Marjorie Everett

Everett, Marjorie L June 8, 1921 - March 23, 2012 Marjorie L. Everett, a titan of the horse racing world in Chicago and Los Angeles over four decades and the heart of a broad social network of friends, has died at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 90 years old. Everett was just 38 when she took charge of the Arlington Park, Washington Park, and Balmoral Park race tracks in Chicago following the death of her father in 1960. But track owner Benjamin Lindheimer had raised his adopted daughter around horse racing, leaving her with both a deep understanding of track operations and a passion for thoroughbred racing and the people who made it happen. In the 1970s she moved West, becoming a principal owner and chief executive of the Hollywood Park track in Los Angeles, where she thrived as both a female leader in the male-dominated racing business and a popular hostess in Los Angeles society. "She reminded me of Barbara Stanwyck -- people would look at her and think powerful. But she had this very dear heart," said the actress Linda Evans, a close friend of Everett. Evans said she met Everett through "Dynasty" co-star and horse breeder John Forsythe, who sat on Hollywood Park's board of directors. Everett, who was married to the late Webb Everett, never had children but considered her friends as family, Evans said. The frequent parties she hosted at her Holmby Hills mansion featured close friends like Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the pianist Van Cliburn, the singer Johnny Mathis and eminent jockeys Bill Shoemaker and Laffit Pincay, but she included people from all walks of life, said Evans. "She was a beloved friend for many years, and we'll miss her very much," said Angie Dickinson, another close friend of Everett. Barbara Grant Jaynes, wife of the late movie star Cary Grant, said Everett was one of Cary's closest friends. They also served together on the board of Hollywood Park. After Grant died, Jaynes said, Everett made sure she was all right, sending a guard to their house to assure her privacy as well as food. "She continued to do that for the rest of her life," Jaynes said. "She was absolutely amazing." In her later years, Everett enjoyed a close companionship with her two dogs, Winnie and Toddy, gifts to Everett from the late Elizabeth Taylor. But most of her life was all about horse racing, and she was considered an innovator in Southern California track operations. In the late 1980s, when track attendance began to decline, Everett forged a deal with the rival Santa Anita track and other racing groups to spice up the action with inter-track and off-track betting -- previously anathema to West Coast horse racing. "We're all working very closely together," Everett told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. "We all think there's great potential in creating new patrons for the race track." But despite Everett's dominant role in the industry at a time when women were seen in track executive suites only as secretaries, Evans said Everett had "no ego about her." "I tried to get her to write a book about doing things as a woman at a time when women weren't powerful. And she'd say, "Oh, it's nothing dear," Evans said. "She didn't think it was something she should talk about. But she was a pioneer in many ways." Everett's friends asked that contributions in her honor be made to Old Friends, a non-profit retirement home for thoroughbred horses in Kentucky: 1841 PaynesDepot Rd., Georgetown, KY 40324.