Now in a good year, I’d be sending this report from the field from the sagebrush somewhere north of Reno. Yes, the fastest racing event on the planet (okay, about 100 feet above the ground), the Reno National Championship Air Races is once again taking to the skies. Hundreds of thousands of folks will be making the pilgrimage up the 395 to Stead Field. But, as interesting a tale that event will offer to be told, you won’t find it here.
What you will find, instead, is a tale that mixes Hollywood eccentricities, San Francisco socialites and Nevada’s historical Comstock Lode. So roll the dice and check out what comes along!
Patient readers of this space may recall that my first visit to the Silver State came in the summer of 1959. I was likely all of seven months old at the time, having crossed the country in a new Renault station wagon on an odyssey from New York escorted by my parents and a plush tiger named “Remley”, in homage to the drummer, Frankie Remley from the “Phil Harris – Alice Faye” radio show (discs of those shows in MP3 form can be found here — some funny stuff!).
Now Nevada has always been what you would call “rustic” once you left the bigger cities of Las Vegas, Reno or other boomtowns. That was true in 1959, and still remains true today. Part of that lure attracted writer Arthur Miller, along with many other folks. Well, that and easy residency requirements for divorce. Through the Thirties and into the Sixties, it was common for dude ranches to do double duty as divorcee’s-to-be spent their six weeks out of the spotlight to meet the legal requirements. Miller did just that in 1956, but spent his time in a rented shack near Pyramid Lake, some fifty miles northeast of Reno.
That time provided him with the inspiration for the story that ultimately became the screenplay for “The Misfits“(1961). One day during his stay, Miller went (according to the book, “The Story of The Misfits“, by James Goode) out of simple boredom, along with a new friend to visit another shack while one of the previous occupants collected some pots and pans she had left behind during he stay. Miller encountered the new tenant – a woman from the East, also in Nevada for her divorce — and her two friends, ostensibly “cowboys”. His encounter with these folks led to his story and screenplay.
The summer of 1960 saw the production crew and cast for the film come to Reno to shoot the project in the same locations Miller had seen four years earlier. Director John Huston along with his crew and cast of Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter, all spent from mid-July into mid-October on locations all over northern Nevada. John Huston often spent as much time gambling as he did directing, and the problems with Marilyn Monroe were the stuff of legends as she proved just how difficult an actress can be on location. Late arrivals on the set were a daily travail she forced the rest of the team to live through. But the tale being told in today’s little effort here involves one of the diversions John Huston took advantage of to ignore those and other problems for a short while.
One of the films locations was the tiny town of Dayton, along the Carson River, east of the State Capital, Carson City. Back then, it wasn’t much; today it still isn’t much. The “glory days” of this town had gone by in the late 1870’s when it was one of several locations where the ores from the Comstock mines were processed at various mills along the river. But as the ores played out, the mills closed one by one and the town’s residents largely went elsewhere. A railroad line along the river heading south into the heart of the state did little to help, even when the big boom came in Tonopah after the turn of the Twentieth Century.
So, when “The Misfits” came to town, it was a real boost. It may have been only for a few weeks, but it put the town back on the map as a minor tourist destination. The bigger attraction then and still today is Virginia City, up the Six-Mile Canyon on the slopes of Mount Davidson. And it was there that John Houston found himself on Labor Day, September 5, 1960.
Telling it from the perspective of someone who was actually on hand as a witness, James Goode relates the full tale of that day in a chapter entitled “Instead of burning sand, there was junk”. I’m sharing that with you because he tells it better than I ever could by interpreting the various accounts.
September 5 – Over a hundred years ago, the United States Army reasoned that the camel was a natural instrument for carrying supplies and troops around the deserts of the great Southwest, and imported a number of them, stationing them as such removed spots as Dayton, Nevada (where a stone camel barn may still be seen), and the Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles. There was even a camel race in the streets of Virginia City, just above Dayton, in 1866, if you have any faith in the historical-promotional studies of Lucius Beebe’s Territorial Enterprise. The U.S. Army, however, did not take into account that you must love a camel to do anything with it, and it is hard to love a camel, unless it is the only thing within miles – as it is for an Arab.
