Our second installment of rare Garroway footage1 involves his well-known love of sports cars. We’ve talked about this on the blog before, especially in terms of his beloved Jaguar. Garroway was a keen amateur racer, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But even though he put aside racing as a driver, he never lost his love for watching car races and supporting the sport through other means.2
Here is some rare footage of a sports car race at Andrews Air Force Base (yes, that one)3 in the 1954 season, probably the President’s Cup race. This 20-minute silent film is a feast for sports car lovers, but of interest to us here is who you start to see about 17 minutes in, and then popping up at the end to interview the winning driver.
Please enjoy this trip to a different time.
- Once again, discovered through the keen eyes of our intrepid associate Brandon!
- On a personal note, this is one of the many reasons Garroway is so agreeable to me as a research subject, for among the many things I have in common with him is that I am also a gearhead and I love to watch racing, including sports car racing. For several years my husband and I made the annual trip to Florida for the 24 Hours of Daytona, one of the marquee sports car races on the circuit. I’ve long said that if I’m ever to own a Rolex, I want to earn it by winning that race. However, given the many years it takes to build that kind of racing skill and the prohibitive costs in time and money it takes to reach that level of racing, I have contented myself with wearing a Timex for the foreseeable future.
- Air fields are natural venues for car races, given that they are closed off and the long runways and taxiways provide long and wide straightaways that can be configured through chicanes and other means. The Air Force sometimes cooperated with these efforts, which is natural enough when you think about how many pilots (including top brass) liked fast machines both on the ground and in the air. Many years ago a friend of mine who was an Air Force brat in the 1950s showed me some photos his family took at a sports car race at a Florida base in the 1950s. Among the dignitaries in attendance was not only Dave Garroway, but the powerful Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Air Force. If LeMay – who, at the time, was commander of the Strategic Air Command and almost always got his way – signed off on it, you knew it was officially okay.