-out effort.”16 The racing press criticized the decision, citing the fact that racing was allowed to continue in England and France in spite of the war. Some claimed that the ban was the result of Washington’s anger over the $1 billion wagered on horses annually—money that was not being invested in war bonds. Others suggested that the ban was retaliation for a $75,000 contribution made to Thomas Dewey’s 1944 presidential campaign by Santa Anita, a Los Angeles area racetrack. Regardless of what had motivated the ban, it was not in effect for long. Racing returned to the United States in May of 1945, following the German surrender in Europe, and proceeded to break national records for attendance and wagering handle: in less than eight months more than 19 million people visited American tracks, plunking down more than $1.4 billion in bets.17
With restrictions lifted, Churchill Downs readied itself for another running of its signature event. The 1945 Derby was run on June 9, the last time the Derby was not contested on the first Saturday in May. Though the date was different, national newspapers were happy to report that things were largely back to normal at Churchill Downs: “This wasn’t the first Saturday in May, but it was the same old Derby Day. It had all the color, all the pretty women, all the second guessers and all the crowd with its hustle and bustle of past Derby Days,” the New York Times reported.18 The Derby’s survival during World War II confirmed its status as one of the premiere events in the nation and reinforced its ties to a distant American past. To an American population that had learned patriotic consumption practices during the war, the Derby came to represent the nation (not just Kentucky and the South) in the “Consumers’ Republic” that emerged in postwar America.19
If Kentucky had been located in the Deep South, it might not have been possible for the Derby to become an “American” institution as early as it did. However, the geographic, cultural, and political location of Kentucky had allowed the identity of the state and the Derby to evolve over the years to suit the cultural needs and tastes of different eras. By celebrating American patriotism, especially during times of war, Churchill Downs leaders had helped to foster an American identity for the event. In 1902, when American forces were fighting in the Philippines, coverage of the Derby had included journalists’ description of the American flags around the track.20 During World War I, Matt Winn and other Churchill Downs officials had trumpeted their charitable efforts and support of the U.S. military, even planting crops in the infield to support the war effort. Thus, by the time the United States had become involved in World War II, the Kentucky Derby no longer needed to be metaphorically draped in the American flag to be perceived as patriotically acceptable in a time of war; it was already an American institution, and was celebrated as such. Whereas other high-profile American sporting events, like the Masters golf tournament and the Indianapolis 500, were suspended during World War II, the Kentucky Derby was a rallying point for Americans at home and abroad.
It was the Kentucky Derby’s considerable cultural clout that enabled Churchill Downs officials to negotiate with the U.S. government to allow the Derby to continue when other events were cancelled. The Derby had reached such a stature, and continuity was perceived to be such a significant piece of the popular appeal of the event, that there had again been serious talk of staging the race without spectators if the ban on horse racing and wartime travel had not been lifted after V-E Day.21
The Derby’s association with the Old South had not been emphasized during the war, but the connection remained potent, and it didn’t take long for the Old South imagery to return. In 1946 a journalist for the Blood-Horse wrote, “If the visitors go away with the impression that central Kentuckians live exclusively on fried chicken and country ham biscuits, and that you are met at every doorway by a dark servitor carrying a tray of mint juleps it will not surprise anyone.”22 In 1950 a photograph appeared in the Courier-Journal that depicted a Wake Forest student waving a Confederate battle flag in the Churchill Downs infield, and in 1952 a U.S. Army band from the “Dixie Division,” dressed in Confederate gray and “rebel hats,” marched into the Derby infield playing “Dixie,” led by their cocker spaniel mascot bearing a Confederate flag.23
The following year a popular Warner Bros. cartoon reaffirmed the connection between Kentucky and the Old South in American culture. In Southern Fried Rabbit, Bugs Bunny travels south in search of carrots during a famine in the North.24 Bugs encounters Yosemite Sam, unaware that the Civil War has ended, dressed in a Confederate uniform and guarding the Mason-Dixon Line. In an attempt to get by Sam, Bugs dons a blackface disguise and strums a banjo, singing “My Old Kentucky Home.”