How the enlisted camel drivers felt about it is recorded in an 1857 song, supposedly unearthed by the erudite Enterprise.
“I’ve rid on mean ‘gators in Floridy’s swamps,
Catamounts, bull calfs, and mule critters too,
But each one is a saint to a camel which ain’t
Good for nothin’ but eatin’ and spittin’ at you.”The Enterprise yearned to bring camels back to Virginia City and sponsored a camel race to be held today, Labor Day, on a 5/8-mile course in the street in front of the county courthouse, in Virginia City. They were offering the winning rider a chalice of Arabian crystal, surmounted by a Comstock silver lid and a silver miniature camel.
Several months earlier, the San FranciscoChronicle and the Phoenix ( Arizona) Gazette had decided to enter camels in the race, and obtained two camels from San Francisco’s Fleishacker Zoo. The Indio ( California) Junior Chamber of Commerce, which has access to local camels, also announced an entry. Casting about for a rider, the Chronicle asked Billy Pearson, ex-jockey and San Francisco dealer in pre-Columbian art, if he would ride. He would, but only against friend Huston. Huston applied for and got the seat on the Phoenix camel. Neither had ever ridden a camel before, nor did they rehearse.
The events today began with a champagne party in the bar at the Reno airport, followed by a ride to Virginia City in Bill Harrah’s fleet of antique automobiles. Huston’s car, a 1914 American Underslung, expired on the Geiger grade going up to the race, and Herb Caen, the Chronicle columnist, said later that Huston shot it in the radiator and took a bus.
In Virginia City there was a parade, with Shriners in Arabian silk trousers bringing up the rear. Then Huston and Pearson dashed for the liquor storeroom of the Sharon House to change into riding clothes. Herb Caen, Pearson’s handler, stuffed Billy into his old racing silks, a derby, and a red kerchief, and Charles Mapes, Jr., Huston’s valet for the occasion, handed John his costume. It began with some ancient and beautiful English riding breeches, and whatever effect these may have had was immediately destroyed by tennis shoes, a mauve shirt, Alice McIntyre’s silk handkerchief, a Faubus-for-President button, and Frank Taylor’s hat, a sennit straw number with a Madras band. Taylor didn’t want to give up his hat, which had been the first and last of a marque at Brooks Brothers, but refusing Huston would have been tantamount to refusing a match to an Olympic torch-bearer.
Huston chided Pearson, who looked apprehensive; “Remember Chantilly. Stop crying. Keep a stiff upper lip. We ride or we don’t get out of town.” Caen: “He can’t smile, for Christ’s sake. He’s seen his camel.” Nancy Camp, Miss Chronicle Camel Keeper from San Francisco, in an abbreviated Gay Nineties costume, gave each of them a drink and they went off to the stables at the finish line to look at their mounts.
Casey Baldwin, director of the Fleishacker Zoo, who had loaned the camels, was trying vainly to get saddles and muzzles on the two beasts. Huston’s, a five-year-old Bactrian (two-humps) cow name Old Heenan, had never been ridden but was fairly tractable. The sight of Pearson’s camel only inspired despair. It was a fifty-year-old dromedary (one hump) named Izmir (Izzy) Kufte that had been retired from all activity twenty three years before. A camel is one of God’s unloveliest creatures anyway, but this was one moth-and-rat-eaten, and there was no visible place where a man might cling. In desperation, Baldwin had wrapped an old tennis net around and around Izzy’s midriff and Pearson was invited to hang on to the net during the race.
The Indio entry, a hot unmilked fifteen-year-old female Bactrian named Sheba, or Deglan Noor, was tethered at the starting line. All of the camels, and Pearson, were in a hydrophobic rage, the camels poking their obscene tongues through the leather muzzles, revealing horrible long yellow teeth, and swinging their insanely quick necks around in attempts to bite their riders. Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg lined up the camels, which were getting up and down endlessly on their splayed legs, in total fury.
