by Jim Haynes
When he returned to Australia in 1915 Bendrodt felt he hadn’t yet done enough for the Allies’ war effort. He sold everything to buy a first-class passenger ticket on the RMS Makura, bound for Vancouver, and sailed off to Canada to join the Royal Flying Corps.
On his return from military service he marched into J.C. Williamson’s one day and said he could act. They believed him and he landed small parts in several plays starring Madge Fabian, Lou Kimball and Link Plummer. He later recalled that he was a lousy actor but discovered he was a terrific showman.
He used that showmanship running dance halls in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s, became a professional dancer and married his partner Peggy Dawes. He also ran a dancing school in Pitt Street. Bendrodt’s enterprises included the Palais Royal dance hall at the showground and the Trocadero in George Street. By the late 1930s he’d switched to ice-skating and transformed the Palais Royal into the Ice Palace. He told reporters he had learned to ice-skate on the frozen Canadian lakes in his youth.
He also became a noted campaigner against cruelty to animals, was a prominent and vociferous member of the RSPCA, and bred German Shepherd dogs.
Bendrodt wrote several books about horses and dogs and his short stories regularly featured in major American magazines. Two of his most famous stories concerned horses named Gay Romance, a filly that won him a fortune, and ‘Irish Lad’, which was in fact the story of his horse Spam who cost backers a fortune when he failed in the Melbourne Cup. Professor Walter Murdoch called Bendrodt ‘the Poet Laureate of the horse and dog’.
During World War II Bendrodt began his famous campaign in the press and on radio deploring the slaughter of pet dogs, given up by their owners to be gassed during the days of meat rationing. His plea began: ‘Why did you kill him, Mister? Why did you kill your friend?’ The response was so amazing that newspapers and radio stations refused to charge him for the advertisements.
Bendrodt soon became a leading owner-trainer of racehorses, with stables at Kensington and a 150-acre model stud, Prince’s Farm, at Castlereagh on the banks of the Nepean River, 40 miles west of Sydney.
In line with his obsession with kindness to animals, the facilities at the stud incorporated the ultimate in comfort for his horses, one visitor describing the stud as being ‘run on the lines of a first-class hotel for horses’, Bendrodt objected to jockeys using whips on horses and other trainers often declared his kindness prevented him from working his horses hard enough to get them into racing condition. They were appalled by his habit of feeding them apples and chocolate.
Bendrodt was particularly criticised for the way he trained War Eagle, whom many experts considered would have been a champion under another trainer. War Eagle won the Lord Mayor’s Cup at Rosehill in 1946, and ran placings in the AJC Sires Produce Stakes, Champagne Stakes, Hobartville Stakes and City Tattersall’s Cup, but many considered he should have won numerous feature races.
Despite the supposedly easy training workouts, War Eagle held the 10-furlong record at Rosehill for many years. When he died Bendrodt erected a huge cage with eagles in it above the horse’s grave at Prince’s Farm.
The professionals also ridiculed Bendrodt for his handling of the preparation of War Eagle for the 1945 Melbourne Cup, when the horse finished 19th behind Rainbird. Bendrodt then imported the Irish St Leger winner Spam for the 1946 Cup and backed it to win more than £100,000. Ridden by Billy Cook, Spam finished 12th but Bendrodt always claimed the horse had been flattened by the Australian heat and the hard track.
Bendrodt’s introduction to the turf was through a former jockey who worked as a waiter at his dance hall. In 1923 the waiter persuaded him to buy the pony Passella for £100. He kept the mare in a yard behind the dance hall and the waiter trained her in his spare time. The mare had her first start in Bendrodt’s colours at Kensington and he bet £400 on her at 2 to 1 with bookie Jack Shaw. Passella, ridden by Bill Cook, dead-heated with another mare, Pretty Sweet, and in those days that meant the pair competed in a run-off an hour later.
Pretty Sweet just beat Passella in a jostling finish but the waiter urged Bendrodt to protest. The complaint was upheld and –Passella won.
Bendrodt then bought books, studied breeding and horse care, and began training his own small string of horses.