In 1956 four Louisville business leaders reestablished the Kentucky Derby Festival that had been first attempted briefly in the 1930s, giving the City of Louisville and festival sponsors an opportunity to shape the image and identity of the Derby and its host city during Derby Week, when Louisville had the attention of the nation. The festival’s events helped city leaders to reemphasize Louisville’s reputation as a southern city. Although the festival has grown to the extent that it now lasts for two weeks, consists of dozens of events, and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to Louisville each year, the first modern Derby Festival in 1956 consisted only of a parade.
In the festival’s early years designers competed for awards given to top parade floats sponsored by local companies. Themes of the floats reflected both Cold War patriotic spirit and a fondness for evocations of the Old South. Winning floats had titles like “The Great U.S.,” “Heritage of the Old South,” and “Medleys of Stephen Foster.”25 A float called “Dixie” won the “Bluegrass Trophy for the float most representative of the romance of Kentucky.”26 Another, sponsored by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, won “most beautiful commercial entry” with a float depicting a “smoke-belching ‘iron horse’ surrounded by a Southern plantation and ladies in hoop skirts.”27 In 1957 the first Derby Festival queen was crowned at the Coronation Ball, which has been held under the name the Fillies Derby Ball since 1959. Today, organizers describe the event as “a grand affair representing Louisville’s tradition of southern hospitality,” demonstrating the continued connection between the Derby and the South that festival organizers have worked to maintain.28
Another way in which the prewar links between the Derby and the Old South reemerged in the 1950s was in newspaper coverage of the Kentucky Colonels’ annual pre-Derby dinner. Reports often included photos of all-black servant staffs carrying trays of mint juleps and singing Stephen Foster tunes, reminiscent of scenes from films like The Little Colonel. The following description is typical in the writer’s knowing nod to his readers regarding Kentucky’s lingering pseudo-Confederate status: “The night’s festivities really got underway when a procession of [black] waiters marched into the Flag Room singing and bearing trays of mint juleps. A toast to the President of the United States was proposed. Everyone arose, waited expectantly, but nothing happened. Then everyone drank to the health of Governor Chandler.”29
Though the winking recognition of an imagined Confederate identity being celebrated at the Derby continued after the war, the days of cartoon depictions of black-faced clowns in newspaper coverage of the Derby were gone for good. The cultural and political climate had changed since the start of American involvement in World War II, and while there was still a place for commemoration of the Old South in 1950s America, the Derby had become more than just a celebration of the regional past. The Derby had also become a site that celebrated the American present, where equine champions and their human connections were praised for possessing the power, strength, and virtue of a nation recently victorious in the largest war in the history of humankind.
After the end of World War II, American horse racing entered a “golden age.” Seven hundred thousand Americans would visit one of the nation’s 130 racetracks each week; racing surpassed baseball as the number-one spectator sport in America by 1952.30 Racing had a virtual monopoly on legal gambling in the United States and provided spectators an opportunity for excitement and escape while participating in a sport with deep American roots. Horse racing, boxing, and baseball, the most popular sports of the 1950s, could all trace their lineage back for generations, which appealed to a society trying to establish itself as a model for the world. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, some of the most successful and celebrated teams and athletes were held up as examples of American strength, success, and prosperity.
The most dominant horse racing operation in the 1940s and 1950s, Calumet Farm, was on a plane of national celebrity similar to that of heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano or Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees. From 1941 to 1961, Calumet Farm dominated all American racing, including the Kentucky Derby. In that period Calumet was the leading owner in terms of annual purse money won in America twelve times, and was never out of the top three.31 Overall, Calumet Farm owned eight Derby winners and bred nine.32 Those eight Derby wins came in just twenty starts. In addition, Calumet Farm had four seconds and a third-place finish from those twenty starts, a remarkable record that is unlikely ever to be matched. Calumet’s dominance of the sport came at a time when Americans were happy to celebrate signs of national strength and dominance. The Kentucky Derby was horse racing’s brightest stage, and horses carrying Calumet’s famous “devil red and blue” silks shone brightly upon it. Calumet’s eight Derby wins doubled the total of its nearest competitor, Colonel E. R. Bradley, and its success helped to increase not only its own popularity but also that of the Derby.
