Ben Rochelle; Vaudeville Dancer Raced Horses

Ben Rochelle, who partnered a comedic husband-wife dance team that performed in vaudeville, the movies and on television, and later raced a champion thoroughbred that earned more than $3 million, has died. He was 91.

Rochelle died Thursday of pneumonia at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Despite the illness, Rochelle, who enjoyed betting on horses as much as racing and breeding them, was at Hollywood Park on Wednesday, trying to hit the pick six. A friend said Rochelle picked the winners of the first five races but missed on the last. Rochelle, who owned about 20 horses currently in training, finished second with one of them, Dianehill, in the Wilshire Handicap at Hollywood Park on April 29.

Rochelle’s best investment in horse racing came in 1984, when he backed into a 50% ownership of Snow Chief, an unraced colt that went on to win the 1986 Preakness and earn $3.3 million in career purses.

Having met Carl Grinstead through a mutual friend, the trainer Mel Stute, Rochelle fancied one of Grinstead’s many horses, Sari’s Dreamer, although he had won only one of 23 races. Grinstead owned 19 horses, and told Rochelle that he would sell him half of Sari’s Dreamer only if he bought into the rest. A half-interest in the lot cost Rochelle $280,000.

Seven weeks after the deal was closed, Sari’s Dreamer earned $95,000 for Rochelle and Grinstead by winning the Mervyn LeRoy Handicap at Hollywood Park, but more important, one of the other horses was Snow Chief. The California-bred colt earned $935,740 as a 2-year-old in 1985, his season-ending win in the Hollywood Futurity establishing him as one of the favorites for the next year’s Kentucky Derby.

Early in 1986, Snow Chief won three preliminary Derbys--the El Camino Real Derby in Northern California, the Florida Derby and the Santa Anita Derby--and roared into Churchill Downs as the favorite in the Kentucky Derby.

The Kentucky Derby was the worst race of Snow Chief’s career. He finished 11th as Ferdinand, a horse he had soundly beaten in the Santa Anita Derby, won the race, but two weeks later, at Pimlico in Baltimore, Snow Chief turned the tables in the Preakness as Ferdinand ran second.

The night before the Preakness, at a party at a private Baltimore club, Rochelle was asked to display a few of his old dance steps, and he obliged by entertaining several hundred people.

Snow Chief later won the Jersey Derby and was voted best 3-year-old colt in the country. A tendon injury ended his career in 1987, but not until he had beaten his old rival, Ferdinand, by a nose in a rip-roaring running of the Strub Stakes at Santa Anita. Rochelle visited the stallion just a few weeks before his death.

When Rochelle bought 50% of Snow Chief, the horse’s value was estimated at $7,500. When Grinstead died in 1987, Rochelle bought all of his horses at a dispersal auction.

An Australian group had put $4 million on the table to buy Snow Chief as a stallion prospect, but Rochelle killed the deal, wrote a check for $2 million to Pearl Grinstead, his partner’s widow, and took over complete ownership of the horse.

Rochelle was born in Tulsa, Okla. He saved money working at a hamburger stand and arrived in California with $400. He and his wife, Jane Beebe, danced professionally as Beebe & Rochelle. Their act started slowly, in a serious vein, but ended in high jinks, with the tuxedoed Rochelle tossing his wife over his shoulder and in almost every other direction.

“I saw them in a movie once,” Stute said. “Ben was throwing his wife around as though she only weighed 40 pounds.”

Before he turned to handicapping horses, Rochelle was a crap-shooting fanatic on the vaudeville circuit. He said it was not unusual to blow his entire two-week paycheck when he found a dice game on his first day in a new town.

After vaudeville, the couple appeared in a few movies, including “Cowboy and the Senorita” and “Take It Big.” They made many nightclub appearances and once appeared on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” TV show.

Beebe died in 1983. Rochelle is survived by his wife, Diane Rochelle, whom he married 12 years ago.

Rochelle will be buried at 11 a.m. Monday in Mt. Sinai Cemetery. Diane Rochelle is inviting his friends and fans to a memorial during a racing card at Hollywood Park on Monday.