Speed Kings
Page 36
Anger, Kenneth, Hollywood Babylon (Dell Publishing, 1998)
Ankerich, Michael G., Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-stung Lips (University Press of Kentucky, 2012)
Ardmore, Jane Kesner, The Self-Enchanted: Mae Murray and the Image of an Era (McGraw-Hill, 1959)
Barbee Lee, Mabel, Back in Cripple Creek (Doubleday & Co., 1968)
Bret, David, Clark Gable: Tormented Star (Da Capo Press, 2008)
Bushby, John, Gunner’s Moon: Memoir of the RAF Night Assault on Germany (Futura, 1975)
Byron, Reginald, and David Coxon, Tangmere: An Authorized History (Grub Street, 2013)
Campbell, Christy, Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria (HarperCollins, 2002)
Carter, Randolph, The World of Flo Ziegfeld (Praeger Publishers, 1974)
Cull, Nicholas John, Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American Neutrality (Oxford University Press, 1996)
De Holguin, Beatrice, Tales of Palm Beach (Vantage Press, 1968)
DeArment, Robert K., Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend (University of Oklahoma Press, 1995)
The Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004)
DiGiacomo, Michael, Apparently Unharmed: Riders of the Cresta Run (Texere Publishing, 2000)
Douglas, Sholto, Combat and Command: The Story of an Airman in Two World Wars (Simon & Schuster, 1966)
Eagan, Eddie, Fighting for Fun (Lovat Dickson Ltd., 1934)
Fowler, Karin J., David Niven: A Bio-bibliography (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995)
Henderson Clark, Donald, In the Reign of Rothstein (Vanguard Press, 1930)
Higham, Charles, and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (Harcourt, 1989)
Jasen, David A., P. G. Wodehouse: Portrait of a Master (Mason & Lipscomb, 1974)
——. Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of Song (Routledge, 2003)
Kendall, Paul, Aisne 1914: The Dawn of Trench Warfare (History Press, 2012)
Kershaw, Alex, The Few (Penguin, 2008)
Klieger, P. Christiaan, The Fleischmann Yeast Family (Arcadia Publishing, 2004)
Knowles, Mark, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances (McFarland, 2009)
Kriendler, H. Peter, “21”: Memoirs of a Saloon-Keeper (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)
Large, Dorothy (ed.), As We Were: Life in Early Longmont as Reflected in the Newspapers of the Day (Sharer Books, 1977)
Longhurst, Henry, My Life and Soft Times (Littlehampton Book Services, 1971)
MacKenzie, Mary, The Plains of Abraham: A History of North Elba and Lake Placid (Nicholas K. Burns Publishing, 2007)
Marion, Frances, Off with Their Heads (Macmillan, 1972)
Martineau, Hubert, My Life in Sport (Water Martin Press, 1970)
Mason, Francis K., Battle over Britain: A History of the German Air Assaults on Great Britain (McWhirter Twins Ltd., 1969)
McCrary, John, First of the Many (Robson Books, 1981)
Mitgang, Herbert, Once upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age (Cooper Square Press, 2003)
Mordden, Ethan, Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business (St. Martin’s Press, 2008)
Moulson, Tom, The Flying Sword: The Story of 601 Squadron (MacDonald, 1964)
Murray, Mae, My Memories (as published in the Milwaukee Sentinel, May 1942)
Nicholl, K. I., The History of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club (private press, 1975)
Olsen, Lynne, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour (Random House, 2011)
Ortloff, George Christian, and Stephen C. Ortloff, Lake Placid: The Olympic Years (Macromedia Inc., 1976)
Perez, Robert C., and Edward F. Willett, Clarence Dillon: A Wall Street Enigma (Madison Books, 1995)
Rider, Freemont, Melvil Dewey (American Library Association, 1944)
Rivadue, Barry, Alice Faye: A Bio-bibliography (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990)
Schuessler, Michael Karl, Elena Poniatowski: An Intimate Biography (University of Arizona Press, 2007)
Seth-Smith, Michael, The Cresta Run (W. Foulsham & Co., 1976)
Small Town, Big Dreams: Lake Placid’s Olympic Story (a Marc Nathanson–Scott F. Carroll Production in association with Sundial Pictures, 2010)
Smith, Amanda (ed.), Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph Patrick Kennedy (Viking, 2001)
Sobel, Robert, The Life and Times of Dillon Read (Truman Talley Books, 1991)
Stansfield, Dean S., Images of America: Lake Placid (Arcadia, 2002)
——. Images of America: North Elba and Whiteface Mountain (Arcadia, 2003)
Stewart Martin, James, All Honorable Men (Little, Brown, 1950)
St. Vrain Valley Historical Association, They Came to Stay (Longmont Printing Company, 1971)