Whirlaway (in front) capturing the Belmont Stakes en route to the 1941 Triple Crown. (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
The name Calumet Farm first became commonplace in the headlines of the nation’s sports pages in 1941, when Whirlaway won the Kentucky Derby in record time on his way to the Triple Crown and two consecutive Horse of the Year honors, beginning a run of two decades of dominance for Calumet Farm in American racing. Whirlaway, known for his freakishly long tail, which reached almost to the ground, and his unpredictable running style, is still regarded as one of the greatest American horses of the twentieth century. He would go on to break the American career earnings record set by Seabiscuit and eventually joined his jockey Eddie Arcaro and his trainer Ben Jones in racing’s Hall of Fame. He helped make Calumet Farm a household name in the American sports vernacular, but he would not even be the greatest horse to carry the Calumet colors in the 1940s.
In 1948 Calumet’s Citation completed the most impressive three-year-old campaign of any American racehorse in history after crushing his competition the previous year to earn two-year-old champion honors. As a three-year-old the mahogany-colored colt captured the Derby as an odds-on favorite, becoming Calumet’s third Kentucky Derby winner of the decade.33 He would go on to win the Triple Crown that year, the last horse to do so until Secretariat a quarter century later. In his 1948 three-year-old season Citation won nineteen of twenty races, including fifteen in a row and eight against older horses, a record that is most unlikely ever to be matched.
Citation, ridden by Eddie Arcaro, Kentucky Derby, 1948. (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Citation earned comparisons to the theretofore incomparable Man o’ War but, unlike Man o’ War, Citation competed in and won the Kentucky Derby. This fact does not diminish Man o’ War’s legacy, but it does reinforce the fact that the Kentucky Derby had unquestionably become the most important race on the American three-year-olds’ calendar, a status that had not been so certain in 1920, when Man o’ War’s owner Samuel Riddle had decided that his horse would bypass the Derby.
Mr. and Mrs. Warren Wright, at Hialeah, 1948. (Morgan Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Calumet owner Warren Wright was in the midst of an unprecedented run as an owner and breeder of champion racehorses. He had endeavored to make Calumet Farm the finest Thoroughbred racehorse factory in the nation when he inherited what had been a top-notch Standardbred farm from his father in 1931, and he was succeeding in that endeavor.34
At the beginning of the Depression, the Wrights were among the wealthiest families in America. As president of the Calumet Baking Powder Company in the 1920s, Warren Wright negotiated its sale for $32 million to an operation that would soon be called General Foods. Warren Wright’s father, William Wright, had founded the baking powder company at age thirty-seven in 1888 with $3,500, his life savings accumulated over his years as a salesman. His product was marketed as containing a special ingredient (egg whites), which gave the baking powder “double leavening action,” according to advertisements.35
In 1931 William Wright died, leaving the vast majority of his estate, including his Calumet Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, to his son Warren. By the 1940s, Warren had established Calumet Farm as America’s greatest Thoroughbred racing and breeding dynasty. After Calumet’s victory in the 1941 Derby with Whirlaway, the farm became one of Kentucky’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing hundreds of visitors per day. Time magazine ran a cover story on Calumet’s trainer “Plain” Ben Jones in 1949, and by 1950, the farm was forced to limit public access to the farm because of the swell in visitors due to Citation’s success.36
In 1952, when Hill Gail became the fifth horse to carry Calumet’s colors to a Derby victory, a writer for the Blood-Horse asserted, “The folklore of sports is filled with exploits of underdogs who sandbagged a champion, but the world loves a consistent winner, and the Man in the White Hat always gives the citizenry something to anchor to.”37 This argument is not a universal truth; the history of American sport is full of “consistent winners” who were not embraced by the public, and of “underdogs” who were. But the quotation does shed some important light on an element of the collective mindset of Americans in the 1950s, and offers some insight into how Americans may have been experiencing and perceiving the Kentucky Derby in the aftermath of World War II.
