Virginia Bruce, Hollywood Horror Star and Horsewoman: Halloween Edition

Tobi Lopez Taylor

This essay is part of the ongoing Halloween Horror Horsewomen series, which also includes a profile of Martha O’Driscoll.  Future essays will focus on actresses Marguerite Churchill, Frances Drake, and Evelyn Ankers.

Just in time for Halloween🎃, here’s the story of another actress from the Golden Age of Universal horror films who also made her mark as a racehorse owner and breeder: Virginia Bruce (b. 1910, d. 1982). (Some of the information about Bruce included herein has been drawn from Scott O’Brien’s 2008 book, Virginia Bruce: Under My Skin, the only full-length biography of the actress.) 

Born in Minnesota as Helen Virginia Briggs, she attended high school in North Dakota and moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1928. One of her first film appearances was a bit part in the 1929 Fox Studios drama Fugitives, which starred Madge Bellamy—who also has a horse connection via a former lover she attempted to shoot:  Albert Stanwood Murphy (see my post on the matter here).

In 1932, Bruce worked alongside Walter Huston and Lupe Velez in the MGM horror drama Kongo. One reviewer remarked in Photoplay, “Walter Huston in a role unsuited to his personality; Lupe Velez with little chance to act; Virginia Bruce's prettiness sacrificed to a sordid part.” Bruce would later partner with Huston’s son John in the racehorse business.

During production of Kongo, Bruce married her first husband, silent film star John Gilbert (b. 1897, d. 1936), on the MGM studio lot. The union proved to be short lived, and the couple divorced in 1934. 

In 1936, Bruce starred with Edmund Lowe in MGM’s The Garden Murder Case. The plot revolves around the death of a jockey in a race. The racing sequence was filmed at Santa Anita Park.

Three years later, Bruce married J. Walter Ruben (b. 1899, d. 1942), a screenwriter, film director, and polo enthusiast who wrote the screenplay for MGM’s Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937), a racetrack musical that was the first feature film to pair Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. One member of the Bruce-Ruben wedding party was Gene Markey, who later married Lucille Wright, the owner of horse racing’s legendary Calumet Farm, which produced two Triple Crown winners, Whirlaway and Citation. 

Ruben and Bruce purchased a home in Pacific Palisades that they called Wildtree. Ruben directed his wife in only one picture, the 1937 MGM western The Bad Man of Brimstone (aka Arizona Bill). Bruce co-starred with Wallace and Noah Beery, Dennis O’Keeffe, and Bruce Cabot. The latter was a first cousin of noted California Arabian horse breeder Frederic E. Lewis II, who established Diamond Bar Ranch.

Bruce credited the 1939 MGM film Let Freedom Ring with helping her get over her fear of horseback riding, which stemmed from a fall she’d taken many years earlier. Around this time, Bruce and Ruben purchased some racehorses for their Wildtree Stable. These included Big Ed (*Bright Knight – Codetta, by The Porter), who racked up some victories at Santa Anita as well as at Agua Caliente, and the non-winner Eternal Lady (Okapi – Rose Penn, by Upset). Bruce bred Eternal Lady to Morvich, the 1922 Kentucky Derby winner, and got Lady Morvich, who broke her maiden at Del Mar, paying $214 to win.

Bruce’s best-known racer was a half-sister to Lady Morvich. This was the bay filly Lady Bruce (*Sierra Nevada – Eternal Lady, by Okapi), a homebred she owned in partnership with director John Huston and his wife, actress Evelyn Keyes.

According to Keyes’s memoir, Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister, when Lady Bruce made her racing debut, Huston, an inveterate gambler, instructed his wife to wager $1,000 on the filly, but to first ask their trainer whether to bet it all to win, or to bet across the board. The trainer indicated the latter. When Keyes told her husband that Lady Bruce had won, paying $26 to win, he was elated—until she told him how’d she placed the bet. He hung up on her and didn’t come home that night. 

Lady Bruce’s biggest claim to fame was beating the stakes winner Speculation, a well-bred son of *Mahmoud, in an allowance race at Hollywood Park. 

Bruce appeared briefly, along with fellow racehorse owner Bing Crosby, in a 1938 short film about Santa Anita.

One tantalizing bit of information in O’Brien’s biography of Bruce is that the actress collected horseshoes that had been worn by well-known racehorses. Unfortunately, O’Brien does not provide any of the horses’ names. Could she have possessed the shoes of, say, Seabiscuit, *Kayak II, Rosemont, or Stagehand? 

The year 1940 saw the release of Invisible Woman, with Bruce in the starring role. Her co-stars included John Barrymore and John Howard. The third film in the Invisible franchise, it garnered mainly favorable reviews and grossed $600,000. The film proved controversial at the time because, although Bruce’s character was invisible, she was also nude. One recent reviewer, critic Glenn Erickson, observed that Invisible Woman was “one of the few vehicles to make use of [her] talent.”

In 1946, Bruce sold her home in Pacific Palisades to actress Deanna Durbin. By this time, Bruce was taking on few acting roles and was no longer raising or racing Thoroughbreds. Her last film appearance was in the 1960 Columbia Pictures release, Strangers When We Meet. She died in 1982 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Retirement Home in Woodland Hills, California. Her obituary in the New York Times observed that she was “a popular leading lady of the 1930s and ’40s, appearing opposite such leading men as “Robert Taylor, James Stewart, Fredric March, James Cagney, Robert Montgomery, Nelson Eddy, William Powell, and Melvyn Douglas.” 

Doing Time: How Two Arabian Horses in Arizona Came to Be Owned by Convicts, Part One: JEREMAH 144

 Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project essay

Photo by Sean Foster, 2012, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Spur Cross Conservation Area, in Cave Creek, Arizona, today consists of more than 2,000 acres of desert wilderness that contain a rare year-round spring-fed stream, stands of majestic saguaros, and dozens of prehistoric archaeological sites. However, few visitors realize that, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this land—known then as the Spur Cross Ranch—was also home to two of the earliest Arabian horses to live in Arizona—Jeremah 144 and Amar 767.

