The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [111]
Through the doors into the grand lobby, one entered another world. People milled around wearing outfits more befitting a society ball than a venue best known for hosting prizefights and the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Beautiful people disembarked from chauffeured Rolls-Royces wearing, as Kurth Sprague noted, “melton and mink, top hats and tweeds, long evening dresses from Ciel Chapman, and chic long riding coats and flared britches from Hertz or Nardi, cordovan cuffed hunting boots and black patent-leather evening pumps, and white tie and wide-waled corduroy.” The press was always out in full force—society and fashion magazines jostling elbows with an assortment of sports columnists come to cover the show for one of New York’s dozen daily newspapers.
The first tier of seats were the ringside boxes, so coveted and closely held that acquiring access to one was a social triumph. Behind the boxes, the seats rose up in three sharp tiers, jamming the maximum seating space into an area only two hundred feet wide. At the time, the Garden was the largest covered venue in the world, able to accommodate more than twenty thousand spectators. Through the turnstile, manned by ticket collectors in tuxedos, ticket bearers wearing their Sunday best rubbed shoulders with the box holders in their evening finery. Around the promenade, hot dog vendors, program salesmen, and souvenir vendors tried to catch the attention of the ordinary folk who passed by the ringside boxes to reach the cheap seats, known as “heaven,” up under the eaves. A thick canopy of cigarette smoke always hung in a blue cloud just below the covered rooftop.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police parade through the arena at Madison Square Garden while the audience, in evening wear, watches from the sidelines.
Families clutching programs purchased for an expensive $1.50 sat high up above the ring with a good view of the spectacle, both horse and human. Inside the pages of the program were pictures of the trophies to be won, and lists of members of the international teams, as well as of all the classes and participants. The air pulsed with an intoxicating mix of danger and allure, pageantry and sophistication. In addition to the competitions, the program was packed with exhibitions: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Budweiser Clydesdales, displays of rodeo tricks and roping, a dressage demonstration by television personality Arthur Godfrey, and the glitz and glitter of the Latin American teams, whose gold-braided white military jackets and charging riding styles always spiced up the international events.
For a child up in the stands, it was all a wonderland. Even for the de Leyer children—Chef, now seven, Harriet, five, Marty, four, William, three, and the baby, Harry junior, eighteen months, who had grown used to watching their father perform in the horse show ring—the crowds, the spectacle, and the spotlights of Madison Square Garden made the entire experience seem new. As always, they were dressed up, slicked down, and perfectly behaved under Johanna’s watchful eye, but for the next eight nights, they would be allowed to stay up late in the stands and watch. This was the most exciting week of their lives.
Eager to watch the opening ceremonies, crowds packed the stands. Just as in Washington, the U.S. Army Marching Band played a rousing Sousa march for the parade of the international teams. With all of the dazzle of the Diamond Jubilee, the stands were filled to capacity—a bigger crowd than ever, and a more