Like Calumet, the Derby was itself a “consistent winner” and an example of American perseverance and strength. It was an event that Americans could legitimately call “American” at a time when the nation was ready to celebrate its own past, present, and future. In other eras in American culture, underdogs and unlikely victors would be more enthusiastically celebrated, and later in the twentieth century journalists and spectators at the Derby would do just that. But in the early Cold War era journalists and race fans tended to pay more attention to institutions with records of longevity and success; Calumet Farm and the Derby were two such institutions.
An exception to the rule was the mixed reaction to Calumet’s sixth Derby victory with Iron Liege in 1957 over a field that many hold as the greatest in the history of the race. Jockey Bill Shoemaker misjudged the finish line aboard Gallant Man, standing up in the stirrups a sixteenth of a mile too early and allowing Iron Liege to prevail by what the New York Times called a “lucky nose.”38 Bold Ruler’s jockey Eddie Arcaro was embarrassed by his fourth-place finish aboard the favorite and blamed himself for the horse’s loss.39 Iron Liege, called the “junior varsity colt” by one writer, rather than being celebrated as an unlikely victor, almost seemed to be blamed by writers for circumventing the “correct” outcome at the Derby, which should have been a victory by the superior talent.40 Despite some spectators’ disappointment, all could take some solace in knowing that they had indeed witnessed greatness that day, including the talents of jockeys Eddie Arcaro, Bill Hartack, and Bill Shoemaker, who would finish their careers with a combined fourteen Derby wins. In addition to the riders who would eventually be enshrined, the crowd also saw three future Hall of Fame horses that day, though the winner, Iron Liege, was not one of them.41
The only equine outfit to even approach Calumet’s success in the Derby in the 1940s and 1950s was Robert Kleberg’s King Ranch, an enormous cattle operation founded by Kleberg’s grandfather in the 1850s that encompassed hundreds of thousands of acres of south Texas brush country. Under the guidance of Hall of Fame trainer Max Hirsch, King Ranch won the Derby in 1946 and 1950 with Assault and Middleground, respectively, the former going on to capture that year’s Triple Crown. As a young horse Assault barely survived an injury to his right front foot sustained when he stepped on a surveyor’s stake. The injury left the colt with a deformity that made walking and trotting difficult. Fortunately for Assault, galloping was another story. Popularly known as the “Club Footed Comet” (despite the fact that he did not actually have a club foot), Assault equaled a Derby record when he won in 1946 by eight lengths with Jockey Warren Mehrtens. A crowd estimated to be as large as 105,000 showed up to witness the first peacetime Derby in five years, and the winner’s share of the record Derby purse amounted to $96,400.42 “The Lone Star yesterday from the Lone Star State won by the width of Texas,” one newspaper reported. “As he flew away from them in the stretch, the only hope the other horses seemed to have of ever catching Assault was to hang around when the race was over and wait for him to revisit the scene of his crime.”43 Only a week later, Assault won the Preakness Stakes by a head before a record crowd for that event.44 He went on to capture the Belmont Stakes to become the seventh Triple Crown champion in American racing history.