            In April 1928, the University of Arizona, in Tucson, held a horse show. University president Byron Cummings was on hand to present medals and trophies. Captain R. C. Woodruff—whom I have written about elsewhere—gave a demonstration ride on his Quarter Horse mare, Sprite. In addition, a young man named Jacob Franz Fishter exhibited a grey Arabian stallion named Jeremah, on behalf of the horse’s lessee, Captain Edward M. Joyce. The latter had quite an unusual excuse for not attending the show: he was in prison in Florence, Arizona. 

             Joyce—a World War I veteran, horseman, and proprietor of some Southern Arizona guest ranches, including the Carlink Ranch—had made headlines four years earlier, when he shot and killed a ranch hand who was paying too much attention to Joyce’s wife. Although Joyce was initially charged with murder, his attorneys successfully advocated for the lesser charge of manslaughter.  

I also happened to learn, while doing research for this essay, that my great-great-uncle, William “Billy” Rhodes, worked for Joyce and was a witness to the shooting. Billy Rhodes was no stranger to violence, as he grew up during the era of Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War (c. 1882–1892), a deadly feud between the Tewksbury and Graham families in which Billy’s father, John Rhodes, was a participant who was nearly killed in a Tempe courtroom. (For more about the Rhodes-Lopez family and the Pleasant Valley War, see here.)

Joyce and two fellow inmates in Arizona’s Florence State Prison used their jail time productively: they met often and, after their release, planned to open a guest ranch north of Phoenix, in Cave Creek. Joyce would provide the ranching experience, Phillip Lewis had some financial expertise (he was a former bank president serving time for tax evasion and embezzlement), and the third, unnamed, convict helped to underwrite the enterprise.

Jeremah Comes to Arizona

Joyce was still in prison when he leased Jeremah. The stallion had already traveled by train from the East Coast to the West Coast and had changed hands at least twice (see below) before arriving in Arizona. Jeremah was born in 1913 at Peter Bradley’s Hingham Stock Farm in Massachusetts.

Breed historian Carol Woodbridge Mulder noted that Jeremah was “a very nice, typy horse with an outstanding pedigree, which included Kars, the founding stallion of Crabbet Stud in England.” Jeremah’s sire, the influential breeding stallion *Hamrah, had been imported from Syria by political cartoonist Homer Davenport, and his dam, Nanshan, was a valuable daughter of *Nedjme, the first horse registered in the Arabian Horse Club of America’s studbook. About Jeremah, Mulder observed that this “very handsome horse is said by the 1927 studbook to have been marked with a blaze that covered his left nostril, left front fetlock, right front pastern, left hind stocking and right hind fetlock. As has often been mentioned in previous articles, *Hamrah 28’s habit at stud was often to sire animals that were quite beautiful, and better than he was himself. Jeremah was one of these.”

Jeremah and Carl Raswan

Jeremah was in a group of Arabians sold by Bradley in 1924 to Carl Schmidt (later known as Carl Raswan), who acted as the buyer’s agent for industrialist Chauncey D. Clarke, then living in California. Clarke had made a fortune from his family’s Illinois distillery business and from his mining interests in Arizona. Unfortunately, his health began to fail, and in March 1925 Clarke sold his horses to cereal magnate W. K. Kellogg, who was establishing his own ranch in Pomona, California. Clarke passed away the following year. (His widow, Marie Rankin Clarke, a philanthropist and a founder of the Hollywood Bowl, outlived him by more than two decades.)

Curiously, a short article in the August 29, 1927 issue of the Pomona Progress Bulletin noted that Kellogg was leasing Jeremah to Chester A. Wortley of Onyx, California, “for breeding purposes.” Presumably the lease agreement fell through, as Jeremah was in Arizona, leased to Joyce, by the time the breeding season would have begun in 1928. (Wortley, a cameraman and wilderness guide for film producer Jesse Lasky and author Zane Grey, died in March 1931.)

It is unclear what, or who, motivated Joyce to lease Jeremah. Presumably he heard about him, or Arabians in general, through Fishter, who owned two Arabians from the Kellogg Ranch, *Razam and Wardi. Homer Smith, a neighbor of Joyce’s in Cave Creek, wrote a colorful, not always accurate, memoir titled From Desert to Tundra that mentioned Joyce and Jeremah. Smith claimed that Kellogg had been a guest at the Spur Cross, that Joyce had borrowed money from Kellogg, and that Kellogg had “given” Jeremah to Joyce.  I have found no evidence for any of these assertions. If Kellogg had visited Spur Cross Ranch, his visit would most certainly have been covered by the Phoenix newspapers.

            Interestingly, the one time that Kellogg is known to have visited Arizona during this period was in November 1924, just weeks before Joyce was arrested for killing his employee. Kellogg stayed in Tucson’s Santa Rita Hotel, where Joyce’s friend Jacob Fishter would later take a job as a clerk. Kellogg was much impressed by the area’s abundant sunshine, telling a reporter, “I have just returned from a trip to Europe and prefer your climate to anything I found there.” (Arizona Daily Star, 11/18/1924) The Santa Rita Hotel, constructed in Mission Revival Style by well-known Southwest architect Henry Trost, was considered the finest hotel in southern Arizona. It was owned by a partnership whose members included former Tucson mayor Levi Manning—the first breeder of purebred registered Arabians in the state of Arizona—and businessman Federico Ronstadt, grandfather of singer Linda Ronstadt, who was herself an Arabian horse owner.

In early 1928, when interviewed about Jeremah, Fishter (or the interviewer) got some basic facts wrong. He claimed that Joyce owned (rather than leased) Jeremah and that “Kellogg paid $12,000 for the stallion, which he purchased from [Bradley’s] Hingham stock farm.” In truth, Kellogg paid Clarke, not Bradley, $18,000 for a package deal of 11 horses, one of which was Jeremah. 