Sutton, Antony C., Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (Clairview Books, 2010)
Tangye, Derek (ed.), Went the Day Well (George Harrap & Co., 1942)
Tyrell Kelly, Barbara, Growing Up in Lake Placid (Graphics North, 2012)
Van Diggelen, Michael H. (ed.), Billy Fiske: A Souvenir Brochure (private press, 2002)
Wallechinsky, David, and Jaime Loucky, The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics 2014 (Crossroad Press, 2014)
Wiegand, Wayne A., Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (American Library Association, 1996)
Wilkinson, Philip, An American Citizen Who Died That England Might Live (Lisek Publications, T J Kean, 1995)
Wood, Houston, Displacing Natives: The Rhetorical Production of Hawai‘i (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995)
Woon, Basil Dillon, From Deauville to Monte Carlo (H. Liveright, 1929)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wouldn’t have been able to write Speed Kings without the help and support of a lot of people. First, my agents, Rupert Heath, who had the perspicacity to spot that this was a tale worth telling, and Dan Conaway. Then my editors, Giles Elliott and Megan Newman, and the teams at both Transworld in the UK and Avery in the United States, especially Dan Balado, Brittney Ross, Gabrielle Campo, and Maureen Klier. Thanks, too, to my editors at the Guardian and the Observer, Ian Prior, Matthew Hancock, and Steve McMillan, for cutting me a little slack and showing a lot of patience while I was working on the book.
I owe Skip Grieser an enormous debt of thanks, for his hard work, his generosity with his time and research, and his lessons in how to shoot pool. He deserves the credit for unearthing many of the details about Billy Fiske’s life that have never been published before. The book was hugely enriched by the kind cooperation of Billy’s relatives, in particular Pat Zabalaga, Emi Zabalaga, and Charles and Setsuko Zabalaga, who gave up their time to help me look through his papers. Also, I spent an enchanting afternoon listening to Newell Fiske Wagoner’s firsthand memories of ’32, and I wish to thank Lady Charlotte Fraser for allowing me to see the heirlooms Rose passed on to her.
It would have been impossible to unravel the mystery of Clifford Gray without the help of John Cross and Brian Willey in particular, but also Bill Mallon, Hilary Evans, David Routh, Caroline Markham, Norman Carter, and Mel Allen. It was a pleasure talking to Tim Clark about the story he wrote back in 1980, and plenty of other things besides. Thanks to Vicki Barcus and the rest of Clifford Grey’s family for the good grace with which they took the bad news that in fact their grandfather wasn’t an Olympic champion after all.
Lake Placid is one of the friendliest little towns I’ve ever had the fortune to pass through. Thanks go to John Morgan, Jennifer Tufano, and Beverley Reid for their local expertise; Amanda Bird from the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation for helping me arrange an absorbing hourlong interview with Steve Holcomb; and especially to the staff at the Lake Placid Olympic Museum, Alison Haas, Steve Vassar, and Susanna Fout, for givin
g me such a warm welcome and so much help. I’m grateful, too, to the bobsledding team out at Mount Van Hoevenberg for getting me down the run in one piece.
Thanks to Peter Hopsicker, associate professor of kinesiology at Penn State, for being generous enough to send me copies of his excellent series of articles on the 1932 Winter Olympics; Stephen Bartley, the archivist of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club, for allowing me access to his library; William Morrison, the honorary archivist of the W. O. Bentley Memorial Foundation; Giles Richards, for helping me research the Le Mans 24; the museum staff at both RAF Hendon and RAF Tangmere; and Ewan Getley, for showing me around his wonderful workshop, and scaring me silly by taking me for a drive around Bicester in his Bentley.
Many thanks to all my friends for listening to me wax on about this book at such length for so long, particularly Paul Matthews, Will Small, Sarah Courtauld, and Jonathan Weil for their advice and guidance, and Maggie Asquith for her inspiration and encouragement. Finally, thanks most of all to my family, Tony, Sandra, Jon, Shoko, Keita, Arthur, and my partner, Hadley Freeman, for all her support, wisdom, and love.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Page numbers in italics denote photographs.