Bill Shoemaker, four-time Derby-winning jockey, weighing in. (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Assault with jockey Warren Mehrtens and groom after his record-setting win in the 1946 Kentucky Derby. (Morgan Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
The following year a colt named Jet Pilot won the Derby for trainer “Silent” Tom Smith, who had first made a name for himself by developing Seabiscuit into a champion racehorse. In the 1940s Smith was nationally known as the trainer for Main Chance Farm, one of the leading racing stables of the 1940s and 1950s, owned by cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. Born Florence Nightingale Graham, Arden began her cosmetics empire in the 1910s, at a time when women who “painted” (wore makeup) were presumed to be whores or actresses. Graham marketed her “Concept of Total Beauty” brilliantly, becoming one of the world’s wealthiest women by selling the idea that youth and beauty could be bought in the form of lotions, cosmetics, and perfumes. A contemporary of Graham’s, Matt Winn must have been impressed by her ability to sell a vision and a lifestyle, something Winn had also done in his promotion of the Derby as a consumable experience.
In 1950 the formidable tandem of King Ranch and Max Hirsch again found the Derby winner’s circle with Middleground, who missed Whirlaway’s record time by one-fifth of a second beneath apprentice rider Bill Boland. In capturing its second Derby the King Ranch became, to that time, only the seventh owner in history to have won at least two Derbies, a list headed by Calumet Farm, which would break a tie with Colonel E. R. Bradley two years later with its fifth Derby victory by Hill Gail in 1952. At the dawn of the golden age of the television cowboys, including Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers, King Ranch’s Texas-bred horses and trainer proved to be popular Derby champions in the postwar culture of mass consumption in America.45
In 1956 Needles became the first Florida-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby. His father and paternal grandfather, Pensive and Ponder, were both Derby winners who had been bred and owned by Calumet Farm.46 One of those on hand to witness Needles’s Derby win was the great American writer John Steinbeck, who had been invited by the Courier-Journal to write a guest piece on that year’s event. In what has become one of the more famous descriptions of the Derby, Steinbeck wrote:
At this sacred moment, in this place of pilgrimage, I have several towering but gossamer convictions. During Derby Week, Louisville is the capital of the world. This lively, lovely city has a temporary population of foster-citizens second only to China. I am also sure that if the national elections took place today, our next president would be a horse. . . . I am fulfilled and weary. This Kentucky Derby, whatever it is—a race, an emotion, a turbulence, an explosion—is one of the most beautiful and violent and satisfying things I have ever experienced. And I suspect that, as with other wonders, the people one by one have taken from it exactly as much good or evil as they brought to it. What an experience. I am glad I have seen it and felt it at last.47
The year before Steinbeck’s Derby coverage appeared in the Courier-Journal, William Faulkner was given a similar assignment to produce a piece on the Derby for the then-fledgling Sports Illustrated. Faulkner, like countless writers who had covered the Kentucky Derby before him, referred to Stephen Foster and called Kentucky “my old Kentucky home,” but he was somewhat atypical in his inclusion of Daniel Boone and Abraham Lincoln in his unusual and evocative description of the Derby experience: “This saw Boone: the bluegrass, the virgin land rolling westward wave by dense wave from the Allegheny gaps, unmarked then, teeming with deer and buffalo about the salt licks and the limestone springs whose water in time would make the fine bourbon whiskey; and the wild men too—the red men and the white ones too who had to be a little wild also to endure and survive and so mark the wilderness with the proofs of their tough survival—. . . the dark and bloody ground.”48
This excerpt would seem to have nothing to do with the horse race that Faulkner was nominally covering. But the writer was trying to capture the essence of the event, and he understood very well that the Derby was more than just a horse race. The Derby was an embodiment of Kentucky and all that the state represented, but it had also become a slice of Americana. In the environment of the Cold War, the Derby was in many ways an American celebration, and Kentucky’s rich history and malleable identity allowed Faulkner to evoke images of Abraham Lincoln, born in a Kentucky log cabin, in the same report with Boone and the 1955 Derby, making Kentucky a cradle as well as a keeper of American national identity. Faulkner continued:
And knew Lincoln too, where the old weathered durable rail fences enclose the green and sacrosanct place of rounded hills long healed now from the plow, and big old trees to shade the site of the ancient one-room cabin in which the babe first saw light; no sound there now but such wind and birds as when the child first faced the road which would lead to fame and martyrdom—unless perhaps you like to think that the man’s voice is somewhere there too, speaking into the scene of his nativity the simple and matchless prose with which he reminded us of our duties and responsibilities if we wished to continue as a nation.49
In celebrating the Kentucky Derby with Faulkner, Cold War Americans could embrace the popular memory of Daniel Boone, the man who brought American values to the untamed wilderness, and Lincoln, the man who preserved them by saving the Union.
