by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It didn’t take very long, once the automobile became a viable and reliable, and certainly revolutionary, form of transportation for auto racing to take root, though there were the expected fits and starts in the early days of motor sports. In Los Angeles, an early venue was Ascot Park, previously featured in this blog and which opened in south Los Angeles in 1903 for horse racing, though, as that sport being especially tied to gambling fell out of favor for the time being, auto and motorcycle races became more common from the end of 1908 onward.
As that post briefly observed, Ascot Park existed until 1919 when the property, owned by Henry E. Huntington’s extensive land company, was sold for the construction of a Goodyear tire factory. For several years, a key figure at the facility was George Roy Bentel (1876-1952), who half a decade later launched a new Ascot enterprise in the El Sereno neighborhood bordering Lincoln Heights. Bentel’s tenure at what was generally called the Ascot Speedway, located on the north side of Valley Boulevard east of Soto Street, was very short, as we’ll explore further in this post and for a few years the facility was under the management of various persons and entities.
In 1928, the American Legion Post 127 of Glendale took on the operation of Ascot and continued until early 1936, when the fatalities of well-known racer Al Gordon and his riding mechanic Spider Matlock led to a suspension of races. A few months later, a fire destroyed most of the grandstand and the speedway was shuttered and, now, there is a mix of residential, educational and commercial uses there, including single-family houses, a large parking lot, a Metropolitan Water District facility, industrial buildings and an elementary school.
While the featured objects from the Museum’s collection for this post are a pair of photographs, taken for a 27 November 1928 race at Ascot, we are going to begin by looking at the remarkable life and career of Bentel. He was born in Freedom, Pennsylvania, located along the Ohio River, northwest of Pittsburgh and, after the loss of his parents by the time he was 16, he went to Pittsburgh where he worked for a stock broker.
With that experience, Bentel somehow ended up in Lima, a town in western Ohio, where, just out of his teens, he became a ticket broker, specializing in railroad fares, and then a stock broker focused on Chicago corn, oat and wheat stocks, as well as general stocks in New York. In 1897, he married Harriet Chaney, a Lima resident, and, two years later, the couple had their only child, Margaret.
The 19 July 1900 edition of the Lima Times-Democrat briefly noted that a suit was filed against Bentel by Randolph Funk for the recovery of not too far under $2,000, a substantial sum at the time, which was money collected for Funk by Bentel, but “which he refuses to pay.” Apparently, this debt led Bentel to take his wife and daughter to Los Angeles, where they settled later in that last year of the 19th century.
Quickly, Bentel got into the real estate business on the coast at the Silver Strand tract at the south end of what was then the newly established and independent town of Venice, as well as a subdivision at the north end of Santa Monica along San Vicente Boulevard. After the death of his much-older business partner, former Illinois state senator H. Dorsey Patton, a product of Chicago’s machine political system, Bentel turned to the burgeoning automotive industry, though there was a sheriff’s sale of his Silver Strand property as an indication of further financial problems.
Initially with partners and then on his own, Bentel became an automobile and tire dealer, selling Continental tires and becoming, in 1908, the first regional agent of Michelin, the French manufacturer, as well as the local representative for such early car companies as Simplex, Mercer, and Jordan and a car body maker.
From modest origins, he expanded a few times in the early automobile center of Los Angeles, with locations on Grand Avenue and Broadway near 10th Street, now Olympic Boulevard. By the late teens, his car body designs, in particular, drew attention, including for a large sightseeing bus accommodating 30 passengers and a patent leather clad race car, of all things.
In an ad from the Venice Vanguard of 9 September 1916, the George R. Bentel Company promoted that it had “a whole building devoted to automobile bodies and equipment” and denoted it as “the fashion center of automobile creation.” Imploring potential customers to “let your car be known as a car among cars because of its individuality,” the firm boasted,
We specialize in the latest in style and fashion of the motor world. Not only do we have men in the large eastern centers who keep us posted in regard to “what’s what” in motordom, but we are the originators of many artistic and distinctive ideas in one-man tops, upholstering and decorating. We build roadster and raceabout bodies.
Don’t let yourself be content with the “hand-me-down” idea in buying accessories and equipment for your motor car, but have it “designed to your order.”
It was natural for Bentel to combine his expanding professional enterprise with the new sport of auto racing and the Los Angeles Herald of 25 April 1908 reported on the previous day’s holding of contests on the sands of Long Beach. This crude early example was such that spectators did not seem aware of when the first race was occurring, while judges and officials struggled to determine by their position when the contest was to start and what the times were. The paper added that “the big red Mercedes 70-horsepower touring car belonging to George Bentel and entered by the Continental Tire Company made a lonesome run in the fourth [race.]”
Somewhat inauspicious as this apparent debut of Bentel’s was, he continued his deep involvement in the sport, with the Los Angeles Times of 8 October 1911 observing that “without making the least noise about it George Bentel went east recently and purchased the ninety-horse-power Simplex racer which Ralph de Palma drove at [the] Indianapolis [500].”
De Palma (1882-1956), an Italian who came to America at age 10, became one of the most famous of the early racers starting in 1909 and, three years later, led for all but four of the laps at the Indy 500, but a cracked piston ended his chance of winning. In 1915, however, De Palma captured the crown at the race.