Jeremah 144

Arabian horses were still extremely rare in Arizona in the 1920s; there were only about a dozen in the entire state, and most were in the Tucson area. In addition to Jeremah, these included five Arabians owned by the previously mentioned Levi Manning (El Jafil, Jarad, Kalub, Saraband, and Shiloh); Fishter’s colt and filly *Razam and Wardi; the colts Hasan  and Desert Song, owned by Pearl Gray Clyde of Phoenix;  Faris, a stallion belonging to the U.S. Remount Service, who stood at Arizona congressman Bert Colter’s ranch in Springerville in 1927, and then went to Lewis A. Bailey, at the Grand Canyon, from 1928 to 1931; and Barzin, also a Remount stallion, who stood at various locations throughout Arizona from 1929 to 1938.

Spur Cross Ranch

After their release from prison, in 1928 Joyce and his partners established the Spur Cross Ranch north of Phoenix, on the west side of Cave Creek near the defunct Phoenix Mine. They reportedly reused materials from the mine in the construction of the ranch and worked so quickly that the Spur Cross was able to welcome visitors by at least July 1928, as noted by a columnist for the  Arizona Republic, who wrote: “Mrs. Vernon Martin and her daughter Verna and Miss Ida Smith spent several days at the Spur Cross ranch last week.” These visitors would not have met Joyce, however, as he remained at the Florence prison until October of that year.

            A March 1929 promotional article by Philip W. Jones in Progressive Arizona and the Great Southwest noted, “One could seek all over the southwest without finding a more ideal location than that selected for the Spur Cross Ranch. A splendid highway leading out of Phoenix through fragrant orange groves and beautiful dwelling houses winds gently upward across a great stretch of desert to a mountain pass which is the gateway to the Cave Creek district.” Three horses were singled out: “The herd is headed by Jeremiah (sic), a purebred Arabian stallion sent to ‘Cap’ [Joyce] by W. H. (sic) Kellogg, the breakfast food manufacturer, from his Arabian horse ranch in California…‘Patches,’ probably the best educated horse in Arizona, is another member of the Spur Cross equine family and frequently entertains the guests with his numerous tricks, as does ‘Pancho,’ a beautiful black gelding, who delights in doing funny things for the amusement of his onlookers.”

The main source for information on Jeremah during his years at Spur Cross is the previously mentioned unreliable narrator Homer Smith, who first saw Jeremah in about 1930, when the stallion was 17: “Even at his advanced age he was a magnificent animal.” (Smith, p. 127.) He was much less impressed by Captain Joyce’s abilities as a stockman. Smith penned a harrowing story of several Spur Cross broodmares, either in foal to Jeremah or having just produced foals by him, who died of water founder thanks to gross mismanagement. As Smith trenchantly noted, “That ended the horse breeding ‘division’ of the Spur Cross spread.” (p. 134).

Snooper, a part-bred son of Jeremah

            Smith himself raised a part-bred colt by Jeremah, named Snooper, who was out of a mare called Nugget: “[Snooper] was a superb animal, inheriting the color and conformation of his dam, and the grace, style and endurance of his sire. He was the most tractable animal I ever saw, and imparted this characteristic to all his offspring: we never had to ‘break’ them, we just started riding and training them.” (p. 134).

Smith went on to note that “some months later, in fact it was the following spring [in 1932], that I was riding over on Cave Creek, and stopped in to pay a casual visit to the Spur Cross….It was apparent that things were not going too well. Jeremiah [sic] had died during the winter.” (p. 137.) Jeremah’s death—on December 2, 1931—is confirmed in the records of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library.

            Unfortunately, the handsome, well-bred Jeremah sired only two purebred Arabians: a colt out of Killah that died soon after his birth in September 1925, and the 1927 grey filly Zoba, out of the excellent producer Hasiker. Zoba—who was sold to Oklahoma in 1929—was a half-sister to some other Arabians in Arizona, including Kalub (by Ziki), a stallion owned by Levi Manning, and Hasan (by Antez), owned by Pearl Gray Clyde. Amazingly, although Zoba produced only two foals (the fillies Daud and Feisal), she still has many well-known descendants. These include El Jahez WH, 2023 U.S. National Champion Senior Stallion and 2024 Scottsdale Senior Champion Stallion; Katalena Bey, dam of multiple National winners, including Alada Lena, a mare with more than 20 National titles in dressage and sport horse classes, and Royal Atheena, stakes winner and Darley Horse of the Year. As a matter of fact, when Royal Atheena came to Arizona in 2006 for her induction into the Racing Hall of Fame, she spent the night in Cave Creek, at Brusally Arabians—less than three miles from Spur Cross Ranch.

 

After Jeremah died, Joyce leased another stallion from Kellogg in 1932. This was Amar (*Nasik x *Rasima), a 1930 bay colt, bred by Kellogg, of all Crabbet bloodlines. He was also a half-brother to Jacob Fishter’s *Razam (by Hassam). Mulder described Amar as “beautifully marked with a strip and four three-quarter stockings.” As was the case with Jeremah, Amar sired no registered purebred get for Joyce.

In early 1930, Captain Joyce made the papers again—this time in Phoenix. He was arrested at the ranch and spent time in jail on a “statutory charge” involving the underage daughter of a local businessman. He also got crosswise with his business partner Phil Lewis, who foreclosed on him around 1932. Joyce gave up the dude-ranching business and by 1950 he was employed as a letter carrier, living in a New York tenement with his second wife, two children, and his mother-in-law. He died in 1956. The Spur Cross changed hands a few more times over the next several years, and it ceased to be used as a dude ranch in 1953.

1951 advertisement

At some point, perhaps around 1940, Amar came into the hands of Yvette Ward—wife of Charles Ward, the other convict in this saga. Amar’s story will be explored in Part Two.  

Trinidad Lopez, the Naco Cemetery, and Arizona's Pleasant Valley War

Tobi Lopez Taylor

 An Arizona History essay

The tiny border town of Naco, Arizona, made the news some years ago because a historic cemetery there was slated to be destroyed in advance of construction of an RV park. In 2006, I was doing research on Naco for an upcoming issue of Archaeology Southwest Magazine when I happened upon a list of the people interred at the cemetery that had been compiled by historian Robert Silas Griffin. To my surprise, one of the names matched that of my maternal great-great-grandmother, Trinidad Lopez, about whom I knew little at the time.