Acton, Harold, 136
Aitken, Max, 219, 222, 245, 246, 266, 273
Alba, Duke of, 59
Albright, Hardie, 203
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), 115–16, 151, 153, 156–57, 212
American Library Association (ALA), 101, 102, 105
Amundsen, Roald, 165
Ankerich, Michael, 40
Ardmore, Jane, 36
Argentina, 12, 57, 83, 86
Aspen, 206–8, 216, 218, 227, 274
Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AFPA), 110–12
Astor, John Jacob, 55
Australia, 12–13, 140–41
Austria, 163, 169, 174, 214, 221
Ayer, Nat, 67, 71
Badrutt family, 15–16, 18, 19, 25
Bailey, Roger, 217, 218, 222
Baillet-Latour, Count de, 96, 112, 184
Barcus, Vicki, 73
Barrymore, Lionel, 41, 42, 271
Bassett, Ted, 268
Bathurst, Ben, 230–31, 239
Beaverbrook, Lord, 219, 246, 262
Belfort, Jordan, 9
Belgium, 11, 55, 163, 164, 174, 178, 238
Bell, C. H., 29
Benchley, Robert, 207
Benjamin, Park, 48
Berlin, Irving, 34
Bickford, Jim, 211
Blane, Sally, 217
Blossom, George, 125–27
Boblet Grand Prix Cup, 23–24, 59
Bobsleigh Derby, 55, 82–84, 91
Bodrero, Jim, 202, 207
Bogart, Humphrey, 205
Boncompagni, Prince, 59
Boyd, William, 205
Bracken, Brendan, 266
Brancourt, J. D., 141
Brehme, Albert, 163, 189
Britain, 7, 10, 15, 20, 22–24, 30, 32, 47–49, 55, 70, 74, 76, 146, 215–16
bobsledding in, 17, 18, 55
boxing in, 137–40
in Second World War, 226, 234, 236, 238–40, 246, 263 (see also Royal Air Force)
Winter Olympics teams of, 86, 90–92, 145, 174
See also London
Brown, John, 106
Brundage, Avery, 208, 212–13
Bryant, Percy, 150
Bullock, Hugh, 9
Burke, Jack, 132–33
Burke, Oscar, 26
Bushby, John, 258
Bushell, Roger, 219, 226, 227, 231, 244, 266, 273
Cambridge University, 5, 137–38, 146, 195, 205, 220
Canada, 7, 9–10, 15–17, 57, 65, 109, 151
Winter Olympics teams of, 82, 89, 94, 174, 184
Capadrutt, Reto, 164, 171, 182–83, 186, 187, 189, 272
Carbery, Lord, 21
Carlsen, Armand, 87, 88
Carnegie, Andrew, 105
Carpentier, Georges, 139
Carter, Randolph, 68
Cassidy, John C. and Clara Louise Whelan, 78
Castle, Vernon and Irene, 34–35
Chaplin, Charlie, 203
Cherrill, Virginia, 203–4, 211
Churchill, Winston, 235, 238–39, 245, 262, 266, 270
Clark, Tim, 63–66, 72–74
Clary, Count, 90
Cleaver, Neil “Mouse,” 203, 215–16, 219, 229, 239–40, 245, 250, 255, 259, 260, 263, 266, 268, 273
Clemenceau, Georges, 132
Clifton, Arthur, 138, 139
Clyde, Billy, 219, 222, 226–28, 230, 239, 245, 255–60, 273
Clyde, Rose, 227
Colledge, Cecilia, 174
Cook, B. J., 148–49
Corviglia ski club, 59
Corwin, Dean, 130
Coubertin, Baron Pierre de, 56–57
Cresta Run (St. Moritz), 16, 19, 55, 89, 90, 93, 214–15, 219, 230, 246, 249, 262, 274
Cross, John, 72–73
Curzon, Frank, 55
Daley, Arthur J., 169, 269
Davis, Al, 32–34
Davis, George, 66
Davis, Percival, see Grey, Clifford
Davos, 56
Dawes, Brigadier Charles, 10
Dawes Plan, 214
Demetriadi, Dick, 251
DeMille, Cecil B., 40, 203
Dempsey, Jack, 126–29, 131–33, 139–43, 148, 270
Denver, 120, 142
Athletic Club, 119, 123–25, 127, 130
de Saulles, Blanca, 35, 38–39
de Saulles, Jack, 34–39
Devine, Charles, 166–68
Dewey, Annie (Godfrey’s mother), 102–3, 107
