From The Now It Can Be Told Department........

[Allan Long]

Tommy,

Why am I not surprised you would have that? Man, it's good to have you back....

Am I off base thinking Mac did the Lloyd/Chaplin courses? I know Geoff did an article about the Lloyd course some years back, but I sure can't find it.

[Tom Naccarato]

Allan, the Lloyd course was, according to Geoff, not MacKenzie, and it speculation that Chaplin had a course at all. However, the image of Douglas Fairbanks has me thinking that maybe he was in line for a "Little" Mac at Pickfair, up until Mary decided she would rather have that area for a rose garden or something!

The GREAT Saundra Sheffer of the late Ralph Miller Golf Library at Industry Hills was responsible for this find!

[Allan Long]

Thanks, Tommy. I don't remember where I got the idea of Mac's involvment, but I did just find this from T&L Golf.

"Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, the movies' reigning comics, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, viewed golf as no laughing matter; each cast none other than Alister Mackenzie to fill their Tinseltown yards with nine-hole par-three tracks."

Since I don't recall reading this magazine, I'm not sure if I got the idea from it, or somewhere like C&W. However, I would tend to believe Geoff's account.

P.S. I get sad every time I think of the Miller Library being taken away at IH.

[Tom Naccarato]

Allan, the article Geoff did was in T&L golf if I remember correctly and it was a great one, as he found some interesting pictures and got some interesting stories.

Your also correct that the original assumption came from what C&W. (Still, a great book!)

The Ralph, even though its was only like 10-15 minutes away from me (and what was it, like 5 minutes from you!?!?) is in a pretty good place now at LA84. The library there is actually a pretty cool building and its great to go there for the day, take your lunch out there and eat in the court yard (its so peaceful!) which is just around the corner from the house they used for the mortuary home in Six Feet Under! Then of course, after a quick lunch, back to work at finding stuff!

I don't do it often enough!

[Don Dinkmeyer]

I just have to say, this is a real treat to read and just one more reason GCA is a unique, wonderful piece of the web!

[Allan Long]

Tommy,

I think Geoff's article was in LINKS. I do remember it having a lot of detail and great photos as you mentioned.

My next trip out, I would enjoy seeing the LA84 library (if you can fit me in your busy schedule).

[Tom Naccarato]

Don't be silly, of course! We'll go play Santa Anita this time!

[Neil_Crafter]

Tommy and Allan
Geoff's article was in Links magazine Jan/Feb 2004. My copies are in a moving box somewhere under a big pile of the same as we are waiting in rental accomm while our new house is being built so I can't get to my copy. If anyone has a copy to hand I'd really appreciate a scan of the article.

Sean Tully has been looking into the par 3 celebrity courses too and has started to interest me as well. It would appear that Harold Lloyd's course was done by Bell. C&W list both the Chaplin and Lloyd courses under Mackenzie's hand, but that does not seem correct. I think the T&L golf article just got that straight out of C&W. I have yet to find anything that suggests Chaplin had a course on his estate and I've emailed the Chaplin Museum a couple of times with no response at all. From what I have learnt, Fairbanks and Pickford's built their estate 'Pickfair', as it was called by the press (but not by them), and encouraged their friend Chaplin to buy some land a little further down the hill to build his estate. So if they both had the idea for private par 3 courses then perhaps Fairbanks introduced Mackenzie to Chaplin, as we can see from the photo Tommy posted that Doug and Ali were good mates. Tommy, the find you referred to from the lady at the Ralph Miller was the photo of the two of them I take it?

I'm planning a post on these par 3 courses, not that I have anything new on them, but just think it would make for an interesting discussion that might elicit some new gem.

I have also been digging through the LA Times on Dana Point and have found a couple of teasing references to the golf course that I'll post a bit later.

[Tom Naccarato]

Yes, Saundra Sheffer used to be, along with Marge Dewey our heroes of the library.

[JC Urbina]

TV - Tommy

The idea of Mackenzie working in Southern California does not surprise me.  Bob Beck gave me a folder of letters that were written during the construction of Pasatiempo and if my memory serves me right some correspondence was happening between Hunter, Mackenzie and Southern California.  It wouldn't take long to verify it if you needed further evidence on the trail to L.A.  I though nothing of it when I was reading the large stack of letters.
 What is your goal to find lost routings or just prove that he was laying out cliff top golf courses in Southern California.  He may have went all the way to San Diego and even beyond to Baja Mexico.

People ( Developers) up and down the coast of California must have asked Hunter and Mackenzie to look at sites over looking the Pacific.  The same would hold true today except for the land is not as easy to access

  

[Neil_Crafter]

Jim
Nice to have you chime in on this. Without putting words in Tommy's mouth, there is an objective of a small group of researchers, Sean Tully and Mark Bourgeois in the US, myself here in Australia and Nick Leefe in the UK, ably assisted by a small band of contributors such as Tommy, to develop a detailed timeline for Dr Mackenzie's presence wherever we can find references to him being somewhere at a certain point in time. This work is being done under the aegis of The Alister Mackenzie Society of the UK and we are now working on the 15th edition of the timeline. Bob Beck was one of the driving forces of this project but he has now stepped back from it. I suspect Bob may have forgotten the stack of letters he gave you as I do not recall 'the project' having seen them. I definitely think they are worthwhile going through them again and seeing what mentions there are in the letters to the various projects. Perhaps if you could get to Sean Tully copies of the letters that would be brilliant and he could take them from there to get copies to the rest of us.