Trinidad’s daughter, Clara R. Acton,
with her son Edward, 1904.

Trinidad was born and baptized in Ures, Sonora, in 1850. By 1864, she and her younger brother, Rafael, were living in Tucson with some of her mother’s relatives, the Heredias. Around 1867, she married Ramon Leon, of Ures, and with him she had at least four children.

Sometime before 1885, Trinidad became involved with John Rhodes, a cattleman from Texas who fell in with the brothers Ed and John Tewksbury, two of the major players in Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War. This feud—also known as the Graham-Tewksbury War, lasted about a decade and was responsible for the deaths of dozens of men. It has been called the bloodiest range war in U.S. history.

John Rhodes in 1916.

Trinidad and John do not appear to have ever married or even set up house together, but between 1885 and 1888 they had three children in Tucson: Juan Francisco (John Frank) Rhodes; my great-great-grandmother, Clara Ernestina Rhodes; and William Robert “Billy” Rhodes. The elder two children were baptized at San Agustin Church in Tucson. There is no record of Billy Rhodes having been baptized.

In December 1888, about a year after some members of the Graham faction killed John Tewksbury, Rhodes married his compatriot’s widow, Mary Ann Crigger Tewksbury. At some point in the next few years, Rhodes traveled from Pleasant Valley to Tucson and demanded that Trinidad turn over the three children to him. Juan, Clara, and Billy, who were bilingual, were then forbidden by their father to speak Spanish again. (Many years later, one relative recalled hearing Clara speaking in Spanish with her cousin, rancher Antonio “Tony” Lopez, in Winkleman, Arizona.)

In 1892, Rhodes and Ed Tewksbury ambushed Tom Graham (the last of the Graham men) in Tempe, less than a mile from the still-standing Niels Peterson House. Rhodes was arrested and put on trial for murder. While in the courtroom, Rhodes was nearly killed when his victim’s widow, Annie Graham, attempted to shoot him. One witness—named Rafael Lopez—who corroborated Rhodes’s claim that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime, may have been Trinidad’s younger brother. Rhodes was ultimately acquitted.

After the trial, Rhodes seems to have become a more-or-less model citizen: he signed up at age 56 as an Arizona Ranger, and in 1907, he became a Pinal County Livestock Inspector. He died in Phoenix in 1919. His widow, Mary Ann, lived until 1950.

Trinidad died in Naco in 1920, perhaps either while coming back to Tucson or going to visit relatives in Ures. Her son Juan Francisco Rhodes was killed in 1911 during construction of the copper mill in Hayden, Arizona. Her only daughter, Clara, married Frank Acton—son of George Acton Sr., who co-owned a butcher shop in Benson—and they raised their children on the Acton Ranch near Mammoth. Clara died in 1968. Billy Rhodes worked for Edward M. Joyce on the Carlink Ranch, near Redington, and in 1924 witnessed Joyce intentionally kill his employee, Jess Whiteley. In 1930, Billy married Rosa Ronquillo, the first postmistress of Redington, Arizona. Billy died in 1971, and Rosa passed away in 1982.

It’s ironic that it took the potential destruction of the Naco Cemetery to bring so much attention to the people who have been interred there for so many decades. Thanks to the residents of Cochise County and other interested parties, the individuals in the cemetery continue to rest in peace—que en paz descanse.

(A previous version of this essay appeared in Archaeology Southwest Magazine in 2006.)

*HALIM, the Arabian Stallion Who Chased After Pancho Villa—and Wound Up in a Museum!

 Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History and Crabbet Chronicles essay

An article in the January 23, 1932 New Yorker, titled “Skeleton-Maker,” profiled S. Harmstead Chubb—whose name and childhood experiences sound as if they were concocted by Edward Gorey: 

“[At] the age of seven [Chubb] found a dead cat. He examined it with great interest, and then dissected it. In this pursuit, he was not encouraged by his parents.” 

Chubb (b. 1863, d. 1949) grew up to be “the sole person of the department of Specialized Osteology at the [American] Museum of Natural History, and he has free rein. He has specialized in horses.” The article went on to observe that

“he has a workshop on the sixth floor—a round room lined with cabinets containing his circulating library of bones….Among the items on file is Halim, the celebrated Arabian horse that General Harbord used to ride. Among judges of horseflesh, Halim was generally regarded as the world’s most perfectly balanced horse. Mr. Chubb hasn’t got round to putting him together yet.” 

Who was Halim—or, more specifically, *Halim (AHA No. 282)—and how did his remains end up in Chubb’s round room? *Halim’s story starts in Sussex, England at the Crabbet Stud of Lady Anne and Wilfrid  Blunt (for more essays on the Blunts, see here, here, and here). The bay colt, foaled in May 1906, was a son of the Blunts’ important stallion *Astraled and was linebred to their foundation mare Queen of Sheba. 

In 1908, *Halim was purchased from Crabbet Stud by Colonel Spencer Borden (b. 1848, d. 1921), an influential American Arabian horse breeder, and was shipped to his farm, Interlachen,

near Fall River, Massachusetts. Borden—who was related to the notorious Lizzie Borden as well as the inventor Gail Borden, of condensed milk fame—came from a wealthy textile-printing family, was educated at the Sorbonne, authored books, and worked with Thomas Edison to bring electrification to New England. 

Starting in the late 1800s, Spencer Borden owned various kinds of horses, including the well-known Morgan stallion Ethan Allan 3rd. He began breeding polo ponies in the 1890s and purchased his first Arabians from England in 1898. His positive experiences with the breed led him to believe that Arabians would be well-suited for use by the U.S. military. As he wrote in 1920, “Having for many years followed the development of ideas used in the most successful studs of nations where cavalry horses are bred…it was found that, without exception, Arab blood was the basis on which all the best horses had been established.” To encourage the U.S. government to use Arabians in its cavalry, Borden held long-distance riding tests and also gave some of his Arabians to cavalry officers, who rode them on patrol and into battle.  