Dewey, Emily (Godfrey’s stepmother), 108, 158
Dewey, Godfrey, 96, 99–100, 105–16, 145–46, 149–58, 178, 195, 196, 207, 208
antagonism toward O’Brien and Fiske of, 115–16, 149, 151–56, 170
bigotry of, 113–14
birth of, 103
bobsled run built by, 110–13, 115, 149–50, 154, 171
bobsleds designed by, 152–53, 165, 167
death of, 272
defeated to become president of Lake Placid Club Foundation, 157–58, 271–72
education of, 106, 107
family background of, 100–103
Kirby’s post-Olympics letter to, 191–92
lobbying for Lake Placid as Olympics host city by, 99–100, 108–10
local bobsled team preferred by, 150–51, 154–66
at 1928 Winter Olympics, 86, 99, 149
during 1932 Winter Olympics, 173–76, 183, 184, 186, 188
Dewey, Katharine (Godfrey’s daughter), 169
Dewey, Marjorie (Godfrey’s wife), 107
Dewey, Melvil (Godfrey’s father), 100–109, 113–14, 158
Dickie, W. G., 251
Dillon, Clarence, 7–12, 197, 213–14, 231, 271
Dillon, Douglas, 271
Dillon, Read & Company, 8–12, 147, 213, 214, 218, 221, 227, 228, 261
Diop, Amadou, 141
Dix, Joan, 174
Doe, Tom, Jr., 85
Dolly sisters, 26
Dorelis, Jose, 270–71
Doubleday, Abner, 17
Douglas, Sholto, 247
Douglas-Hamilton, Douglas “Douglo,” 137, 139, 140
Dowding, Hugh, 274
Duke, Angier, 33
Dupree, Paul, 181, 210
Eagan, Clara (Eddie’s mother), 120, 125, 142
Eagan, Eddie, 118, 119–43, 185, 195, 215, 217, 227, 269–70
amateur boxing championships of, 118, 119–25, 130–31, 133–35, 138, 180, 270
in army, 129, 269
at Billy’s funeral, 238
death of, 270
Dempsey in exhibition fights against, 126–29, 139
Dewey’s antagonism toward, 155–56
education of, 121, 123, 125, 129, 130, 132–33, 135–37, 139, 180, 185
legal career of, 143, 185, 269
marriage and family of, 143, 270
in 1932 Winter Olympics, 143, 148, 157, 178–80, 185, 187, 189–91, 245, 270
and 1936 Winter Olympics, 209–11
on world tour with Pirie boys, 139–42
Eagan, John (Eddie’s father), 120
Eagan, Peggy Colgate (Eddie’s wife), 143, 191, 270
Earhart, Amelia, 74
Eberstadt, Ferdinand, 11, 213
Edward, Prince of Wales, 47–49, 137
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 269, 271
Eisner, Mark, 113
Eliot, T. S., 18, 136
Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, 18
Elliott, William, 231
Ellis, William Webb, 17
Empson, John Howard, 122
Evanson, Bernt, 87–88, 90
Fairbanks, Douglas, Jr., 5, 201, 217
Fall, Louis Mbarick, 139
Faulkner, Cyril, 257–58, 273
Faye, Alice, 205, 245
Fenwick, Irene, 41–43, 75, 77, 271
Ferris, Daniel, 116, 151, 153, 156, 157
Finland, 56, 236
Winter Olympics teams of, 87, 90, 94, 174
First World War, 129, 164
Fischbacher, Christian, 215, 219, 272
Fisher, Carl, 47
Fiske, Beulah Bexford (Billy’s mother), 7, 26, 51, 236–38, 261, 266, 268–69
Fiske, Billy, 2, 3–7, 15, 26, 50, 79, 106, 146–49, 195–211, 213–22, 269
adolescence of, 51–52
Aspen resort project of, 206–208, 216, 218
birth of, 7
childhood of, 9–10
in Cresta Run races, 54–56, 214–15
death of, 257–63, 265–66
Dewey’s antagonism toward, 149, 151–56
at Dillon, Read & Company, 218, 221
education of, 12, 146–47, 195, 205, 273