David Stamm mentioned that Mackenzie submitted for the Balboa Park project in San Diego but lost out to Bell, and in my brief forays into the LA Times Bell is a name that keeps coming up again and again. I think Tommy has fairly well established that Bell designed the Tijuana course that has recently been promoting itself as a Mackenzie, but that's not to say that Mac didn't head south of the border when he was in San Diego.

I now have a reference to another coastal project that Mackenzie was linked to near Pismo Beach (see my new thread on this), so the work stretched from SF southwards, how far we do not know.

Additionally, we are working up a detailed spreadsheet list of his courses, as well as his possible projects and information like you have in those letters may prove invaluable. If we find any lost routings along the way that would be marvellous but that is hardly a realistic goal seeing how few of these have ever surfaced.

cheers Neil

[Neil_Crafter]

Matt
Thanks to the link to the aerial photo website, very interesting. I've checked out the 1946 Dana Point aerial and no sign whatsoever of a golf course where the golf course was planned to go on the tract map, it is still just undeveloped land. Or anywhere else nearby. I think that it can be pretty well assumed that no course ever did get built there in the late 20's early 30's.

[Tom Naccarato]

Jim, We won again last weekend, locked up the FC championship (for Nostalgia Funny Car) also while setting the E.T. record. (click on link, that's me with my arms straight up into the heavens when we won!)

There is little doubt in my mind that MacKenzie made it to TJ--for some booze and broads. I can almost see him right now in some Tijuana hump-hump bar, dancing a with tequila-touting rooster who was pouring it down his throat... As far as the rest of SoCalifornia, I'm still looking and I too would also like to look over the letters!

Hope all is well!

[JC Urbina]

Neil
I will try and gather up the letters and get back with you.  It wouldn't surprise me if Mackenzie and Hunter looked at the land Tommy and I have discussed many times just north of Santa Barbara.  All you needed in that era was sand, ocean and railroad access.  The dunes north of Santa Barbara had all of those qualities.

[Larry_Rodgers]

welcome Back Tom, Your renewed passion is inspiring.

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks Jim
Appreciate that and look forward to hearing from you about the letters.
Do you think Mac and Hunter would have been identifying possible land parcels and talking to developers that Hunter knew to try and get them interested? Or were they waiting for the phone to ring?

Tommy
Congrats on the victory - you do look like a happy camper!

[Tom Naccarato]

Mr. Urbina would be correct in identifying the dunes in California's central coast as being the next great place to build a golf course in California. There are some quality sites that abound there, and all's it takes is getting past that CCC! Still, I think its doable!

Thanks Neil! It was a fun weekend and I actually might be going to Phoenix the upcoming weekend for the last race of the year, but haven't decided yet. I'm more anxiously yearning for golf then racing! (I think thats a good thing!)

Jim, I want to see those letters too!!

Larry, oh buddy, oh pal, oh chum! Thanks for the warm welcome again. Lets talk soon!

[Eric Morrison]

Great work! That is exactly why this site is so interesting...rekindles the excitement of turning up new info on my course in my searches..thanks!

[Neil_Crafter]

Some further trolling through the LA Times archive has revealed some further information about the Dana Point project and its elusive golf course. There are a few references to the golf course, but nothing that exactly says that it was completed and in play. The 1946 aerial of the area revealed no sign of a course either.

First up is an advert for the Dana Point development from Mar 9 1928



Next is an extract from an article about coastal developments in CA from December 2 1928, which indicates that $1,000,000 was slated to be spent on the golf course and clubhouse.



Another advert from March 3 1929 - nice sketch of a golf clubhouse, was this the one planned for Dana Point perhaps?



This next article from December 8 1929 says that preparations are under way for houses surrounding the golf course. Was the course there or not?



Moving forward to 1930, this article says that the golf course is either completed or under way. Take your pick.



Finally, this advert for Danaville by the Sea includes golf, so there must have been a golf course nearby.



So there you have it. Was the course ever built? The evidence from these articles and adverts is not conclusive and as the aerial from 1946 shows no signs of a course, I'd have to suggest that it wasn't. Perhaps further evidence will tip this one way or the other.

[David Stamm]

Neil, is there a date on the last ad? The only other course (if the DP course wasn't actually built) this could have been would be San Clemente.

[Sean Leary]

I am surprised that there aren't people who are still alive who would know whether it was built or not...granted they would be 90ish but..

[Neil_Crafter]

David, sorry, that last advert is from May 31 1935. Hope that helps in determining what other nearby courses may have been built by then.

Sean, there may well be, but I don't know them. And somehow I doubt they are trawling GCA looking for references to Dana Point!

[PCCraig]

Wow nice find!