*Halim was one of the Borden Arabians to be tested privately and ridden in combat. In 1912, he participated in a 26-mile riding test from Providence, Rhode Island, “over pavements and hard road,” to Borden’s Interlachen Farm. Ridden by Major George Byram of the Tenth Cavalry, *Halim finished the ride in three hours, despite carrying 200 pounds and losing a shoe en route. 

The following year, *Halim completed a 55-mile ride. He was ridden by Captain Frank Tompkins (b. 1868, d. 1954), also of the Tenth Cavalry, from Fort Ethan Allen to Northfield, Vermont, and covered the distance in nine hours and 20 minutes. It was noted that this was “3 miles more than the direct distance, caused by roads covered with ice cakes from the breakup of the Winooski River, compelling a detour.”

U.S. soldiers camped on the border with Mexico. Naco, Arizona, 1916.   Courtesy Library of Congress.

By January 1914, *Halim was in Naco, Arizona—on the U.S.-Mexico border—with Captain Tompkins. As Arabian horse historian Carol Woodbridge Mulder noted, it would have been quite a change of climate for him, having come from England, then relocating to Massachusetts, and traveling thousands of miles across America to the desert Southwest. Notably, *Halim appears to have been the first purebred, registered Arabian horse to live in the state of Arizona, as he arrived more than a decade before Tucson Mayor Levi Manning’s Arabian stallion El Jafil was purchased from California in late 1925.

Stationed in Arizona, Tompkins wrote:

“I am using Halim for all my patrolling and ‘distance’ work….Halim has never been tired yet, and I am beginning to feel that he never will be. The horses here [at Naco] are without shelter. Halim stands out like the rest and takes everything that comes along in the way of weather. The last four days we have had a fierce wind and sand storm, followed by rain and snow. Halim takes this like an old soldier. He is a fine war horse—I never owned a better one.”

In March 1916, after Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and his men raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that a “punitive expedition,” headed by Brigadier General John “Black Jack” Pershing, ride into Mexico to capture Villa. The 11-month expedition, which was ultimately unsuccessful, was later chronicled by Tompkins in a 1934 book called Chasing Villa: The Last Campaign of the U.S. Cavalry. (Tompkins, who rode with Pershing in pursuit of Villa, was mounted on a partbred Arabian named Kingfisher.) 

The foreword to Tompkins’s Chasing Villa was penned by Major General James Harbord (b. 1866, d. 1947), who, as a member of the First Cavalry, rode *Halim in Mexico as part of the punitive expedition. In the book, he wrote that Tompkins “has probably forgotten that 20 years ago last summer [i.e., 1914]…he sent me…‘Halim.’” The horse was finally registered with the Arabian Horse Club of America in 1918, with Harbord as his owner. A 1920 article in the Cavalry Journal noted that Harbord was still riding him.

 Harbord retired from the military in 1922. He then became president of the recently created Radio Corporation of America (RCA), a position he held until 1930. During Harbord’s tenure, RCA diversified dramatically, founding the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and becoming a partner in the movie studio known as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., which made many films in various genres, including Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, Bringing Up Baby, Cimarron, Swing Time, Pride of the Yankees, and King Kong, to name a few. 

Also in 1922, Harbord lent *Halim to the U.S. Army Remount for breeding purposes. The stallion stood at the Front Royal Quartermaster Remount Depot, in Virginia, in 1924 and 1925. By 1927, the Arabian studbook listed *Halim as being in the ownership of the Remount. 

*Halim died sometime between 1927 and 1930.  While owned by  Borden, he sired two fillies, Narina and Primrose. In 1918, when Borden decided to stop breeding Arabians in favor of Guernsey cattle, fellow Arabian breeder/promoter W. R. Brown purchased the majority of his horses, including *Halim’s daughters. Although each mare produced one registered foal apiece, those foals did not breed on. 

Borden would have been stunned to hear that *Halim was “generally regarded as the world’s most perfectly balanced horse,” according to the New Yorker. In 1915—a few years after he had sold *Halim—Borden observed to Lady Anne Blunt, “Halim was a disappointment, though he made good in the [military] service. He never had the finish that my educated eye demands in an Arab.” Carol Mulder, who assessed *Halim from some photographs, believed that *Halim did have some good points, such as his “pleasing head,” “fine, expressive eyes,” a neck of “good length,” and good shoulders. 

The last word about *Halim, however, should go to the man who knew him best. Major General Harbord, who rode him in search of Pancho Villa, called this stallion “the most beautiful and lovely thoroughbred Arab horse that ever brought delight to the heart of a cavalryman.” 

Photo of *Halim at age 4. Rider unknown. In Imported Foundation Stock
of North American Arabian Horses, Volume II (revised edition),
by Carol Woodbridge Mulder.

Martha O’Driscoll, Hollywood Horror Star and Horsewoman: Halloween Edition

 by
Tobi Lopez Taylor

This essay is part of the ongoing Halloween Horror Horsewomen series, which also includes a profile of  Virginia Bruce.  Future essays will focus on actresses Marguerite Churchill, Frances Drake, and Evelyn Ankers.

Just in time for Halloween 🎃, here’s a quick look at an actress from the golden age of Universal horror films who also made her mark as a breeder of champion Thoroughbreds. 

Born in Oklahoma, Martha O’Driscoll (b. 1922, d. 1998) grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and moved to Hollywood as a teenager to pursue a career as an actress and a dancer. Her first on-screen credit was in the 1938 Columbia film Girls’ School, and while she didn’t often get top billing during her movie career, she did work steadily for the next decade, appearing in nearly 40 films, ranging from Westerns to crime dramas to comedies. 

        One picture she appeared in, a Western musical called Under Western Skies, was set in her adopted home state of Arizona but was actually filmed at the Iverson Movie Ranch near Los Angeles.

Martha made her Universal Pictures horror-film debut in 1944’s Ghost Catchers, a “horror comedy” starring the comic duo of Olsen and Johnson. (She’s shown here riding sidesaddle.)

        Her next horror role was in House of Dracula, a 1945 Universal film that is best known today for bringing together Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Wolf Man (see trailer). Martha played the part of Milizia Morelle, a nurse who is pursued by Count Dracula (John Carradine, not Bela Lugosi, wore the cape in this film).

