HORSE RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Ameche Proved to Be an Owner Very Well Met

“Pardon me, sir.”

Boy, that voice was familiar. It came from the other side of an island at a gas station in Playa Del Rey, on a morning about eight years ago.

“Pardon me, sir,” the man repeated, as he stepped over to my side of the divider. “Could you show me how to get to Hollywood Park? I must have taken a wrong turn off Manchester.”

That’s how I met Don Ameche. He had found the right guy for directions to the track. I didn’t waste the chance to thank him for all those great movies, either.

This summer, in front of a hotel near Del Mar, I reminded Ameche of our chance meeting at the gas station.

“I don’t recall,” Ameche said. “But since it’s about me getting lost, I’m sure it happened. That sounds like me, all right.”

Ameche, on his way to the backstretch at Del Mar, was waiting for a cab. Waiting for him at Del Mar, at trainer Gary Jones’ barn, would be Ferrara and a few other young horses that Ameche owned.

“This is a hell of a loss for racing,” Jones said the other day of the 85-year-old Ameche’s death Monday in Arizona.

Ameche and Jones were nearly inseparable during the Del Mar meeting, as much a team as the actor and Frances Langford had been on those long-ago radio shows about the bickering Bickersons.

“I’ve never gotten so close so quickly to an owner as the two of us did down there,” Jones said. “We’d hang out in the mornings, and then go up to the sky boxes in the afternoons. We had a ball.”

In a Hollywood world, the one that was part of Ameche’s life for more than 50 years, the dapper actor would have held off the ravages of prostate cancer a little longer, and taken Ferrara to next year’s Kentucky Derby, with someone as pretty as Betty Grable joining him in the winner’s circle.

But now whatever racetrack thrills that lie ahead will belong to Ameche’s children, who have indicated to Jones that they will continue running the horses.

“I hope I can do something with them,” the trainer said. “They would make a nice legacy for Mr. Ameche.”

Wearing a green satin jacket that had his stable name, L’Aquila Ltd., splashed across the back in white script lettering, Ameche would move along Jones’ shedrow at Del Mar, feeding carrots to his horses. Ameche looked frail, but the tonic of the track seemed to add some spring to his step.

“His son (Don Ameche Jr.) was telling me the other day that this was the most enjoyable summer his dad ever had,” Jones said. “He said that his dad might not have even made it as far as he did if it hadn’t been for the horses.”

Ameche is listed as the breeder of Ferrara, named along with the Oscar-winning actor’s other horses after towns in Italy. Ameche bought Ferrara’s dam, Arctic Swing, for $27,000 while she was in foal to Capote, a son of Seattle Slew and the champion 2-year-old colt in 1984.

Ferrara gave his owner only one victory, against maidens at Del Mar in August, but after a couple of solid third-place finishes, in the Del Mar Futurity and the Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita, Jones entered the colt in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita last month.

“Unfortunately, Ferrara’s a speed horse, and my other horse in there (Del Mar Futurity winner Winning Pact) also runs that way,” Jones said. “They compromised each other’s chances. I think (Corey) Nakatani (Winning Pact’s jockey) told (Kent) Desormeaux that he’d be crazy to run with his horse, so Kent took Ferrara back early. Ferrara’s a Bertrando-type horse, and we’re not going to be able to do that with him.”

Ferrara, who finished ninth, four positions behind Winning Pact, is getting a rest while Jones maps out the colt’s career as a 3-year-old.

This was not Ameche’s first fling with horses, although there were long gaps between his ownership involvements.

He recalled that it was at Del Mar, shortly after Bing Crosby and his partners had opened the track in 1937, where he and some other entertainers claimed a horse for $3,500. The horse won next time out, then was claimed away in the start after that.

When Johnny Longden rode Sir Bim to victory while wearing Ameche’s colors in the 1945 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, the owner was away, entertaining World War II troops.

More than his incredible break-dancing, at 76 in his Oscar-winning role in “Cocoon,” I’ll remember Ameche for his sensitive performance in David Mamet’s 1988 film, “Things Change.” In one scene, playing an illiterate shoeshine man, a hapless guy caught up in a mob-inspired plot, Ameche goes to the bathroom in a fancy hotel suite. He carefully removes the sanitary paper strip around the toilet, then dutifully puts it back after he has finished.

The hilarious sight gag worked without a word, which wasn’t exactly Ameche’s style, either in films or at the track.

“He was part of the golden age of movies, and he had the stories to go with it,” Gary Jones said. “Racetrack stories, too, and I could listen to him for hours. He called me several days before he died. He took the time to say goodby.”

Horse Racing Notes

With the forecast for weekend rain, which could hurt the chances of some of the contenders, a slightly larger group of seven horses has been entered in Sunday’s $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup. The field includes Fraise and Bien Bien, who were only a nose apart at the wire in last year’s running, with the stewards disqualifying Fraise for interference and giving the $275,000 victory to Bien Bien. Fraise, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Gulfstream Park, wound up second to Sky Classic in the Eclipse Award voting for best male on grass.

Since last year, Bien Bien has earned $968,675. He won the Hollywood Turf and Sunset handicaps and finished second, a half-length behind Kotashaan, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita. Fraise has won only one race in four starts and was fourth in the Breeders’ Cup.

Miatuschka, who will be ridden by Corey Black, drew the inside for the 1 1/2 miles, and the rest, in order, are Know Heights, with Kent Desormeaux riding; Explosive Red, Gary Stevens; Bien Bien, Chris McCarron; Fraise, Pat Valenzuela; Square Cut, Chris Antley, and Jeune Homme, Thierry Jarnet. Under weight-for-age conditions, four starters will carry 126 pounds, with Miatuschka at 123 and Explosive Red and Jeune Homme at 122 apiece. . . . Since winning astride John Henry in 1983, McCarron has has been aboard the winner five of 10 times.