In 1931, at the height of the Depression, he bought a horse called Firecracker for 60 guineas. Years later a commemorative plaque honouring jockey Bill Cook was unveiled at City Tattersall’s Club. It featured three champions: Rainbird, on whom Cook won the 1945 Melbourne Cup; Amounis, on whom he took the 1930 Caulfield Cup; and Carioca, on whom he won 11 races including seven in succession. The plaque also featured the forgotten Firecracker. Below Firecracker were the words: ‘the horse that saved the Palais Royal by winning at Menangle in 1931’.
In July 1931 Bendrodt had addressed his 150 employees at the Palais Royal. He had just sufficient cash to pay the £1200 he owed in wages. The Palais would have to close unless the staff adopted his daring plan to win enough to keep it going through the Depression.
Firecracker was entered for a race at Menangle, to be ridden by Bendrodt’s friend Bill Cook. The plan was to bet the wages on the horse, with the employees to get double their money if it won and the rest of the winnings to be used to keep the Palais open. The employees agreed, and Bendrodt and eight of the Palais’ bouncers drove to Menangle and backed Firecracker from 10 to 1 to 6 to 4, and the horse won by a length from the useful sprinter Gold-digger.
Bendrodt often recalled how he went to the 1937 yearling sales to buy a colt, but peered into a horse’s box and fell for the small bay filly inside. He bought her for £450, named her Gay Romance, and later that year she won the Gimcrack Stakes at Randwick.
Bendrodt wagered everything he had on that race and collected a fortune in bets. The winnings helped finance Prince’s restaurant, which he opened in Martin Place in 1938 and which soon became the showpiece of his empire.
Prince’s was an instant success, but during the war it came in for a lot of criticism from over-patriotic ‘blue-noses’ who declared no one should enjoy themselves while the troops were away fighting. Bendrodt retorted that Prince’s was a valuable recreation spot for troops on leave—they certainly spent a fortune there and made him rich—and the US forces recognised this by placing it at the top of their lists of recommended entertainment establishments.
Bendrodt often claimed that when Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt visited Australia he was the only civilian she sent for—to thank him for helping US troops in their brief spells of leave.
As a punter, Bendrodt often only bet in £5 notes, though every now and then he would ‘have a go’, but rarely on anyone else’s horse. He used to say: ‘Punting is one of those things there is no percentage in. I can go broke easier ways than that.’
Nevertheless, he collected £15,000 when Rimfire won the 1948 Melbourne Cup; he explained that he’d selected Rimfire on his breeding three weeks before the Cup and had backed it at 150 to 1.
Other good horses owned by Bendrodt included Snow Star, which won at Canterbury and Randwick in 1948, and Goshawk, one of the first horses to go to the United States from Australia.
One incident which highlighted Bendrodt’s great love of horses concerned Tommy Smith’s famous first winner, Bragger, a horse that campaigned through the 1940s for Smith and was still racing in top-class races, such as the Newcastle Cameron Handicap and Randwick Tramway handicap, when he was ten years old.
Bragger was returning to Smith’s stable after a spell when the float, carrying three horses, caught fire on Parramatta Road near Auburn. Driver Kevin Spain smelled smoke, jumped out and threw open the float doors. The straw was blazing and though he was easily able to lead out two horses, one of which was owned by Bendrodt, Bragger was straddled in fright across a partition and was very badly burned.
Smith fought for weeks to save Bragger and horse-lover Bendrodt enlisted the help of a doctor friend; all three men applied ointments and medicines for the best part of a mo
nth, often around the clock, before they finally gave up the hopeless cause and put an end to the horse’s suffering.
In 1950, Bendrodt imported the sire Abbots Fell, acknowledged among breeders as the greatest living descendant of Carbine and, at that time, the highest-priced thoroughbred imported into Australia for stud. Bendrodt also imported numerous other horses from England, including the stallion Scarlet Emperor and the broodmare Tollgate.