O’Driscoll retired from acting in 1947. In July of that year, she married Chicago businessman and lifelong horse racing fan Arthur Appleton, with whom she had four children. In the late 1960s, Arthur bought his first racehorse, and by the mid-1970s, the couple established Bridlewood Farm in Florida, where they bred numerous stakes winners. 

Martha Appleton with a Bridlewood Thoroughbred.

        For many years, Bridlewood was often among the top 10 American farms in terms of money earned. The Appletons stood successful breeding stallions like Skip Trial, sire of Skip Away, Horse of the Year and winner of the Breeder’s Cup Classic, and Silver Buck, sire of Silver Charm, who captured the first two legs of the Triple Crown. 

        The couple also founded the Appleton Museum of Art, which has devoted an entire wing to equestrian art. Its website notes, “The Appleton’s equine art collection spans over 3,000 years of history from around the world. As Ocala is heralded as the Horse Capital of the World, horses and equine art may also be understood to be part of the Appleton’s DNA….Ranging from Eurasian Steppe Bronze Age horse-bridle bits to contemporary works, the equine art collection is particularly notable for its wide range of human-horse endeavors–riding, hunting, racing and farming.

        Martha died in 1998, and Arthur outlived her by a decade. In 2013, John and Leslie Malone purchased Bridlewood, with the intention of, as they put it, “spearheading its revitalization.” 

        

Of Cats, Cornflakes, and Crabbet Arabian Horses: The Improbable Lives of Hamilton and “Lady” Betty Bassett, breeder of ALILATT AHR 632

Tobi Lopez Taylor

This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on the Arabian Stallion Karonek, Penny Chenery and Secretariat, Hank the Cowdog, Man O’ War’s son By Hisself, Major-General Jonathan Burton, Fred Almy (the Cowboy Millionaire), and Doc Pardee. 

Many Arabian horse fanciers are familiar with the stallion *Raseyn, bred by England’s Crabbet Stud and imported to the United States in 1926 for breakfast cereal magnate W. K. Kellogg. *Raseyn became a noted sire of champions, and several mid-twentieth-century breeders based their programs on his bloodlines. These included Daniel Gainey, whose Gainey Fountainhead Arabians was spearheaded by the stallion Ferzon, a great-grandson of *Raseyn; John Rogers, whose *Raseyn daughters nicked spectacularly well with his senior sire *Serafix; and Sheila Varian, whose foundation sire Bay-Abi was a grandson of *Raseyn. 

*Raseyn with Arabian horse historian and author Gladys Brown Edwards. 

*Raseyn was not the only notable member of that 1926 Kellogg importation, whose members were selected by well-known horseman Carl Raswan (born Carl Schmidt). Arabian horse historian Gladys Brown Edwards has described this group as one of the most important importations of that era. However, one man who saw these horses—who called himself Hamilton “Horse” Bassett and was referred to as the “western representative” of the Horse Association of America—wrote to Kellogg’s son that this group of horses was an “ill judged” selection that “would be considered a joke if it was not so pitiable. You have been made ridiculous and the story of Kellogg’s Arabs will go down in history as an example of the greatest horse swindle of all time.” (Kudos to researcher Teresa Rogers for uncovering this information in the archives of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona.)

Ironically, it was Bassett who proved to be—if not an outright swindler—a serial fabricator of lies big and small. For starters, although Hamilton Bassett claimed at various times to be a native of New York, he was actually born Harry Dwight Bassett in Cincinnati, Ohio. Various sources describe him as a onetime newspaperman and an insurance agent. It is known that he participated in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Around 1904, when he was in his late 20s, Bassett made the acquaintance of the well-known Belgian opera singer Blanche Arral in Singapore, when both happened to be staying at the Raffles Hotel. 

Despite having no experience in the theatre business, Bassett convinced Arral that he should become her manager. (He also began billing himself as “Hérold Bassett.”) As she recalled, “Bassett mapped out an ambitious tour. He was full of confidence.” Arral then rented a villa outside Singapore and purchased a riding horse. She “went riding on the bridle paths and avenues around the villa. Bassett, who was a fine horseman, often joined me on these canters, full of talk about the projected tour and big ideas for launching me into the musical life of Asia and Australia.” (Blanche Arral, The Extraordinary Operatic Adventures of Blanche Arral, p. 266) Over the next few years they toured the Dutch East Indies, Australia, Tasmania, Fiji, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast.

The tour that Bassett laid out was indeed successful, and the two business partners became romantic partners as well. It’s unknown whether Bassett and Arral ever married—though numerous press reports referred to him as her husband. However, over the years, Arral’s romantic and professional relationship with Bassett deteriorated. She recalled that although “Bassett was my manager, he was young [about a decade younger than she], and sometimes our relations were more like those of mother and child.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 283) She also observed, “Though I had a manager, I felt that at the last I was really responsible for the whole company. One never can tell what men will do! Naïve and charming as children, they are off when most needed and usually return with some beautiful tale.”

By 1908, the relationship between Arral and Bassett appears to have become strictly business. During a stop in Fiji that year, they met a well-known author. Arral recalled that Bassett “was delighted at the acquaintance, for the man was Jack London, then at the pinnacle of his fame and the beau ideal of many young Americans. He and his wife were equally charming.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 287)  Arral claimed that London, author of The Call of the Wild, wanted to write the story of her life. That never happened, but a character named “Lucille Arral” makes a brief appearance in London’s book Smoke Bellew. Although Arral and London met only once, Bassett and London would cross paths again years later. 

In 1909, The Cat Review published an article by “Harold Bassett” claiming that Blanche Arral was the first person to bring a Siamese cat to the U.S., after she had visited Thailand on a concert tour. In actuality, the first documented Siamese cat had come to the U.S. many years earlier, when President Rutherford B. Hayes received “Siam” from the American Consul in Bangkok. Furthermore, between 1900 and 1903, eight registered Siamese cats were known to be in the U.S., none of them belonging to Arral. It is unknown whether Bassett genuinely believed what he wrote or if it was simply for publicity’s sake. 

