Darryl Zanuck, Walt Disney and Hollywood Polo

What follows are the memories of novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch ("Duel In The Sun," "The Westerner," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" etc.) Niven played polo in 1930s Hollywood, with people like Spencer Tracy, Will Rogers, Darryl Zanuck, and Walt Disney... When I got to Hollywood in the early thirties, I found that my boss Darryl Zanuck was a polo enthusiast. Somebody had told him that polo was a game that required guts, and brains, and above all required money and indicated high status and class and this was something that Darryl wanted. Darryl was production head of Warner Brothers at that time, and he'd found several guys at Warners that played a little polo. One was director Mike Curtiz, who had this weird seat on a horse. Mike had been a Hungarian cavalry officer, and apparently in the artillery they taught officers to ride leaning forward and way up on the saddle, and he played polo like that. Now of course he couldn't get back to hit, but he'd dribble, and he was a very good dribbler. But he was always riding up on his horse's neck and so everyone called him a pommel f*cker. In addition to Mike, Darryl had two or three semi-pro players. He said to me at a story conference, "I hear you play some polo," and I said "Oh yes, Mr. Zanuck, I played at Princeton." Well, my experience at Princeton was minimal, but I let him know I was a big star instead of a second string stiff who occasionally got into a game, and the next day, when I got to the office, there was a pink envelope on my desk and it said READ AT ONCE FROM DARRYL ZANUCK." I thought it was my pink slip, but it was a note that read: "Polo practice will be held at the Warner field tomorrow at seven a.m. Please be mounted there and ready to play at that time." In other words, it was a command from the front office and if I hadn't showed up I felt that my contract was in jeopardy. Anyway, I showed. But I liked it, and we played polo in the mornings. Before long, Zanuck left to form his own company, but we kept playing. We got another bunch of players including some backcountry cowboys from down by the stockyards. In those Depression days, and right on until the war came along, we were playing all over the San Fernando Valley on dirt fields, and over at the Riviera Country Club on grass fields. Our polo team was called "Los Amigos" and we were located at the old Warner Bros. field. The Black Fox military school had a polo team where the Disney Studio now is. There was a dirt field down by the stockyards, and a grass field in a little subdivision in the Valley near Woodland Avenue -- Green Acres, a little off Ventura Blvd. It looked good but it was full of gopher holes. VARIETY kept writing polo up as long as Zanuck and movie producer Walter Wanger were in it. Nobody else very classy was into it. Then the different studios began to talk about teams. At the start there were only two, one at Warner Bros. and one at Twentieth Century, and Zanuck had started both teams. Now I'm going to jump ahead a little to where Zanuck formed his own successful company when he merges with the old Fox Company out on Pico. And Zanuck begins to acquire some real high-end polo players. The trades start making a big play of reporting polo games every Sunday, because more motion picture personalities are now getting involved. VARIETY describes the games like they were international matches at Meadowbrook, and they also kid them because some people getting into the games had absolutely no business on a horse, let alone a polo field. So now, into the polo scene come other people who want part of this publicity and also think it would be one hell of a lot of fun. Spencer Tracy comes on and buys himself a couple of horses and stables them at Riviera. By now we've all moved away from the dirt fields in the Valley and we're out on the grass at Riviera and we've got grandstands and people are coming out and there are pretty good-sized crowds who pay to sit in the stands and watch us make asses out of ourselves. Zanuck used to LOVE to play the number one position, which is the player that takes out the number four, so he's up there in front where if somebody hits a long ball to him he can poke it through the goal "Goal by Zanuck!" He LOVED that. One time he scored a spectacular goal that won a game, but what happened was he missed it and his pony kicked the ball and knocked it through the goal. So the announcer said, "Goal by Pony!" Darryl fired the announcer. I sent to England for special boots and Zanuck had boots you wouldn't believe. He had a kid at the studio shining them up, and I don't think the kid did anything else. Zanuck was by now trying to develop his wrist for polo. He had a sawed off polo mallet with a four-pound head made of solid lead and the mallet was only a foot long. And he went around his office and he'd always be swinging it. He'd walk up and down the carpet in story meetings and sometimes he'd train his eye by flipping a tennis ball to guys and he expected them to toss it back. If you didn't you were liable to get a closing slip the next day. Around this time others start playing. Clark Gable, who was a very good athlete, was on his way to becoming a good polo player, but he didn't get huge about it. He didn't play more than about a year, because the studio kept him so busy promoting and running around. The little time he had he wanted to do hunting and fishing. A lot of actors were really pretty timid players, because if they got hit in the face there would go their careers. I remember one time I was taking the ball down the field, and Spencer Tracy was playing opposite me on the other team. I hit a shot off the boards, and Tracy should have ridden right at me and tried to take the ball. But he was scared he'd get hit, so he rode across the boards and damn near went into the stands, and the grooms were standing there laughing, which was really mean because he was new to the game and my horse was going all out like an express train. Walt Disney got into the act. We played a lot of games, and I only had about two horses, and without Disney, I wouldn't have been able to play a full game. He said, "Niven, take any two of my horses," and this gave me four horses to play. We didn't socialize much away from the polo field, but I always liked Walt. He had a little moustache and a shy smile and was always smoking cigarettes. Will Rogers was a very aggressive polo player, and a hell of a horseman. But he'd do mean things, like if he rode you off the ball, instead of pushing you and riding straight to take the next shot, he'd push right across you and take the next shot on the near side, which could be a foul if the referee wanted to call it. He could throw you that way, and if you knew he was going to do it you would watch for it, but he'd kind of look back with a dirty smile and say, "Well, take that you silly son of a bitch." Rogers was very bad with horses. He was mean with a horse, he'd pull them around. I didn't think he was a very nice fella, I really didn't. Nobody liked him very much around the polo barns, I can tell you that. What they thought of him on the sets at Fox, I don't really know. But he was such a beloved character with the public that if you said anything against him they'd put you down as a freak. Just say he had bad manners on the polo field. (The above is part of a long interview I did with Niven Busch years ago. Not a lot there to do with animation, but a LOT to do with Hollywood in the 1930s.)