Jim Bendrodt gave up racing during the 1950s because he said both training horses and selling his stud’s produce to other racing men involved ‘too much sadness and distress for an animal lover’. He publicly castigated racehorse owners for selling broken-down champions without thought or care as to what may become of them—he himself had refused to sell his beloved War Eagle at the end of his career, despite an offer for the then huge sum of £12,000.
For a time Bendrodt retreated to his old-world cottage in Eastbourne Avenue, Darling Point, where his collection of Royal Meissen porcelain and Bohemian crystal took pride of place. But in the late 1950s he opened a new haunt for the racing fraternity, Caprice Restaurant—opposite Royal Sydney Golf Club and beside the flying-boat base, on the water at Lyne Park, Rose Bay. The restaurant was fitted out at great expense and was described as ‘a caravanserai for the connoisseurs of cuisine’.
Bendrodt sold Caprice in 1967. His wife, Peggy, later said, ‘He was very upset at having to sell—but he knew his health was becoming worse and he could not continue with the special attention he always gave his patrons.’ He took a trip back to Canada in 1968 and, upon his return to Australia, reappeared at the track as a small-time owner-trainer.
Jim Bendrodt died on a Saturday morning in February 1973. Later that afternoon his filly Tropic Star ran third at Randwick at 330 to 1.
A ‘point-to-point’
A.B. (‘BANJO’) PATERSON
LAST SATURDAY’S POINT-TO-POINT STEEPLECHASE at Eastwood brought out a field of seven starters, each of whom had his partisans among the crowd of ladies that clustered at the top of the hill.
Eastwood House stands on a round-topped volcanic hill, whose smooth, steep sides are terraced with gardens and shrubberies. The course runs round the foot of the hill and, except for about a quarter of a mile, the horses are in view all the way; but, to keep them in sight, the spectators have to move round the hill, so that on Saturday the amusing spectacle was witnessed of hundreds of fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen running backwards and forwards on the smooth, green hilltop, shrieking encouragement to the riders, who, far away below them, were toiling gallantly over fences, ditches, avenues, logs, and anything else that came in the road.
The day was fine and clear, the air like wine, and over everything was a scent of grasses and flowers; also there was plenty of excitement, and not a little to laugh at; so what more would anybody want?
To encourage owners to ride their own horses instead of seeking the assistance of the ‘professional amateurs’, who usually figure in the saddle in such races, it was a condition of the race that any owner riding overweight would be allowed a 1-second start for every pound overweight he carried.
This somewhat novel idea worked fairly well, though the second per pound allowance is not enough. The dauntless seven were lined up by Mister Forward, the starter, with their tails almost touching a big built-up log fence, and then, by the aid of a stopwatch, they were dispatched in a sort of timetable order.
First to go was Andover, a fine big grey horse, about the best specimen of a weight-carrying horse in the lot, but he was very fat, and was carrying more than 15 stone, so that his only chance was for all the others to fall or baulk. He had a 48-second start, and on the word being given he started off on his lonely journey at a good round pace, jumping the first few fences in good style, and disappeared among the timber.
Next to go was Mercadool, another veteran, whose only hope consisted in his being a safe conveyance. He left sharp to time, 17 seconds after Andover. Barney followed 11 seconds later. He is a chestnut horse, and at one time the property of the well-known and well-liked ‘Jack’ Fitzsimmons, who committed suicide in the gardens. Barney is well known on many showgrounds, but is getting rather past steeplechasing.
Riverstone followed 11 seconds later, a good class of horse, and looking very well. He was ridden by a young gentleman from the old country, whose turnout for neatness and correctness put the rest of the field in the shade; and he rode with pluck, if not with judgement, as will be seen later on.
Tatta, Larry and Sparrow were the scratch horses, i.e. those that carried no overweight, and they left 48 seconds after Andover.
It could hardly be called a race at first. Andover was out of sight, Mercadool just disappearing, and Barney and Riverstone stringing after him like a wild geese, when the scratch horses left; but the water jump altered all that and brought them together in one common bond of disaster.