In 1911, an American newspaper reported that Arral “returned to her home in Brussels a few weeks ago, after a very pleasant visit with her husband here [in the U.S]. Mr. Bassett had planned to return with her [to Brussels], but at the last moment the call of the business in which he is engaged proved too formidable to overlook, and he remained. He may visit her in Europe later in the winter.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 322) A year later, Arral was living in Orange, New Jersey, in a home with a “remarkable collection of Siamese cats,” wrote a reporter. Hamilton Bassett was not mentioned. Arral last sang in public in 1918, and she died in 1945 at age 80.

Blanche Arral with one of her Siamese cats. 

Before we leave Blanche Arral behind, it should be noted that when she appeared in Herve’s operetta Mam’zell Nitouche for the final time, in the rooftop auditorium of New York’s Century Theatre, a 27-year-old Polish singer named Ganna Walska performed between the acts. Walska would later marry wealthy industrialist Harold Fowler McCormick, the father-in-law of Anne McCormick, who established a very successful Arabian breeding program in the 1950s and imported the well-known Russian Arabian stallion *Naborr in 1963. 

As for Hamilton Bassett, sometime before 1915 he met a young Englishwoman named Elizabeth Burrell Grice, who reportedly came to the U.S. in 1902. She was born in 1889 in Blackburn, Lancashire, to George Grice, who worked as a tailor and a sack merchant, among other occupations, and Martha Burrell Grice, a housewife. 

In August 1915, the following article appeared in the Republican-Gazette of Gove City, Kansas, in which Elizabeth Grice (perhaps with Bassett’s help) had transformed herself into Lady Betty Emerson of London:

Lady Betty Emerson of London under aegis of Captain Hamilton Bassett, enroute to San Francisco and the Fair, stopped in Gove City, Kansas, Saturday. They are riding their ponies, “Peanuts” and “Popcorn” from New York to Frisco, and have one pack pony.

Lady Betty is a daughter of Sir Joseph Grice-Emerson, and is a noted adventuress and explorer. She has penetrated almost inaccessible regions of Africa in search for big game, is an author of distinction and owner of valuable mining lands in British Honduras [now Belize].

Captain Hamilton Bassett of Cincinnati was the first man to penetrate into Thibet [Tibet], and spent two years there. The Captain has lived seven years in China, two years in the South Seas, three years in India, and has visited many other parts of the globe.

 

Similar articles about the pair appeared in small-town newspapers in Illinois, Utah, and California, with Betty Bassett also styling herself as “Lady Betty Grice Emerson Bassett” and claiming that she was the daughter and granddaughter of two Members of Parliament, the fictitious Lord Emerson and Lord Grice. One 1915 article, titled “Seeks Valley of the Moon,” in the Salt Lake Telegram, noted that “Lady Betty” had been inspired by Jack London’s 1913 novel of that name, about a couple named Billy and Saxon Roberts, who wanted to leave modern society and live off the land, or, as Lady Betty put it, to “live out in the open, like Jack London’s girl in his Valley of the Moon.” In the novel, Billy and Saxon move to an area that is thought to be Sonoma Valley, California, north of San Francisco. Hamilton and Betty would also take up residence in California.

As for Hamilton, he was clearly not the first white man to visit Tibet; Europeans have traveled there since the 1600s. His remark, however, raises another connection to Ganna Walska, the singer who  married Harold Fowler McCormick. Walska’s sixth and last husband, the self-proclaimed  White Lama, Theos Bernard—who, like Bassett, inflated many of his achievements—claimed to be “the first white man ever to live in the lamaseries [monasteries] and cities of Tibet” and went on the lecture circuit at the same time as Carl Raswan, the man who Bassett claimed had made the  “ill judged” purchase of Crabbet Arabians for Kellogg. (For more on Raswan and Bernard, see Paul G. Hackett, Theos Bernard, The White Lama, p. 289) 

Hamilton Bassett must have kept in touch with Jack London after their meeting back in 1908, as a December 1915 article in the Petaluma, California Argus-Courier noted that “Lady Betty” and “her guide, Capt. Hamilton Bassett,” had lunch at Jack and Charmian London’s ranch near Glen Ellen, California. Less than a year later, Jack London died at age 40. Among the works published after his death was a short story written in 1916 titled “The Red One,” which appeared in The Cosmopolitan in 1918. Curiously, the main character is a scientist named Bassett who is beheaded at the end of the story. Thus, both Blanche Arral and Hamilton Bassett found their way into Jack London’s fiction!

Around 1916, Hamilton and Betty Bassett settled near San Luis Obispo, California. As of 1919, the Bassetts owned a number of horses, cattle, and hogs, and Hamilton got involved in the area’s first livestock show. By 1920, Hamilton was calling himself Hamilton “Horse” Bassett and had become the West Coast representative of the newly incorporated Horse Association of America. Just as he had been incorrect about the quality of the Kellogg importation, Bassett was likewise wrong about the future of horses in farming. As he told the Ogden Standard-Examiner in December 1920, “Ranchers need not worry about the tractor, the truck and the automobile. They have their uses and will be used, but for every one in use there is just that much more need for good horses.” 

A June 1920 article in the Sacramento Bee observed that Bassett was “a well known California livestock man and owns the White Triangle Ranch, where purebred Clydesdale horses are bred….[Bassett] is a thoroughly practical horseman, has traveled all over the world, is thoroughly familiar with breeding, rearing, breaking and use of horses, and is a well known writer who has been contributing to agricultural papers for many years.” (No evidence of Bassett’s pre-1920 agricultural writing has been found.)

Sometime in 1925, Hamilton Bassett was contacted by Levi H. Manning, former mayor of Tucson, Arizona, who wanted some well-bred Arabian breeding stock to upgrade the working horses on his Canoa Ranch, which at its height encompassed hundreds of thousands of acres. Manning bought five horses via the Bassetts, who traveled to Tucson to deliver them. (It is unclear if the Bassetts owned the horses outright or simply facilitated the sale.) The horses’ previous owners were Samuel C. Thomson of San Francisco and Frederic E. Lewis II of the Diamond Bar Ranch outside Los Angeles. The purchase consisted of the mare Shiloh (Letan x Sedjur) and the stallions El Jafil (*Ibn Mahruss x Sheba), Jarad (Ziki x Tamarinsk), Kalub (Ziki x Hasiker), and Saraband (Harara x Sedjur). Of the five, the only horse whose price was made public was Saraband, a paternal half-brother of W. K. Kellogg’s champion stallion Antez. Manning paid $3,000 for Saraband (or $52,000 today). 

