• Today’s Movie: The Day The Bookies Wept
• Year of Release: 1939
• Stars: Joe Penner, Betty Grable, Richard Lane
• Director: Leslie Goodwins

This movie is not my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called the Betty Grable Blog-A-Thon being hosted by Taking Up Room. Yet again, she’s got some of the best blog-a-thon themes out there. Thankfully, she has yet to realize these events would only go up in quality if she quits having me back 🙂 Besides, Betty Grable barely shows up in this movie, but it a) qualifies for the event and b) allows me to discuss being a degenerate gambler, which is a subject I am far more qualified to discuss.

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

• Days One, Two, and Three
• The Wrap-Up

The Story:

The Day The Bookies Wept is good, old-fashioned, straight-forward comedy with a fittingly simple premise. Some New York City cabbies who love to lose their fares at the racetrack decide to buy their own horse. The problem is they obviously aren’t good at picking horses; they end up with one that would rather guzzle beer than run.

One of the divers at the Colonel Cab Company becomes the driving force behind this idea. When Ramsey Firpo (played by Richard Lane) gets a eyeful of the haul the owners of winning horse take home, he sells the other cabbies on pooling their money to buy a racer. To bring this to reality, Firpo enlists his sister Ina (played by Betty Grable). Ima also has a goof-bag boyfriend named Ernie Ambrose (played by Joe Penner), who just happens to raise pigeons. That makes him the closest thing they have to a horse trainer.

Now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise as to how this all unfolds. Ina and Ernie head for Kentucky to find a horse. Naturally, the fact they don’t know beans about horses radiates from them. In no time at all, they catch the eye of a consummate con-man in the form of Colonel Match (played by Thurston Hall). Match and his accomplice Patsy (played by Carol Hughes) conspire to put a rob-job on Ina and Ernie.

Hall engineers a plot hood-winking these two unknowing pigeons by selling them a glue-factory candidate named Hiccup known mostly for his fondness for beer. They give up 500 bucks for this nag, but when Ina and Ernie get Hiccup back to New York, everybody’s hopes go super-sonic when they see Hiccup run down a beer wagon with eye-popping speed.

The problem is…you guessed it…this does not translate to the track. Just as Hiccup’s new owners are about to abandon all hope, Ina overhears Colonel March letting Hiccup’s secret slip. It seems the beer wagon was a bit of foreshadowing; Hiccup’s track-dusting speed is only inspired by alcohol. Once Ina and the cabbies know that…you guessed it…cut to the obligatory “goofy comedy” happy ending, roll the credits, and FIN.

It would be the definition of “stretch” to call this a great film, but if you want more than a few simple, but honest-to-goodness straight-up belly laughs (like the cameo from Chill Wills), The Day The Bookies Wept is a solid investment for 64 minutes of your life.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

The theme for today is simplicity. As previously mentioned, The Day The Bookies Wept is a simple, straight-forward comedy. As such, it’s only fitting the hidden sports analogy in this film is of a similar uncomplicated nature. Replace the cabbies with a bunch of Ivy League frat boys laden with the case money to burn on rather spendy lark, take the beer out of the horse and put it in the college boys where it belongs, and you’re already in the homestretch.

This story gets out the gate in 2019 when five fraternity brothers (Eric Armagost, Dan Giovacchini, Reiley Higgins, Patrick O’Neill and Alex Quoyeser) from Theta Delta Chi at Brown University got together and formed Boat Racing, LLC. See, when trust fund babies buy race horses (unlike a bunch of taxi jocks) they form a limited liability corporation to make everything nice and legal.

The next stop was to hire a professional horse trainer. Did we mention that Patrick O’Neill’s Uncle Doug is just such a guy?

All that was left was to find a horse. Enter Hot Rod Charlie, whose Run For The Roses happened in 2021. The three-year old was owned by a consortium of Roadrunner Racing, Strauss Brothers Racing, and Boat Racing, LLC. They first began to have hopes for Hot Rod Charlie when he finished 3rd in the Grade 3 Robert B. Lewis Stakes in January of that year.

Then Hot Rod Charlie took home the trophy in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby in March. Hot Rod Charlie stayed hot by finishing in the money in four more races leading up to the big day at Churchill Downs. In Louisville, Hot Rod Charlie continued his money-finish streak by hitting the wire in 3^rd Place in the 147^th Kentucky Derby.

Hot Rod Charlie rounded out a very successful year with a 2nd Place running at The Belmont Stakes, a win at the Pennsylvania Derby, and 4th Place spot in The Breeder’s Cup. All tolled, the three-year old cashed in to the tune of $5.6 million in 2021. That’s a level of success which now sees the retired runner having been put out to stud…where the stud fees will keep rolling in for quite some time. Not bad considering 90% of race horse owners never see a dime of profit.

By the way, before you get all sniffy about some rich frat boys racing horses, Boat Racing LLC formed a partnership with the Melanoma Research Alliance, donating a portion of their 2021 earnings to it’s efforts to find a cure.

The Moral of the Story:

Horse racing and beer…how can you go wrong?

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