Faulkner and Steinbeck published their evocative Derby descriptions at a time when national sports telecasts were still in their infancy. But it would not be long before sportscasters would come to overshadow sportswriters as national celebrities and as popular sources for description, analysis, and interpretation of sport. With the growth of national television broadcasting in the 1950s came a homogenization of Derby coverage in some respects. Television networks needed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in national broadcasts, which ironically led to a reduction in media focus on the aspect of the Derby that had helped it to become so culturally significant in the first place—its evocation of the Old South. Although elements of southern-ness like singing “My Old Kentucky Home” and tossing back mint juleps remained part of the story in the age of television, the advent of network broadcasting helped to further reshape the Derby as an American event, not just a “southern” one.
In 1928 radio broadcaster Credo Harris had lamented to his Derby audience, “In such a condition of color and motion the task of describing it to you seems almost hopeless. I wish that television were in general use—as it will be shortly—for then I could turn it on and let you thrill with the actual picture, instead of asking you to follow a most inadequate word printer.”50 Two decades later, in 1949, Louisville’s WAVE television station carried the first live telecast of the Kentucky Derby. The telecast, which could be seen only in the homes of the few owners of television sets in Louisville and the surrounding area, included an interview with an aging Colonel Matt Winn.
Only months after appearing on the first limited television broadcast of the Derby, Matt Winn died at the age of eighty-eight. He had seen each of the first seventy-five Kentucky Derbies in person, and was widely acknowledged as the man most responsible for the event’s survival and prosperity. Legendary sports columnist Arthur Daley described the considerable role Winn played in shaping the Kentucky Derby: “A fabulous character in every respect was the man who was christened Martin Joseph Winn but became Matt Winn. He could give cards and spades to Barnum and beat him. [The Kentucky Derby] is his baby and his alone. He will always be a part of it, even more a part of it than the spired towers at Churchill Downs. He alone made it what it is today.”51
From the beginning of his association with Churchill Downs, Winn had a friendly relationship with members of the press. Winn spent much of his winter “off season” in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria, where he often entertained sportswriters and picked up their tabs.52 He encouraged top sports journalists to come to the Derby, and made sure they were well treated while in Louisville. His list of friends within the industry included some of the most famous names of that generation: Grantland Rice, Damon Runyon, and Jimmy Cannon. Bill Corum was another of Winn’s favorite writers. Corum coined the phrase “Run for the Roses” in 1925, and later succeeded Winn as president of Churchill Downs, Inc.
The respect that Winn had for writers was reciprocated, and the writers knew that he was always good for a useful quote and a free drink. Writers returned Winn’s kindness by regularly heaping praise and attention upon him in their columns. Arthur Daley wrote of Winn, “The colonel took a hinky-dink country race and converted it into the most glamorous and widely publicized hoss event in the world, the Kentucky Derby.”53 Time magazine claimed that the popularity of the Kentucky Derby could be attributed “to the industry and wily determination of a fat, white-haired Louisville Irishman who, as General Manager of Churchill Downs since 1902, has transformed the event from a pipsqueak Dixie picnic to a major U.S. sport fiesta.”54 Such explanations of the Derby’s rise to prominence were gross simplifications, but articles like these nevertheless helped to promote both Winn and his beloved Kentucky Derby.