The spectators on the hill witnessed the start, and then ran round to watch for the first horses to come through the orchard. It seemed a long time. At last Andover appeared, jumping grandly, though it was rumoured that he had already parted once with his rider on the journey, and had been remounted. Be that as it may, he was making no mistake about his fences when he burst in view of the populace. He was followed by Mercadool and Barney, and people held their breath as the trio strung down to the water jump.
This jump is at the foot of the hill, and is of no great width, but the taking off side is higher than the landing side, and the latter was muddy and slippery on Saturday, and not at all an inviting place to jump onto. So, at all events, thought Andover, and on being ridden at it, he dropped dead. He was hurriedly wheeled around, and rushed at it again, but again dropped dead, this time shooting his rider into the wavelets that lapped invitingly below, the rider pulling the bridal off in his fall.
Mercadool and Barney scrambled over more or less ungracefully, and then came Riverstone at full speed. As soon as he saw the water he made up his mind to stop, but the ‘new chum’ on his back was equally determined to go on, and he rubbed the spurs and whalebone into Riverstone in a style that made the noble animal fling himself in despairing fashion off the bank, much like a suicide jumping off South Head; he landed half in and half out of the water, shooting his rider over his head, while a yell of excitement went up from the spectators on the hilltop.
The rider stuck to the bridle and remounted, but the rein was broken, and the martingale also broke with the result that the saddle slipped back and the horse ran the best part of 2 miles over fences with the loose end of a broken rein flapping round his legs, and his rider most insecurely perched on his hindquarters.
Hardly had he got away again, when the three scratch horses swooped down on the jump. Larry and Tatta baulked, and Sparrow wished to follow their example, but his rider was of the determined order, and he let the old grey have a few rib-roasters that lifted him clean up in the air, only to fall half in and half out of the water as Riverstone had done. And again the shrill feminine yell, ‘He’s off; he’s off ’, rose from the hilltop.
Sparrow’s rider stuck to the bridle grimly, and remounted, and after getting over at the second attempt, the field was pretty well closed up, with the exception of Andover, who, being without a bridle, had run away and was eating grass.
The rest of the race demands little description. Mercadool’s rider mistook the course and pulled off at the ‘Avenue Double’, the red flags on the fence either not being conspicuous enough to catch his eye, or else conveying the impression that they were danger signals. The others rushed the double in style, but the two leaders, Larry and Tatta, baulked in the lane, and would be there yet, only that Sparrow was kept straight and gave them a lead.
Riverstone was in two minds about stopping, but not being used to having a rider sitting on his hips, he thought it better to go on, and he got across somehow, though he practically fell over the second fence. There were ‘riders in the stand’ watching the race and criticising, who wouldn’t have been on t
he horse for £1000; but his rider still kept on with him, though he was hopelessly in the rear.
From here on, Tatta drew to the front, and it was obvious that, barring a fall, he must win. He is a thoroughbred horse to all appearances and, notwithstanding his great age of 18 years, was in good trim, and ‘stood off ’ his fences and sprang like a stag. Sparrow chased him home pertinaciously, but the grey lost too much ground at the water and at the fences; and the end of the struggle saw old Tatta, very tired, lobbing on in front of Sparrow, with Larry, just in sight, third.
No others finished. There was no time taken.
The usual ‘take-down’ bookmakers put in an appearance, and laid 6 to 4 against Tatta, and refused to pay when he won, on the grounds that he was the only horse backed, and they had wasted their afternoon for nothing. They were escorted off the premises with threats and bad language; but if the cherry-picking inhabitants of Ryde and Eastwood were half the men that their forefathers used to be, they would have given those bookmakers a wash, if nothing else.
A hurdle race was run after the steeplechase, but the jumps were so flimsy that if a crow sat on them they would fall down, so there was no excitement, except that a big chestnut horse knocked off the top rail with his front legs and got himself tangled up with it, he rolled himself and his rider over and over for a few revolutions. Then the guests drank the health of Mister Eric Terry, the winner of the steeplechase, who rode a good race, and then all and sundry made for home.
The Cab Horse’s Story
C.J. Dennis
Now, you wouldn’t imagine, to look at me,
That I was a racehorse once.
I have done my mile in—let me see—
No matter. I was no dunce.