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Prior
to the filming, at the ‘31 500, Warner Bros. had seen Joe
Caccida and his riding mechanic, Clarence Glover sustain
fatal injuries when they flipped over the southeast wall during
practice. Then, a few weeks later, 1930 winner Billy Arnold
and his riding mechanic, Spider Matlock, almost both bought
the farm by going over the Speedway’s northeast wall in flames
in their Summers-Miller while leading. Arnold ended up with a
fractured pelvis and Matlock a broken shoulder, but both survived.
Realizing
racing back then was as tough as it gets, the studio decided to
forego the usual stunt men and hire real drivers for the scary
stuff. Hence, the drivers-as-themselves cast made a pretty impressive
Indy starting line up, and affords us the opportunity to see these
great men as they were: Fred Frame, Ralph Hepburn, Wilbur Shaw,
Shorty Cantlon, Mel Kenealy, Stubby Stubblefield, Harry Hartz,
Lou Schneider, Bryan Saulspaugh, Phil Pardee, as well as Arnold
and Matlock, to name a few. Coincidentally, the following year,
Arnold and Matlock were injured again, this time switching injuries
— Arnold with a broken shoulder, and Matlock with a fractured
pelvis. It pretty much ended Arnold’s career.
As
in many racing movies to follow, a lot of the racing sequences
were filmed at the famous Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles, a track
built specifically for midget auto racing by oilman Earl B. Gilmore.
Speed
(1936)
Known
mostly for its slightly odd casting (a young and gawky Jimmy
Stewart and Three Stooges founder Ted Healy, who plays
an eccentric engineer named “Gadget”), “Speed”
offers little in the action department, using plenty of stock
footage and rear projection. Stewart, who claimed in an interview
that he didn’t even recall making the picture (it was one
of nine he made that year), plays Terry Martin, chief test driver
for Emery Motors. He has invented a new type of carburetor, and
he and his mechanic race against the clock to perfect it in time
for the Memorial Day race.
Burn
‘Em Up O’Connor (1939)
“Burn
‘Em Up O’Connor” was based loosely on, of all things,
a murder mystery/racing novel by land speed record pursuer Sir
Malcolm Campbell, called “Salute to the Gods”. Race
car owner/builder Pinky Delano can’t figure out why his drivers
keep getting killed trying to make the same turn on the track!
Along comes driver Jerry O’Connor (Dennis O’Keefe)
and his dim-witted mechanic, Buddy Buttle (Nat Pendleton).
It’s Jerry’s turn behind the wheel, and just as he starts
the big race, Buddy inadvertently discovers the crashes weren’t
exactly accidental. Hey, can we stand the suspense?
In
one of the film’s more unbelievable scenes, a race driver
is able to negotiate the track blindfolded (!!!) at over a hundred
miles an hour, thanks to someone standing at the tricky turn and
whistling at him! Nonetheless, some of the great race drivers
of the day appear in the film, including Fred Frame, Ronnie
Householder, Rex Mays, Louis Meyer, Kelly Petillo, Art Sparks,
and Joel Thorne. Actor Tom Neal plays a race driver,
but is better known in real life for having beat up Franchot
Tone in an argument over hussy Barbara Payton. And
look for Clayton “The Lone Ranger” Moore as a
hospital intern.
Indianapolis
Speedway (1939)
You’ve
gotta love a movie where Pat O’Brien says, “Listen,
Pop! I’ve seen kids start out from all over the country!
Grinding away year after year in dirt and grime on dangerous rotten
tracks! Getting crippled and killed, and for what?? So they wind
up – skid crazy!” Okay, “Indianapolis Speedway”
is a scene-for-scene remake of “The Crowd Roars,” this
time with O’Brien replacing Cagney and John Payne
replacing Eric Linden, but it’s still great fun to watch.
Once again, Billy Arnold was hired to play himself, but
just about every racing scene is lifted right from the original
Cagney movie, including a peculiar moment where a horse wanders
onto the track. Interestingly, the Speedway had done away with
riding mechanics by 1938, although a lot of the 1932 footage reused
here features them.
Buck
Privates Come Home (1947)
Abbott
and Costello find themselves out of the army and on the run
from their old drill sergeant, played by Nat Pendleton
(remember him from “Burn ‘Em Up O’Connor”?).
They somehow end up in the midget car racing business, trying
to raise the money to adopt the poor little war orphan they brought
back from France. The wild finale finds Costello himself behind
the wheel of the #17 midget, and entered in a big-money California
short track auto race. In typical A & C fashion, he doesn’t
stay on the track for long, and feverishly tries to escape the
authorities by dodging motorists and pedestrians alike. Oh, that
rear-projection screen! Milburn Stone (“Doc”
from “Gunsmoke”) plays the track announcer.
The
Big Wheel (1949)
“The
Big Wheel” features the zero-to-sixty rise of Billy Coy,
recklessly going from mechanic to race driver in the shadow of
his famous father, who died in a fiery crash during the final
laps of the Indy 500. Mickey Rooney hams it up as Coy,
a kid with a chip the size of Indiana on his shoulder, out to
apparently prove he can just about kill himself same way the old
man did. Although it can be hard to imagine Rooney getting any
of the era’s Tough Tony Bettenhausen persona across
(Mickey’s helmet just doesn’t seem to fit quite right!),
he brings his usual bottomless energy to the part, and it’s
sort of fun to watch him crouched low, sawing the big wheel of
the Al Sherman “Four Bits” midget.
For
the film, United Artists managed to capture some wild racing action,
including George Lynch’s heart-stopping crash in the
Automobile Shippers Offy on the first lap, right in front of the
first turn camera bay. Allen Heath and Perry Grimm
provide some of the West Coast short track action, and boxing
great Jack Dempsey appears as a trophy presenter.
To
Please a Lady (1950)
“The
Crowd Roars” may be the grandaddy of all open wheel oval
track racing films, but “To Please a Lady” is in many
ways the best. It’s certainly the most glamorous, and Clark
Gable, well, he just looked like a race driver (in fact, he
looked exactly like his racing “stand in”, real racer
Bud Rose). It’s impossible to beat the casting and
chemistry between reporter Barbara Stanwyck, and Gable
as a “bad boy” of racing who tears up the tough sprint
car tracks of the northeast before heading to the Brickyard to
try to win The Big One. Will Geer, long before his “Waltons”
days, plays Gable’s car owner.Many actual drivers are featured,
including Henry Banks, Peewee Distarce, Cecil Green, Jack McGrath,
Johnny Parsons, and Johnny Tolan.
Mauri
Rose assured himself an appearance in the picture by catching
fire in the pits, then hopping back in to rejoin the race. His
chief mechanic Jim Travers, was left in the pits to struggle
out of his burning pants with $2,000 in the pocket, only to find
his nylon boxer shorts had melted. But the real star of the picture
could be the Don Lee Kurtis-Kraft KK2000 Offy, the car
“driven” by Gable in the film. Click
here to read Lou's article "From Race Car to Movie Star"...
the strange story of The Don Lee Special.
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