Stagehand

Myron Selznick, Hollywood talent agent, put $6,000 on his own entry. The $50 parimutuel windows trailed long queues of cinema celebrities, the $5 windows were stampeded. Over $1,370,000 was bet in four hours. It was a holiday in Hollywood and most studio folk, from Clark Gable down to the lowliest stagehand, were among the 60,000 people celebrating Washington's Birthday with a day at the races.

Feature event was the Santa Anita Derby, a $60,000 stake which would get top billing at any other U. S. race track. But at Santa Anita, where everything is colossal, it plays second fiddle to the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap, grand finale of the 57-day meet. As the field of 15 three-year-olds paraded to the post, Sun Egret was the favorite and William du Font's Dauber had a large following; but hunch players and a few sentimentalists were betting on Stagehand, a shiny bay colt owned by Maxwell Howard of Dayton, Ohio.

Last year Stagehand finished his two-year-old season a maiden (a horse that has never won a race). But this winter, in the theatrical setting at Santa Anita, Stagehand blossomed into a star, won three races in a row. Racing fans all knew that the incomparable Earl Sande, most famed jockey of modern times, was Maxwell Howard's trainer. Because Earl Sande in his riding days had won 967 races (including three Kentucky Derbies and five Belmont Stakes), earned $3,000,000 for his employers, and had the reputation of being able to do more with a horse than anyone else in the world, hunch money last week was going down fast on Sande-trained Stagehand. But seasoned railbirds figured that the Sande protege, a slow starter, would get into a jam in the crowded field of 15.

Into a jam is precisely where Stagehand got. With able Jockey Jack Westrope up, he was twelfth at the start, eleventh at the half-mile post, still in the ruck coming into the stretch. But the wiseacres had not counted on Stagehand's fine sense of drama. In time's nick, like the hero of a Wild West thriller, Stagehand lengthened out, swept wide around the pack, past Sun Egret, past Dauber, won by half a length.

As Trainer Sande, a familiar little figure in unfamiliar clothes, rushed over to Stagehand, plopped a kiss on his nose and led him back to the winner's circle, the jampacked grandstands roared. Looking a little ill at ease without his whip, 39-year-old Earl Sande tipped his hat and grinned. It was his first major victory* in seven years as a trainer.

Like a true Hollywood star, Stagehand had earned $42,775 in less than two minutes, promptly became a favorite for the Kentucky Derby.

*Sande-trained Sceneshifter, older brother of Stagehand and a likely choice for this week's Santa Anita Handicap, came close to victory when he placed second to War Admiral in the Belmont Stakes last year.

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