Advertisement from the Arizona Agriculturalist, June 1926.

Until Manning’s purchase of these five horses, there were no purebred registered Arabian horses in Arizona, aside from W. K. Kellogg’s stallion Jadaan, who was on location in Yuma, Arizona, for only a few weeks in early 1926 while portions of the film The Son of the Sheik were filmed. Jadaan served as Rudolph Valentino’s mount, and in some more dangerous sequences was reportedly ridden by the previously mentioned Carl Raswan. (The next purebred registered Arabian to take up residence in Arizona after the Manning horses was the U.S. Remount stallion Faris [*Rizvan x *Balkis II], who stood at Arizona Senator Bert J. Colter’s ranch in Springerville in 1927. Unlike the Manning Arabians, Faris had no recorded offspring.)

In addition to the Arabians, the Bassetts sold Manning a McKinney-bred Standardbred mare named Owywa and some draft horses, including the Clydesdale stallion Chief Guardsman, which Betty Bassett had paid a mere $50 for at a dispersal sale in San Luis Obispo. The arrival of the Bassetts and the new Manning horses generated a lot of copy for Tucson’s two rival newspapers. As usual, Hamilton embellished his résumé; he was said to have “gained experience as a breeder in China” and to have spent a couple of years riding across Australia and New Zealand. (How he would have done that while managing the career of Blanche Arral is unclear.)

The one Arabian horse that the Bassetts kept for themselves was the mare Leila, bred by Samuel C. Thomson. Leila was described by H. H. Reese, the Kellogg Ranch manager, in a letter to Kellogg as “a mighty fine type….She is over 15.1 in height and is a very strong, full made mare….She also has ample quality with an excellent type of Arabian head.” 

Leila (El Jafil x Narkeesa)

In the spring of 1926, the Bassetts bred their mare Leila to Saraband, resulting in Saraband’s only known purebred foal, Alilatt, who was born in March 1927. Betty Bassett (who appears to have ditched the “Lady” title by the 1920s) was credited as her breeder. By 1930, Betty Bassett was boarding Leila and Alilatt at the Kellogg Ranch. She approached Reese about selling Leila (now 13) and Alilatt (a 3-year-old) to Kellogg for the extremely high price at the time of $6,000 ($5,000 for Leila and $1,000 for Alilatt). Betty also dropped a bombshell: she told Reese that she and Hamilton were getting a divorce, the mares belonged to her, and she could provide “a good, clear title” to them. Reese wrote to Kellogg that Betty didn’t think she could get Hamilton to “sign a statement that the mares belong to her, as she had not given Bassett any idea that she is leaving him, and to bring the subject up might cause him to get mad and refuse to sign.” Ultimately, Kellogg bought the two mares for Betty’s asking price, and she never did divorce Hamilton. (Thank you to Teresa Rogers for uncovering this information in the archives of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library)

Alilatt, Leila’s first foal, was soon sold to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst for $2,000. Even though she was reportedly not nearly as lovely as her mother, she became an excellent producer and is primarily responsible for the survival of this bloodline. Among Alilatt’s many champion descendants are the stallion Karonek, about whom more can be read here; Hariry Al Shaqab, U.S. National Champion Senior Stallion; two Darley Horse of the Year racing champions; and two recent Tevis Cup endurance winners. 

Leila then produced two colts by Hanad—Lanad and Haneil. The former was sold to Mexico, where he died not long after his arrival, and the latter was purchased by the Colombian government.

Lanad (Hanad x Leila)

 In 1936, Leila, now 19, was sold to Fred Vanderhoof for $300—a far cry from her 1930 sale price. Leila was in foal to the Kellogg stallion Ralet, and a filly, Lalet, was born in 1937. (Lalet had no offspring.) In 1939, Leila produced the colt Leidaan, by Jadaan, for Vanderhoof. Researcher Teri Cox called Leidaan a “top ranch horse.” Leila’s last foal, El Kunut, a colt by El Kumait, was born in 1940; he was bred by Leila’s final owner, A. W. Bramhall. Teri Cox notes that El Kunut became a champion in halter and performance. 

In 1939, Hamilton Bassett died from injuries he received after a colt he was riding reared and fell on him. As usual, his obituary made a highly unlikely claim—that Bassett was “one of the last surviving members of the crew of Jack London’s vessel, The Snark.” (Oakland Post Enquirer, June 29, 1939.) A book about the voyages of The Snark penned by London’s wife makes no mention of Bassett among the crew; furthermore, he would have been accompanying Blanche Arral on tour during that time.

Betty Bassett survived her husband by 17 years. After retiring as the national president of the Spanish-American War women’s auxiliary, in the late 1940s she was ordained as a minister in the Church of Religious Science, a denomination founded by Ernest Holmes in 1926.

At the Religious Science church she established in Hayward, California, she preached regularly for many years on such topics as “Victorious Living,” “Thought Emancipation,” and “God and the Businessman.” 

When Reverend Betty Bassett died in 1956, her obituary made no mention of her earlier incarnation as “Lady Betty Emerson,” her supposed father “Lord Emerson,” or even her valuable mining lands in Belize. Ironically, the obituary writer for the Oakland Tribune appears to have mistaken Reverend Betty for another Betty Bassett, an actress who performed on Broadway (once with Jack Benny), toured with Bronco Billy Anderson, and was brought to Hollywood in the 1930s by MGM mogul Samuel Goldwyn. 

I suspect that Reverend Betty—and Hamilton—wouldn’t have minded that slight embellishment to her life story. After all, as the newspaper editor said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  The Bassetts, as we’ve seen, invariably chose the legend.