Matt Winn, always dapper, always promoting the Derby. (Photographic Archives, 1994.18.4644, Special Collections, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.)
Much of the longevity and success of the Derby can be attributed to the many contributions made by Matt Winn, who worked tirelessly to make the Derby the annual spectacle that it has become. Winn continued the efforts of M. L. Clark to make Churchill Downs and the Derby appealing to high society, and to establish a reputation of legitimacy and integrity for the Downs. Under Winn’s watch the Derby’s attendance grew along with its national stature. Thanks in large part to Winn’s leadership, Churchill Downs and the Derby survived antigambling and antiracing reform movements, two world wars, the Great Depression, and a major flood.
In promoting the Derby, Winn sold a vision, a dream, and a lifestyle. He was selling romantic notions of Old Kentucky and the Old South. The Kentucky Derby was an opportunity for the swells to indulge in vice and a chance for the masses to experience a bit of luxury. Eventually the Derby would become a celebration of the American Dream, a place where patrons had an opportunity to shoot for success on the highest stage with a $2 ticket to win on a Derby champion, or for dreamers to imagine themselves in the winner’s circle. The Derby was always more than just a horse race. From its inception it was a romantic celebration of past and present. Winn, more than anyone else, recognized and effectively exploited the Derby’s potential for mass appeal.
Above all, Winn was a walking, talking, living embodiment of the myth and romance that the American public had come to associate with Kentucky. He called himself “colonel”; he drank bourbon, smoked cigars, wore light-colored suits, and employed a black valet. Those who have called Winn indispensable to the success of the Kentucky Derby are correct in their assessments, but they have generally missed the nature of his significance. Winn was not merely a “tireless promoter,” a term that calls to mind a mustachioed, cane-twirling carnival barker with an uncanny ability to attract rubes with fast talk. He was not an example of someone whose touch turned everything to gold. He had a hand in dozens of other racetracks with signature races in the United States and Mexico over a long career, but no event that he promoted or managed ever began to approach the popularity or cultural significance of the Kentucky Derby.
WHAS TV camera, 1953. Worries that televising the Derby would lead to decreased attendance proved to be unfounded. (Radio Photographic Collection, 79PA104-0437, University of Kentucky, Lexington.)
Winn attracted attention to the Kentucky Derby because he was able to provide an image of what people wanted or needed Kentucky to be. He invited Americans to experience the image that he embodied by coming to Louisville each May or by following the event via newspapers, radio, newsreels, and television. No person was more important to the story of the growth of the Kentucky Derby than Colonel Martin J. Winn. Behind the scenes he was a capable manager, administrator, and businessman. He was an innovator in the world of horse racing. He had a warm and symbiotic relationship with many of the nation’s greatest sportswriters. But for millions of Americans who attended, read about, listened to, or watched the Kentucky Derby every year, Winn was a real-life Kentucky colonel who served as both spokesman and pseudo-mascot for the event. This was his greatest contribution to the Derby.
In 1952 millions of people beyond Louisville had the opportunity to experience the Derby in their living rooms with the first live national television broadcast of the event. It was believed to have been the costliest half-hour show in television history at that time and was picked up by more than forty television stations on the Columbia Broadcasting System network. The television audience was roughly estimated at between 10 and 15 million viewers, and millions more heard Fred Capossella and Mel Allen call the race on a national radio broadcast that was carried by 208 radio stations across the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada, and was rebroadcast around the world to the American Armed Forces Network.55 Churchill Downs officials had been concerned about the broadcast’s potential effect on attendance, but track president Bill Corum happily reported after the 1952 Derby that attendance and betting figures were both up from previous years.
Other tracks did not learn from the Derby’s successful relationship with media technology, and American racing in general suffered as a result of its failure to take advantage of the enormous growth of televised sports in the second half of the twentieth century. The general reluctance to use television among racing industry leaders had been due to their fear that because people could not bet on the races if watching from their homes, the racetracks would lose income with televised racing. This was a shortsighted fear that proved to be costly. But the Kentucky Derby would remain a fixture on American television, which helped keep the event relevant throughout the twentieth century.
