Seabiscuit’s bit part in ‘Chinatown’

Remember the scene in “Chinatown” in which private eye Jake Gittes visits the morgue on his lunch hour to find out “who died lately”?

If you listen closely, you can hear race announcer Joe Hernandez calling a Seabiscuit race from Santa Anita racetrack in the background. Later, there’s a quick insert of a newspaper headline about the horse.

As the movie based on Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller “Seabiscuit” nears release, screenwriter Robert Towne remembered that he wanted a greater role for Seabiscuit in “Chinatown” but was thwarted by director Roman Polanski. “I could never get Roman to understand the importance of it,” Towne said. “ ‘That’s folklore!’ And so he put a shot of Seabiscuit in the paper.”

Towne wanted Gittes to defend the horse during a heated exchange in a barbershop. “I wanted Jack’s character to be this little pimp of a sleazy private detective, but he had some innate appreciation of class, which was gonna get him in trouble eventually. I wanted it foreshadowed by his appreciation of Seabiscuit.”

Towne wrote an appreciation of Seabiscuit for Sports Illustrated in 1984.

-- Bill Desowitz