This Week In History: Curtain Comes Down On Louis B. Mayer’s Racing Career

The golden age of horse racing and its overlap with the golden age of Hollywood are well-recounted. We’ve all seen photos of the days when Bing Crosby and Pat O’Brien graced Del Mar, and could have rubbed elbows with racing owners Betty Grable, Mervyn LeRoy, or Rita Hayworth. But Hollywood producers were also part of the scene; Harry and Jack Warner of Warner Brothers started Hollywood Park, and for a few dominant years, Louis B. Mayer had a racing operation that outclassed all of them.

This week in 1947, Mayer began dismantling his stable after a decade of success most owners only dream of.

A 1960 feature from Sports Illustrated recalled that Mayer was traveling Europe in 1937 with fellow movie executive Joe Schenck. Schenck had an appointment in Amsterdam with a famous doctor, and Mayer got a check-up himself while accompanying his friend. Legend has it that Mayer, then vice president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was told that “while there was nothing organically wrong with him, he was rather tensed up and should relax more, possibly find a hobby,” according to SI writer Gerald Holland.

“The doctor pointed out that many wealthy men found the breeding and racing of Thoroughbred horses an interesting diversion,” Holland continued. “When Dr. Snapper happened to mention the Aga Khan as an example of a well-to-do horse fancier, Mayer perked up. To be mentioned in the same breath with the Aga Khan was status indeed for a man who had started as a junk dealer.

“Mayer bought his first horse from his dear friend, Joe Schenck, and, in the best Hollywood tradition of friendship, Schenck unloaded the worst horse in his stable on him, a dog named Marine Blue.”

Despite any suggestion that horses be a hobby, Holland reported that Mayer approached the idea of a racing stable with the same somber focus on success he’d become known for at the studio, and after that rough beginning with Marine Blue, it paid off.

Mayer eventually developed a 504-acre farm in Perris, Calif., which was complete with a foaling barn, six-stall stallion barn, and a training center that included what New Yorker magazine called a duplicate of Santa Anita’s dirt track, which supposedly used the same materials composition for the cushion.

Filling the stallion barn proved to be more challenging than he’d probably anticipated. Holland wrote that Mayer offered Samuel Riddle $1 million for Man o’ War and was told the legend wasn’t for sale. He got the same answer when he tried to buy English stallion Hyperion for the same price.

In the end, he settled for Beau Pere, a $100,000 purchase who had proven successful as an Australian stud, and Alibhai, a son of Hyperion who retired before he’d even started in a race.

Still, the formula worked – according to a profile on the website for the Tony Leonard photography collection, Mayer was leading breeder in California for ten years, and in the late 1940s can be found alongside much larger operations as a top breeder of stakes runners.

Mayer bred Your Host, who would go on to sire Kelso, but his crowning achievement was the 1945 Horse of the Year Busher, who he purchased when she was a 2-year-old. The daughter of War Admiral didn’t finish off the board in 18 starts as a 3-year-old in 1945, with wins in handicaps against colts.

Mayer’s interests even led to him registering with the Australian Jockey Club to run there as an owner in 1941. At the time, he was listed as the owner of five yearlings, three of whom were by Beau Pere, though it’s not clear what became of his Australian operation.

In February 1947, only ten years into his new hobby, Mayer announced a dispersal sale of his racing stock. It was the same year he divorced his first wife Margaret, and he may have had a hefty settlement to pay. The sale, held by Fasig-Tipton at Santa Anita at the end of the month, was broadcast on the radio and attracted 7,000 people. Sixty horses were sold for over $1.5 million.

At the time, newspapers estimated his horses had won over $1.6 million, with 315 wins, including 45 stakes.

That auction would be the first part in a gradual process of divesting himself of nearly 250 horses. Two years later, Louis B. Mayer Stock Farm sold for more than $1 million to Ellsworth Statler (of Statler Hotels) and Mrs. Meredith Harless, formerly of the Ziegfeld Follies. Beau Alibhai and Beau Pere were still in the stud barn at the time, but were not included in the deal. Both were sent to Spendthrift. Beau Pere, by then over 20 years old, died shortly after the move. Alibhai would pay off, going to Spendthrift in 1947 for what was then a record syndication price of $500,000.

Like many people tied to horse racing though, Mayer found himself called back. By the 1950s, he was back in the game, spending huge sums to build back the racing and breeding operation he’d liquidated.

Mayer died in 1957, too soon to know he’d be the breeder of 1959 Preakness winner Royal Orbit.