‘BIG APPLE’ & ‘GREAT WHITE WAY’

New York City has been called the Big Apple for quite some time. There are many theories of the nickname’s origin.

The most common account dates back to 1921 when New York Morning Telegraph writer John FitzGerald popularized the nickname by using it in his horse racing column.

FitzGerald in turn gave credit to African-American stablehands in New Orleans who called the NYC race tracks the “Big Apple” since they held “the big” races with the “big prizes.”

http://www.usatourist.com  

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I discovered the origin of “the Great White Way” in 1992, just a few minutes before I discovered the 1926 origin explanation of “the Big Apple.” The essential information was on the same microfilm reel of the New York Morning Telegraph. “Big Apple Corner” is, as it turns out, on the Great White Way (Broadway).

“The Great White Way” was originally the title of a 1901 book about the South Pole. The term was applied to Broadway by Shep Friedman of the New York Morning Telegraph, after a snowstorm on Broadway in 1902 had turned the street into a “white way.” Later, “white way” referred to the lights of Broadway.

http://www.barrypopik.com

WALL STREET JOURNAL OF RACING

TIME MAGAZINE

Dec. 24, 1951

At Chicago’s bustling, blustery Loop corner of Clark & Madison, Newsie Sol Bertuca tightened his coat against the cold, and scowled: “It’s gone, it’s nothing, it’s dead.” All over the country, the sale of racing forms had dropped as much as 75% —way below seasonal expectations; tip sheets were as badly off or worse. Reason: Bookies had closed shop rather than pay the new federal betting tax and thus face arrest for violating state laws.

Walter Annenberg’s far-flung Triangle Publications were hard hit. The antigambling drives, plus the sky-high production costs plaguing all publications, had shuttered two Annenberg turf dailies, Houston’s Racing Form and the Cincinnati Record. Chances were odds-on for the merger of two more, the New York Racing Form and the 118-year-old New York Morning Telegraph, which boosted its price a dime to 35¢ a fortnight ago.

Galloping Genesis. But if the tightening on the rein worried the Telegraph (circ. 34,000), it was not saying so. In his sleekly modern Manhattan offices, decorated with sculptures of horses and Dufy racetrack paintings, Publisher J. (for Joseph) Samuel Perlman snorted: “We’re not a tip sheet. Selections are a very minor part of our papers . . . We give racing the widest coverage of any sport in the country.”

No one would deny that. To horse-race betters, the Telegraph is Genesis. The paper had long been devoted principally to racing and amusements. No news was good news to the old Telegraph unless it had a show-business or racing angle. One old Tele graph headline: CALVIN COOLIDGE DEATH REACTS ON BROADWAY. Its office was a stepping stone for many star newsmen. Among them: Westbrook Pegler, Gene Fowler, Louella Parsons, Heywood Broun, Sime Silverman, who later founded Variety and shoved the Telegraph out of its place as the No. 1 show-business paper.

Walter Annenberg, who also owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Seventeen, brought Perlman in to run his racing news empire in 1943. Perlman, a dressy, 51-year-old Canadian who was once sport editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, and had his own racing paper and horses, beefed up the Telegraph’s show-business coverage. But he still yawns at general news, manages to squeeze in less than a column of items, and never tries to compete with the big dailies. Says Perlman: “If war broke out, we’d probably let the other papers handle it.”

Feed box. The Telegraph’s comprehensive coverage of racing is zealously accurate. It prints past performances, charts and ratings, perhaps half a million digits each day, a printing task which would stagger most newspapers. But its reports seldom err. Most of them are in a jargon no layman can understand. Example: A line on one of the entries in the second race at Florida’s Tropical Park one day last week carried this report on Stormy Ruth, a two-year-old bay filly by Little Beans—Witchwater, by St. James, bred by J. Tucci, trained by M. Fife: “23Jy 51-1 Jm fst 5½ f .23 .471/5 1.06 3/5 Cl. $6500 3 3 1 3 3 4 9 17” The knowing reader’s translation: On July 23rd, Stormy Ruth ran in the first race at Jamaica, a $6500 claimer, five and a half furlongs, on a fast track. She broke from post position three, was third out of the gate, was in front at the quarter, dropped back to third at the half, was third by four lengths in the stretch, finished ninth, beaten 17 lengths.

Collecting and keeping such an endless stream of racing information is an intricate business. Crews of Perlman’s men— dockers, chart-callers, call-takers, reporters—cover every major North American race. To transmit the information, the Telegraph has its own teletype circuits. It also keeps in type, ready to print, the up-to-date records of more than 30,000 horses.

Says Sam Perlman: “We’re to racing what the Wall Street Journal is to business.”

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TIME MAGAZINE

March 17, 1958

After totting up attendance figures for U.S. spectator sports. Triangle Publications (Morning Telegraph, Daily Racing Form) raced to report that horse parks, with 53,820,958 customers, led all other competitors for the sportsman’s spare time. Second: baseball, with 32,512,503 (despite a drop of more than 1,500,000 in minor-league attendance). Third: football, with the colleges and pros playing to a combined 16,767,613.

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CANADIAN HORSE RACING HALL OF FAME

J. Samuel Perlman – Hall of Fame Inductee, 1977

J. Samuel Perlman has probably did more to improve the public image of racing than any other individual, be he Canadian or not. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the turn of the century, Perlman began his career as a young cub reporter in the sports department of the Winnipeg Free Press and went on to become editor and publisher of the two largest racing papers in the world, the Morning Telegraph and the Daily Racing Form.