Clegg fired the starting pistol shortly before the camels died of rage. Huston’s camel headed like a shot toward the stable on the other side of the finish line, outrunning the horses that were meant to lead the race. Pearson’s crazed camel went in all directions, through the crowd, up, over, and around parked cars, mashing in the trunk of a new Lincoln, narrowly missed a six-year-old girl, and then headed for the open door of Piper’s Opera House, a city block from the prescribed course. Pearson clung like a fly to the hide of a mad elephant, ducking under the hump to miss the doorway of Piper’s, and managed to get off the camel in the lobby of the opera house. He sat for some twenty minutes afterward in a catatonic trance on a windowsill, hugging his knees and crying.
The Indio rider had been thrown at the very start, and Deglan Noor crushed several people against cars in his path, but injured no one. Huston was a clear winner by 234 lengths, and beamed for the photographers as he rode across the finish line, hair flying in the wind. Frank Taylor said that Huston looked like the sign from the George C. Tilyou Steeplechase ride at Coney Island as he swung into the stables.
Huston was brought to the judge’s stand, and asked to say a few words for a national ABC radio show. He said that Old Heenan was the damndest camel he had ever ridden, that he owed the victory to his deep understanding of the camel, and to his handler, Charles Mapes, Jr., and that this was the penultimate moment of his racing life.
The announcer interrupted: “He’s been in training many months…”
Huston: “Many years.”
Announcer: “Many years, pardon me.”
Huston: “All of my life, in fact.”
Announcer: “What kind of a feeling is it up there on the back of a camel, John?”
Huston: “Well, it’s uh, there’s uh, you’re living when you’re up there, there’s no question about that. You know you’re alive. It has it’s ups and downs, but so has life itself.”
Announcer: “How true. I don’t know whether he ought to be the director or the comedian in this movie he’s making. John, how did you get on? Our view was blocked. I didn’t see the start.”
Huston: “How did I get on the camel? Well, the way a jockey is put onto a horse. I was given a leg up. I asked a girl if she’d give me a leg up before the start, but she looked rather shocked, so the job was turned over to someone else… a man.”
Announcer: “And your friend, Pearson?”
Huston: ” Well, he gave his horse, his camel, a lovely ride over several parked cars, a few widows and orphans… there are babies in arms still scattered over these historic hillsides, bloodied. Actually, it’s a scene of carnage, owing entirely to Billy’s mismanagement of his camel… He’s just not, just not camelwise…”
Pearson (seizing the microphone): “My camel was a ***.”
Announcer: “That summarizes the race…”
Huston: “He’s lacking in camel lore.”
Announcer: “Incidentally, how did you ever get across the finish line?”
Huston: “Well, what a question? How do you think I won the race without crossing the finish line?”
Announcer: “Well, the only thing I know is that the Chronicle sponsored this event. You were a Chronicle rider, I understand.”
Huston: “Not at all.”
Announcer: “There was a Chronicle camel and the judges, two of the judges, came from San Francisco…”
Huston: “Your misinformation in unfathomable. No, indeed, I represent the PhoenixGazette. All the Chronicle people are my mortal enemies. I’m polite to them but it was a Chronicle man that just took that shot at me. Herb Caen lost his girl to me at…”
Announcer: “It was just before the race, wasn’t it?”
Huston: “Just shortly before the race. My relations with San Francisco and particularly the Chronicle are at a very low ebb indeed.”
Pearson: “It was a foul start.”
Huston: “Anything to do with camels is foul.”
Announcer: “Thank you, John Huston.”September 6 – While Huston and Pearson recreated the race at a victory banquet at the Sharon House yesterday, Marilyn Monroe was flying back to Reno. Shooting resumed this morning in the saloon at Dayton.”
Astute readers may recall that I mentioned this event two weeks ago. Well, the 2004 Virginia City Camel Races are now history as are the days of filming “The Misfits” in the Silver State. A search for the results of this year’s race is ongoing, but I’m sure that “a good time was had by all”.
Speaking of a good time, yes that promised saloon excursion tale is coming along nicely. It just needed some first hand research to follow up on a finer pint, eh point, or three. Look for it coming along, soon…
I know I’ve been pushing the American Red Cross for your consideration at the end of my last few columns. I’m doing it again today. There are one heck of a lot of people they continue to help on a daily basis all over the world, but especially in Florida and right now. If you can share something, now is a really good time to do so. ’nuff said!