An estimated 20 million people tuned into the CBS telecast of the 1953 Kentucky Derby.56 Seventy-two percent of American televisions that were turned on at the time of the race were tuned to the Derby coverage when American racing’s first television superstar, a gray colt named Native Dancer, was defeated by H. F. Guggenheim’s Dark Star after being bumped badly on the first turn.57 This shocking defeat before an estimated one hundred thousand fans was the only loss in the career of the immensely popular gray colt. His late-running style and his distinctive color were part of his appeal to audiences, but the reasons for his popularity were more complicated, as a biographer of the horse explained. “It was an epic time for mythmaking in America. In the aftermath of a depression and war, at the dawn of the television age, the country was moving to the suburbs and learning to commune over heroes hatched in living rooms on flickering black-and-white TV sets.”58 Native Dancer, affectionately known to his supporters as the Grey Ghost, was owned by the handsome and wealthy sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. The horse and owner seemed to Americans to embody what they wanted to believe about themselves and their nation—success, confidence, and power.59 Although American sports history had been replete with unlikely victories by popular underdogs, Dark Star’s upset of Native Dancer came in the 1950s, not the 1930s, and it was not popular. Time magazine reported, “Thousands turned from their TV screens in sorrow, a few in tears.”60 Arthur Daley admitted, “This reporter was never as emotionally affected by a horse race.”61
Native Dancer’s popularity had transcended the sport of Thoroughbred racing and the Kentucky Derby; he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in May of 1954. His popularity helped to demonstrate that the Derby was a marketable television event. The following year the Gillette Safety Razor Company agreed to pay $150,000 to sponsor the Derby’s CBS telecast for the next three years. The national broadcasts allowed millions of fans across the country to experience the Derby from their living rooms and helped the Derby to secure a place in the changing American culture of the television age.
The next equine television superstar and popular hero of Thoroughbred racing to emerge was Silky Sullivan, named for boxer John L. Sullivan.62 Silky had a habit of spotting his rivals dozens of lengths before catching them at the wire in a blazing finish. But in 1958 he became one of the first victims of the Sports Illustrated jinx (which, some believe, has caused an uncanny number of athletes appearing on the magazine’s cover to subsequently underperform or suffer injuries) when he appeared on the cover the week before the Derby.63 The Derby was America’s most popular race, and Churchill Downs would have served as a fitting setting for Silky’s coronation as king of American racing. The national television coverage of the Derby even had a camera dedicated to Silky so that his fans could keep him in view as he employed his usual tactic of dropping far behind the rest of the horses in the race, far out of the typical frame of televised racing.64 But his triumph was not to be. Rain had caused the track conditions to deteriorate, and one trainer later recalled that it was “like racing in chewing gum.”65 Calumet Farm’s Tim Tam prevailed, adding to the farm’s already impressive Derby record.66 Nevertheless, the Derby was the beneficiary of increased attention and publicity when a horse as popular as Silky Sullivan competed in the event.
The Derby achieved its lofty national reputation and stature in the early twentieth century in large part because of the event’s perceived connection to romantic elements of Kentucky and the Old South. But even as the Derby gained popularity because of its southern ties, it had become, at least by the time of the American entrance into World War II, an American institution and a significant piece of Americana. This status helped the Derby to remain popular and culturally relevant in the second half of the twentieth century, when many of the aspects of the Old South were not as widely appealing as they had been in the first half of the century. By the end of the 1950s the Derby’s increasingly American status, combined with the continued growth in media coverage of the event, which by then included a week’s worth of prerace festivities, made Louisville a national stage during Derby Week. In the increasingly homogenized American culture in the 1950s, which included network television, Levittowns, the interstate highway system, and chain stores, the Derby remained a distinct piece of regional culture even as it became increasingly American.
