Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Hollywood Park Operating Company
- Abstract:
- The Hollywood Turf Club, later renamed Hollywood Park, opened in 1938. Known as the Track of the Lakes and Flowers, it served as home for a number of talented jockeys, trainers, and prominent thoroughbreds. The collection consists of minute books and ledgers; stock certificate books; scrapbooks; negatives; press clippings; and chart books.
- Extent:
- 364 linear feet (5 boxes, 104 shoe boxes, 189 cartons, 86 flat boxes, 117 oversize flat boxes), 236 audiovisual carriers (236 open reel videotapes), 1 born-digital carriers (1 optical disc), and 58 linear feet (12 unprocessed record cartons, 5 unprocessed oversize boxes, 1 unprocessed shoe box, 236 unprocessed reel containers)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Hollywood Park Records (Collection 2254). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The collection consists of material related to Hollywood Park and the California racing community. Included are minute books and ledgers; stock certificate books; scrapbooks; negatives; press clippings; and chart books. The minute books and ledgers represent annual and special meetings of the Hollywood Turf Club and Hollywood Park. The stock certificate books comprise stock certificate sales for the first decade of the track's operation. The scrapbooks and press clippings document media coverage of Hollywood Park, as well as other racetracks such as Santa Anita, Los Alamitos, and the California horse racing culture. The negatives represent Hollywood Park racing seasons and track events. The chart books provide racing statistics regarding horses, jockeys, and odds mostly for the other regional race tracks, with only one chart book representing Hollywood Park.
The collection consists of
- Scrapbooks 158 albums (no boxes)
- Committee meeting and documented executive-like transactions; Stock certificate books; Thoroughbred magazine (Boxes 1-11 and 17-19)
- Chartbooks (Boxes 12-16)
- Clippings files (Boxes 20-43)
- Negatives (Boxes 44-261)
- Bound magazines (Boxes 262-267)
- Video Tapes (Boxes 268-294)
- Approximately 237 1 inch video tapes (in cases); stored in boxes that measure 22 x 14 x 11 height).
- Biographical / historical:
-
The Hollywood Turf Club (later renamed Hollywood Park), opened on June 10, 1938. Constructed on close to 315 acres, it was built to accommodate 30,000 people and 1,250 horses. The race track itself was an oval one mile distance and 90 feet wide.
A year earlier, in 1937, the Los Angeles Times reported that there were two applications for a Los Angeles horse racing track: one submitted by the Golden State Jockey Club, the other from the Hollywood Racing Association. Ultimately the Golden State group was awarded a provisional permit to build. Golden State changed its name to the Hollywood Turf Club and selected a West Los Angeles location near the intersection of Sawtelle and National to build the track. Although granted a provisional permit from the California Horse Racing Board and approval from the Los Angeles Planning Commission to begin building in September 1936, there were "floods of protest" from the West Los Angeles community that led the Hollywood Turf Club to withdraw its application for zoning in West Los Angeles and select the Inglewood location that would be the home of Hollywood Park.
In January 1938, Hollywood Turf Club officers and directors included Hollywood industry figures and Los Angeles businessmen such as Walter McCarty (Beverly Wilshire Hotel), Jack Warner (Warner Bros), Earl Gilmore (Gilmore Oil Company), J. I. Schnitzer (Western Costume Company), Raoul Walsh (motion picture director), Roy Wilcox, Al Jolson (radio artist), C. M. Rood (oil operator), James Duffy (Santa Fe railroad), Thomas Simmons (oil operator), and Alfred Green (motion picture director). According to Jack Warner, the Hollywood Turf Club was to provide another outstanding attraction for visitors and tourists to Southern California.
The infield of the track was beautifully landscaped with lush gardens and small lakes. The Hollywood Park Goose Girl tradition began during the park's first season in 1938. Each year a Goose Girl was chosen and in addition to posing for photographs and making publicity appearances, she would walk among the geese (and other birds) that populated the infield or coast along on the lake in the small boat, the Miz Clementine, feeding the birds. The tradition was discontinued in the 1970s and brought back for a very brief time in the 1990s. In May 1949, less than two weeks before the opening of the track's spring racing season, a fire severely damaged the original grand stand and Club House. The track reopened a little more than a year later in June 1950. Known as the Track of the Lakes and Flowers, Hollywood Park served as home for a number of talented horsemen and eminent thoroughbreds. Among the horses were Seabiscuit, winner of the inaugural Hollywood Gold Cup in 1938, three-time Gold Cup champions Native Diver and Lava Man, Triple Crown winners Citation, Seattle Slew and Affirmed, Great Communicator, Landaluce, and Zenyatta. Jockeys Eddie Arcaro, Jerry Bailey, Jerry Lambert, Donny Longden, Laffit Pincay, Jr., Bill Shoemaker, Mike Smith, Gary Stevens, and George Woolf; and trainers Charlie Whittingham, Barrera Lax, Bob Baffert, and Doug O'Neill also worked at the park. Three legendary horses, Landaluce, Native Diver, and Great Communicator were interned at the race park.
Hollywood Park closed December 22, 2013, ending 75 years of continuous racing in the Southern California region. It was demolished to make way for a residential development.
- Acquisition information:
- Gift of Hollywood Park Racing Association, 2014.
- Processing information:
-
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's library collections and archives.
- Arrangement:
-
The collection is arranged in the following series:
- Series 1: Minute Books and Ledgers
- Series 2: Stock Certificate Books
- Series 3: Scrapbooks
- Series 4: Negatives
- Series 5. Press Clippings
- Series 6. Chart Books
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
- Subjects:
- Horse racing.
- Names:
- Hollywood Park Operating Company -- Archives
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Portions of this collection are closed.
Box 312 is restricted and may be unavailable for use. Inquiries regarding these materials should be directed to UCLA Library Special Collections.
Many scrapbooks are in fragile condition due to clippings and/or photographs falling off pages.
- Terms of access:
-
Copyright to portions of this collection has been assigned to the UCLA Library Special Collections. The library can grant permission to publish for materials to which it holds the copyright. All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to Library Special Collections. Credit shall be given as follows: The Regents of the University of California on behalf of the UCLA Library Special Collections.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Hollywood Park Records (Collection 2254). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988