The paper noted, however, that, while Bentel might have intended to enter the Simplex in an upcoming Santa Monica road race, another man was determined to have the car and purchased it from Bentel. As for the contest, he told the Times that Michelin authorized him to offer a $300 prize to the winning car equipped with its tires, but also that the firm was prepared to outfit all the cars in the race.
It was noted that, the prior year, Michelin “sent out three excitable little Frenchmen who danced around and made a decided stir in the camp, but when the time came for a quick tire change they were cool and calm and were able to yank off the tires in less than half a minute.” A local, Jack Adams, however, was able to do this in 23 second, earning him a Michelin award—today’s record for a Formula 1 change is under 2 seconds!
For a regionally famous race, held in Corona in Riverside County on 9 September 1913 and comprising the last contest for the Automobile Association of America (AAA) championship, Bentel had three Mercer cars entered in two races with his drivers being De Palma, Spencer Wishart (who was killed just under a year later in a race in Elgin, Illinois) and the legendary Barney Oldfield.
Oldfield was perhaps the most famous of all early racers and known as the “Speed King” for his many records. None of the trio won in either contest and, in the most widely reported “free for all,” Earl Cooper, who also took the heavy-car race, won, with Oldfield, who looked like he would win the contest, crashing and De Palma and Wishart dropping out to mechanical problems.
On 26 December 1915, Ascot Park’s one-mile motor car track debuted, with Bentel serving as chair of the contest committee of the Ascot Speedway Association. With the venue having secured an official sanction from the AAA, he was sure to tell the Times of that day, “he did not want to overlook a single detail in making the opening race on the Ascot speedway a perfect meet.”
As part of his knack for publicity, Bentel invited the Washington State University’s football team, in town to play Brown University in the second Rose Bowl contest (which WSU won 14-0 on a rain-slicked field), to attend with the Times adding that he was “among those who are making the gridiron warriors welcome to our little pueblo.”
The 13 May 1917 edition of the Times published a photo with a caption explaining that “Speed Demons Can Now Have [A] Car With A ‘Limousine Finish'” thanks to the fact that
George Bentel conceived the idea that a racing car could be built with plenty of leg room, soft cushions and a pretty carpet on the “floor.” He further argued that the old type of car, with nothing appealing about it but a smell of castor oil and a seat made of rough lumber, wasn’t calculated to attract “gentleman racers.”
With his newly designed vehicle, shown turning a corner at Ascot at nearly 100 mph, Bentel told the paper, “if comfort is desirable at twenty-five miles an hour, it certainly is desirable at 100 mile san hour” and added that a race car driver, in contests lasting from an hour to four hours, “is entitled to all the comfort that can be built into a car, and that’s what has been done in this model.”
Not quite two months later, his mammoth sightseeing vehicle was featured in the paper with “upholstery . . . as rich as one finds in easy-back chairs in a millionaire’s home” and a six-cylinder engine capable of achieving a top-speed of 25 mph. Not only did the 26-foot long bus have three feet between the seats for ample leg room, but what was adjudged as “the finest sightseeing car in the world” offered electric bulbs mounted in the cabin to “furnish the passengers with sufficient light to read by.”
Tough times, however, ensued at Ascot during the First World War and its immediate aftermath and, though, Bentel tried reintroducing horse races and a rodeo at the venue, it was, as noted above, sold. The Times of 26 June 1919 ran a piece which stated, “Ascot Speedway is not to perish” and Bentel told the paper “he had secured an option on a new location and that he expected within the next few weeks to begin the construction of a brand new gasoline oval [track,]” which was to be a mile-and-a-quarter and “banked much higher than the concrete turns of the present track” with the goal of regularly achieving 100 mph speeds.
The article noted that the AAA sanctioned a half-dozen dates for races for the upcoming fall and winter season, including the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays and ones late in the months of January through March 1920. Bentel told the paper that there would be races with substantial purse money and he anticipated that eastern-based racers would stay in the area for the winter. Lastly, ended the account, “the name of Ascot Speedway will be transferred to the new location, which at the present time is a secret.”
There was to be, however, a substantial delay of some 4 1/2 years before the new venue was to be realized and Bentel wound up involved in a significant diversion on his career path. He became associated with the renowned stage producer and theater owner Oliver Morosco on a strikingly ambitions plan to take many of the impresario’s wildly successful plays and refashion them into motion pictures, as well as to construct, on 100 acres, a studio that was to have other elements and mix European architectural styles into a “Greenwich Village” project called “Moroscotown.”
The 14 July 1920 edition of the Times reported on the formation of Oliver Morosco Productions, Inc., with the namesake as president, actor and drama school owner Frank C. Egan as secretary, and Bentel as vice-president and general manager. Eleven Morosco stage works were identified as those to be refashioned into films, with temporary studios utilized until an expansive facility could be built, while a new theater was to be constructed at Olive and Seventh streets and three existing venues, the Morosco, Mason and Little theaters, were to be used, as well.
We’ll return on Tuesday with the second part of this post, taking us to the Morosco undertaking and forward, so be sure to check back for that.