In that job, he found himself in a position to mold public opinion on the sport he obviously loved and he made the most of the opportunity. Emphasizing the great sporting traditions of racing, the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form became highly respected papers under Perlman’s guidance. Perlman, himself, traveled extensively, promoting racing wherever he could. In his early years, he visited every track his papers covered at least once a year. It was Perlman who originated the Daily Racing Form’s annual poll to name the Horse of the Year.

During his 16-year tenure as publisher, Perlman put the full support of his papers behind the formation of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations and the National Association of State Racing Commissioners.

The appreciation of the racing fraternity was revealed in the many honours and awards that were bestowed on Perlman. In 1950 he was honoured by the NASRC for doing “an outstanding job for racing.” The following year the Jockey’s Guild named him Man of the Year for “his thorough understanding of thoroughbred racing’s problems and his unceasing efforts to solve them fairly and constructively.” The HBPA, honoured him for “his many contributions and long service to racing” and the TRA for “his overall efforts on behalf of all phases of racing.” In 1959, every racing organization in Canada joined in an unprecedented joint award for his contributions to racing in this in this country.

In 1943 he left Canada and went to New York as assistant general manager, becoming general manager of the Daily Racing Form and Morning Telegraph a year later. In 1949 he was named publisher and in 1954 assumed the title of editor as well.

In the early ’70’s, Perlman worked as a steward at Assiniboia Downs in his native Winnipeg and he was responsible for the formation of the Manitoba Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association.

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HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA

Evan Shipman was for many years both a harness racing and thoroughbred columnist for the old Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form. He also was an accomplished published poet, author, literary figure and close friend and confidante of Ernest Hemingway.

Shipman was second only to the immortal John Hervey as a dual breed authority, widely respected for his knowledge of both sports. His harness racing novel, Free for All, was lauded by Sherwood Anderson and others as a major sporting work.

Hemingway dedicated his 1927 novel Men Without Women to Shipman, and the two wrote together, drank together and fought together in the Spanish Civil War.

Shipman was official handicapper for Roosevelt Raceway in its early days, and his column “In the Sulky” was a regular feature in the Morning Telegraph.  He died in 1957.

OBITUARY

Photo: TVG Community

TIME MAGAZINE

April 24, 1972

But look at Epitaph, he wins

it by a half

According to this here, in

the Telegraph . . .

So sang Rusty Charlie to Benny Southstreet and Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls. The three veteran horseplayers were searching for that eternally elusive winner in the bible of Belmont and Broadway, The Morning Telegraph. No other publication in the world was so well-informed on such a will-o’-the-wisp subject—the ponies. The Telegraph was the Wall Street Journal of the racing world, and its 30-odd pages crinkled on every railing from Santa Anita to Hialeah.

The Morning Telegraph was so valuable a guide, in fact, that every day 50,000 readers plunked down a dollar for its thoroughbred information. No more. Last week after a nasty labor dispute and a one-week strike, the Telegraph appeared on the nation’s news stands for the last time.

Like so many New York City journalistic shutdowns, the Telegraph’s demise involved Bertram Powers and his powerful Local 6 of the Typographical Union. Powers had called the strike, he said, because the parent organization, Triangle Publications, had refused to submit to arbitration the layoff last winter of 20 of the paper’s 120 printers. Stewart Hooker, publisher of the Telegraph and its sister sheet, the Daily Racing Form, argued that the printers still had a year to go on their contract, and anyway the 20 who had been laid off were back on the job before the strike was called. Powers struck anyway.

Setting the Pace. For Hooker, the strike furnished a good excuse to close the old-fashioned Telegraph and shift much of his editorial force to the more efficient Racing Form, a computerized operation. The Form will retain much of the Telegraph’s flavor. “Chart Callers,” for example, will still encapsulate the drama of a race with the same terse economy they exercised in each issue of the Telegraph: “SOLAR NAIL saved ground from the start, got through rallying in the stretch and outgamed ODDS HAVE IT to the wire.” Or “BOBS B BEES quickest to begin, moved to the inner rail when clear, increased the margin along the backstretch, began to shorten stride in the final sixteenth and was all out to last over STOOL PIGEON.”

Founded in 1833, the Telegraph’s roster of writers over the years included H.L. Mencken, Ring Lardner, Louella Parsons, Ben Hecht, George Jean Nathan and Heywood Broun, who was fired. When it carried Walter Winchell’s “Beau Broadway” column in the 1920s, the Telegraph was studied as closely as Variety at Broadway restaurants such as Sardi’s and Lindy’s. Even in recent years the paper kept five staffers on the show-biz beat. One of the most popular writers in the 1950s was Columnist Tom O’Reilly, who used to write a Monday piece. As Saul Rosen, 66, the paper’s saw-voiced editor since 1965, wistfully recalls, “I used to watch O’Reilly through my window as he would settle at his desk, type out a line with two fingers, then go into convulsions of laughter. I’ve never seen a guy break up over his own humor like O’Reilly.”

Rosen himself is a paradigm of a curious Telegraph phenomenon: like bartenders who do not drink, most of its callers and handicappers seldom, if ever, played the ponies. They wrote for the track record because they really loved the feel of races: the jockeying for position at the rail, the thrill of a photo finish and the sweet, sweet smell of big money. Tom O’Reilly once wrote it nicely: “It is fun to doll up and play the sport of kings for a day—as much fun as going to a wedding when the bride’s old man is rich.”