He Might Have Star in Making

The voice on the other end of the phone had to be Don Ameche’s. The tones were unmistakable, syrupy, soothing, syllables as cultured as pearls. Part Barrymore, part Caruso. An operatic voice. Part tenor, part baritone. Someone once said it was like butterscotch being poured over ice cream.

It was once the most-heard voice in the United States, not excluding the President’s. You couldn’t go to a movie Don Ameche wasn’t in. America adored him.

Usually, he was on screen in a dress suit with top hat, white silk scarf and velvet collar, carrying Loretta Young across a penthouse threshold. He was Hollywood’s most dapper leading man, handsome, happy. He kissed more hands than a French duke in a powdered wig.

He starred first in a radio show called “The First Nighter,” a weekly half-hour melodrama that made the Ameche voice as familiar in America as Amos and Andy’s or Bing Crosby’s or Eddie Cantor’s or Jack Benny’s or any other staple of that Depression era.

Hollywood came running. He made movies as fast as they could be shot, and his charm and good looks soon made him a sought-after leading man. His films had a high content of treacle and white ties until he made the story of Alexander Graham Bell and became to a whole generation of moviegoers the inventor of the telephone. He went into the language. If someone said you were “wanted on the Ameche,” that meant you had a phone call.

But he didn’t want to talk about that the other day. Don Ameche has a new role these days--horse owner. A lifelong tracksider himself, Ameche was on the Ameche to talk about Ferrara, a 2-year-old colt of exceptional promise who Don hopes will be in the starting gate at Louisville for the Kentucky Derby next year.

Ferrara--Ameche names all his horses after towns in Italy, even though he was born in Wisconsin--is a front-running swifty out of a stout-hearted dam, Arctic Swing, and is a grandson of the great Seattle Slew, who won the 1977 Triple Crown.

Ferrara had a so-so debut, getting run down in two early starts at Hollywood Park this summer, but Ameche realizes the telephone wasn’t invented in a day either.

“He worked a half in 45 the other day!” he chortles in the familiar burbling terms of the man who once smiled his way through so many Fox films the audience thought there were two of him.

Ameche switched his colt into the capable hands of trainer Gary Jones for his Del Mar debut last month, and it appears to be his smartest move since he said yes to the Bell role. Ferrara promptly won a three-quarter maiden race in 1:10 flat, turning back in the process a Devil’s Bag colt, Devil’s Mirage, who had shuffled him back in a previous maiden race at Hollywood Park.

Off that race, Don Ameche’s horse could be favored in Wednesday’s 47th running of the Del Mar Futurity, a seven-furlong steppingstone to 1994’s classic races.

Only two Del Mar Futurity winners, Tomy Lee in 1959 and Gato Del Sol in 1982, have gone on to win at Kentucky.

But Show Biz’s Ameche is bucking bigger odds than that. No Hollywood type’s horse has ever won at Kentucky, even though movie moguls from Louis B. Mayer to the Warner brothers to Neil McCarthy to Raoul Walsh to Myron Selznick to Bill Goetz to assorted disc jockeys and TV anchors have taken a shot at it. An Academy Award is easier. Actor Jack Klugman’s Jaklin Klugman finished third in 1980, almost the best Hollywood has done.

Del Mar’s Futurity has had some near misses at Louisville. Best Pal won the 1990 Futurity and was second at Churchill Downs after getting stalled behind a wall of horses in the stretch and had to come out to lose. In 1974, Diabolo won at Del Mar and the next year engaged in a mid-stretch bumping contest with Avatar, which had the effect on both of them of losing the Derby to Foolish Pleasure.

Actor Ameche is not without hope he could be the first leading man to make the winners’ circle in Kentucky. Ferrara’s sire, Capote, broke down in the ’87 Derby, but had a record of some distinction up to that misfortune.

The trip from show biz to sports biz is not new to Ameche. In the late ‘40s, he was president of the old Los Angeles Dons of pro football’s old All-America conference, a franchise owned and founded by Midwest millionaire Ben Lindheimer and his daughter, Marj Everett. Popular notion was, the team was named after Ameche, but it was actually a low bow to California’s Spanish heritage.

When the conference disbanded, the stronger franchises were absorbed by the NFL and it is principally remembered today for its contribution of the San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns.

Don Ameche admits to having bet on a few losing propositions in his life. Like the time the studio offered him a five-year contract at $6,000 a week. When he turned that down, the studio began offering his roles to a fellow named Cary Grant.

But the telephone is still an “Ameche” and in 1985, when he was 77, his career got a shot in the arm when he played a starring role in “Cocoon,” a movie about a group of retirees finding a “fountain of youth.”

That was nice, but the shot in the arm he’s interested in now, at 85, is Ferrara. If he wins, it could be the greatest night for an Ameche since the premiere of “Alexander Graham Bell.”

He never got an Academy Award--they kept giving it to people like Spencer Tracy, Fredric March and Gary Cooper--but just remember, he uttered one of the deathless lines of movie--and American--history: “Come here, Watson, I need you!”

But if Ferrara wins the Del Mar Futurity Wednesday and goes on to Kentucky next year and you try to get Don on the Ameche, just expect to get a busy signal.