 A unusual Page from Hollywood history 
Who is this, you wonder? Her name is Joan Page and she’s posing at Hollywood Park, a thoroughbred race track located in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles. The photo, which was made today in 1954, was intended to publicize the circuit’s new aluminum rails, which had replaced the old wooden rails during the off-season. The photo also announced Page’s candidacy for the title of Goose Girl, the winner of the track’s yearly beauty contest. Why was she called a Goose Girl, rather than a Horse Girl or a Pretty Filly, you’re probably thinking? Because Hollywood Park, which was known as the Track of Lakes and Flowers, enclosed several small lakes populated by geese. In addition to posing for photos and making publicity appearances in a ridiculous outfit, the Goose Girl was required to drift around in a small boat called Miz Clementine, tossing food to the birds as the racegoing crowd cheered. Hollywood Park operated on the theory that race days were events, and successfully staged such spectacles for decades, beginning with its opening in 1938.
But times change. Hollywood Park had long been a playground for celebrities and political figures, but as the decades passed such clientele began to seek thrills elsewhere. During the 1980s some of the park’s lakes were filled in to build concession stands, and the popular Goose Girl was eliminated, brought back in the 1990s, then eliminated again. Profits sagged, and real estate values went through the roof—always a deadly combination. Hollywood Park’s land became too valuable for racing, and the site’s closure was announced in May 2013. The current plan is to transform the former Track of Lakes and Flowers into luxury housing, which seems to always be the plan, everywhere. And what happened to Joan Page? Hard to say. There are several Joan Pages who appeared in films during the 1940s or 1950s, but we have no way of knowing which—if any—posed on Hollywood Park’s aluminum rail in 1954, or for that matter whether she ever won the title of Goose Girl.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
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