At One Point, This Meet Was Worth Yelling About

It was a warm September night in 1960 on the Via Veneto, Rome’s cafe district that famed Italian director Federico Fellini would later capture in a film, “La Dolce Vita.” Don Bragg, who had won the Olympic pole vault competition hours before, was celebrating with Al and Shirley Franken, a bright and energetic young couple from Los Angeles.

Bragg and the Frankens had become friends the previous winter, when Al and his partner, Herschel Smith, promoted the first L.A. Indoor Invitational track and field meet at the Sports Arena.

“That was the first time I ever drank pure wine,” Bragg recalled Wednesday of that sweet night on the Via Veneto. “Up until then, I had mixed wine with 7-Up. I told Al and Shirley, ‘This stuff is good.’ ”

After winning the gold medal, Bragg had delighted the crowd inside the Olympic Stadium with a Tarzan yell, and after a few glasses of wine, he decided that the crowd on the Via Veneto deserved to hear it as well.

“He let out the longest, loudest Tarzan yell you’ve ever heard,” Franken said.

It was an intoxicating time, a time when all things seemed possible.

Bragg was going to follow in Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller’s footsteps as the next great Tarzan in the movies.

Franken was going to become the promoter of the best indoor track and field meets west of Madison Square Garden’s Millrose Games.

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Bragg failed in his ambition. He made it as far as Hollywood, where he was shooting “Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar” in 1964, when the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate sued for copyright infringement. Production halted. Bragg returned home, to New Jersey, and became a drug supplies salesman.

Franken succeeded.

In 1961, the second year of the L.A. Invitational, Wilma Rudolph, who had won three gold medals in Rome, was the featured attraction. The crowd at the Sports Arena was more than capacity because fans arriving to find that all the tickets had been sold crashed through a side door.

Kip Keino ran in the United States for the first time during the ’66 meet, leading the Kenyan invasion. He lost to the anonymous John Lawson in the mile. Keino was so angry at himself that he demanded entry into the two-mile and won.

If you want to know how spectacular the L.A. Invitational has been, consider some of the gold medalists who weren’t voted by a media panel among the top 40 athletes to compete in the meet’s first 40 years. Edwin Moses, Gail Devers, Valerie Brisco, Bob Hayes, Bill Toomey, Dan O’Brien, Quincy Watts, Kevin Young, John Carlos, Lasse Viren.

On Wednesday, some athletes who did make the list, including Evelyn Ashford, Tommie Smith, Charlie Dumas and Bragg attended a luncheon hosted by the Sports Arena to honor Franken.

Bragg performed his Tarzan yell and kidded Dumas that John Thomas could beat him today. “Hey,” Dumas said, “ask him what happened the last time I met him, next door at the Coliseum.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, introducing himself as the only Southern California politician who ever had a subscription to Track & Field News, presented Franken with a square from the historic Coliseum track that was removed to enlarge seating capacity for the Raiders.

Recalling the sellouts at the Sports Arena, Yaroslavsky told Franken: “Those really were the good old days. That’s when amateur athletics was at its peak, and you brought it to us.”

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Promoting the meet hasn’t been as much fun for Franken, 73, since Shirley died four years ago. He appeared at the luncheon with his cowlick standing at attention and a wisp of hair hanging over his forehead. He said Shirley would have made sure he combed his hair.

But the void at his side is not the only reason he’s thinking that the 40th L.A. Invitational, on Feb. 19 at the Sports Arena, will be his last before he turns it over to his son, Don.

This, mind you, is not exactly like H.L. Hunt turning over the family oil and natural gas fortune to his sons. Fewer than 6,000 spectators attended last year’s meet. USA Track & Field opted to sponsor a meet on the same night this year in Pocatello, Idaho. While the U.S. Air Force is putting $600,000 into Friday night’s Millrose Games, Franken hasn’t had a title sponsor since Sunkist pulled out in 1995.

Now the man who once had Tom Petranoff throw a javelin over a lake and a Frisbee-catching dog jump against Dwight Stones says that he has “run out of fresh ideas.”

If it makes him feel better, he should know that he isn’t alone. A lot of people who are younger and newer to the business of the sport, including USATF Executive Director Craig Masback, also are grasping for ideas.

Pocatello, Idaho, over Los Angeles?

“Maybe Craig has a better mousetrap,” Franken said Wednesday. “I hope somebody does. It’s a great sport.”

Meantime, there is nothing better to do than turn back the clock and recall the good old days, like the one when you heard Don Bragg’s Tarzan yell on the Via Veneto.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.