THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Burnham’s Gone, but Devotion to Sport Was Second to None

When the National Turf Writers Assn. gave Joe Burnham the Joe Palmer Award in 1991, I was president of the group and called Burnham to ask about his coming to Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week to accept a plaque.

“Need some film for the dinner?” Burnham asked.

It struck me that here was a guy who was getting an award, yet he acted as though he was going to have to work his way past the door.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Whirlaway won the Derby and the Triple Crown 50 years ago. Got anything on him?”

“Want maybe five minutes on Whirlaway?” Burnham said.

“Then we got Carry Back, who won the Derby 30 years ago,” I said. “Jack Price (Carry Back’s owner-trainer) is always there. Maybe it’d be good to do something on him.”

“I could give you five minutes on Carry Back if you want,” Burnham said.

“Twenty years ago, the Derby had Canonero II,” I said.

“Got him too,” Burnham said. “I could put together something on all three--Whirlaway, Carry Back and Canonero.”

Joe Burnham, who was 73 when he suffered a stroke last week, died Monday in a hospital near Santa Anita. He was usually putting something together, from a racing-film library that he almost completely shot personally over the last 50 years. Many of his friends wouldn’t have recognized Burnham without his tripod.

His fees, when he charged them, might have been lower than Mathew Brady’s for the Civil War. A Hollywood mogul called Burnham to his sprawling office once to discuss a project.

“We want to do a film about our horse,” the mogul said.

“Sure,” Burnham said.

“But we don’t have a budget,” the mogul said. That was Hollywood talk that meant he wanted a freebie.

“Sure,” Burnham said.

I saw some of Burnham’s personal correspondence once, and letter after letter reflected how little he asked for and how much he gave:

“Thanks much for returning the check,” read a note from the national turf writers’ secretary-treasurer.

“Don’t forget the billing for your fee,” said a letter from a television producer in Chicago.

It may not be coincidental that the annual Eclipse Awards dinner started showing red ink just about the time Burnham stopped producing the film show. He did 17 of those shows, starting in the 1970s, and the Eclipse people put a blushing Burnham on the other side of the camera once, giving him an award of his own for film achievement.

Working out of some of the best hotels in the country--the Fairmont in San Francisco, the Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the Waldorf in New York and the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach--a producer might have expected the best possible conditions for those Eclipse shows, but Burnham found that this wasn’t necessarily a given.

One night at the Waldorf, high above a double-decked audience of about 1,500, Burnham looked like a circus juggler standing on one leg, but he kept all the plates spinning until the long evening ended.

“They gave me some equipment that was right out of Rube Goldberg,” Burnham said later.

His favorite horse to shoot was Determine, the colt from California who won the Kentucky Derby in 1954.

“I really loved that horse,” Burnham said. “He was my all-time favorite, and not because he was so photogenic. Actually, he was just the opposite. I never could get a good conformation shot of him. But he will always remain my favorite, probably because he was small, wiry and such a fighter.”

Burnham’s most photogenic horse was Silky Sullivan, the late-running colt who left his finishing kick in California when he finished 12th in the 1958 Derby.

“He was all ham, a true showboat,” Burnham said. “Point a camera at Silky and his ears would go up and he would strike a pose for you.”

Coming from the pre-videotape era, Burnham was in awe of the technological improvements that helped racing cinematographers as they honed their craft. In the late 1950s, Burnham made his own contribution, working from a strange-looking two-camera rig that had a small lens for race starts in front of the stands and action through the stretch, and a long lens that covered the backstretch.

He especially liked what high-tech equipment did to sort out the controversial running of the Santa Anita Handicap in 1982, when Perrault was disqualified by the stewards for interference and the victory was given to John Henry.

“That race was a photographer’s dream,” Burnham said. “The photo-finish lens showed Perrault first at the wire, but the video-patrol tape decided the winner. The head-on view clearly showed that Perrault made contact with John Henry, forcing him out and impeding his progress. John Henry’s victory comes with an asterisk, but the videotape is lasting proof.”

In recent years, in semi-retirement, Burnham concentrated on cashing a few $2 bets at Santa Anita, and waited for the cribbage games to start at Del Mar, where the track president, Joe Harper, is remembered as an aide who used to help Burnham carry his cameras around.

Because of a stricter policy for film crews at Churchill Downs, Burnham soured on the Kentucky Derby and covered few of the recent runnings. It frosted Burnham that Churchill required him to promise that he wouldn’t use any of his footage for commercial or promotional purposes. That was an affront to a guy who promoted racing first and Joe Burnham a distant second.

California racetrack directors should be rushing to their board rooms today, to name a stakes race after him. Make it one that will have a photo finish, every year.

Horse Racing Notes

Kingdom Found, drawing the outside post in a field of eight, is the 6-5 morning-line favorite in Saturday’s $250,000 Wells Fargo California Cup Classic at Santa Anita. The 1 1/8-mile race is the richest of the nine on the annual Cal Cup card, which is worth $1 million overall. Others running in the Classic are Warning Label, Flying Sensation, Hill Pass, Bossanova, Goldigger’s Dream, College Town and Corslew. . . . Argolid, who had been expected to run in the Classic, will compete in the $100,000 Sprint, which drew 13 starters. One of them is Uncaged Fury, who was unable to get an invitation to the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5.

Journalism, who has a third and a seventh in previous tries, will be heavily favored against nine rivals in the $150,000 Cal Cup Mile on grass. . . . Desert Mirage, second to Supremo in the Norfolk Stakes and second behind Timber Country in the Balboa at Del Mar, broke his right foreleg in training and underwent surgery Thursday. . . . Kenny Noe, fired as racing secretary by the New York Racing Assn. in 1979, has been named president of that organization, which runs Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga. Noe, who had been associated with Calder Race Course for 15 years, replaces Jerry McKeon, who resigned recently. . . . Joe Burnham’s family has suggested that contributions in his name can be made to the Winners Foundation at Santa Anita.