Chrysler at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair

by Jim Benjaminson. Copyrighted by the Plymouth Bulletin. Reprinted by permission.

Nineteen Thirty-Three wasn't exactly the best of years as far as most people were concerned. The depth of the Depression had been reached the year before. But one year's improvement was so slight that few, if any, really noticed. A good percentage of the population was out of work and farmers were now feeling the first effects of what would become known as the "Dirty Thirties" as their farms were blowing away in the hot dry winds. It was a time of trials  and tribulations - a strange time, it would seem, to think about "the extravaganza to end all extravaganzas," the Chicago World's Fair.

No doubt there were Fair planners in Chicago who were having second thoughts as well. The first plans for the Fair had been made in 1926 when Chicago had openly asked to be the host site for the Fair. Permission for the Fair had been granted on October 29, 1929 - exactly one day before the Wall Street Crash of '29. At first the plan had been to run the fair for six months, from June 1 to November 1, 1933. (It actually opened for business on May 27.) By the planned closing date, fair attendance had amounted to just slightly over 22 million visitors, far below the projected figures. So it was decided to continue the Fair into 1934 as well. It was a wise move. At the end, the Fair not only repaid all its debts, but had money left over which was donated to the city of Chicago.

It was to be, as Fair publicity stated, an exposition of "Science, Industry and Art." Ultimately, it was industry that supported the Fair the strongest, as the automobile industry had the largest contingent at the Fair. For the car lover, the Fair was the place to be. Each of the Big Three were represented with its own pavilion. As well, there was support from Nash, Cord, Packard, Pierce-Arrow and others, including several original inventors displaying their "dream cars." At the Packard display was the Golden Packard (so named because its appointments were trimmed in real gold), as well as James Ward Packard's first 1899 automobile. Duesenberg had a new model on display called the Twenty Grand - and that's what it sold for! That would buy you forty new Plymouth business coupes, with change to spare!

There were special sixteen cylinder Cadillacs, the sleek Pierce "Silver Arrow," Buckminter Fuller's radical three-wheeled rear-engined Dymaxion, and the prototype Lincoln Zephyr. The "Wings Of A Century" production featured not only a large collection of antique autos, but relics of all sorts of methods of transportation. There were Conestoga wagons and early railroad locomotives, including the Tom Thumb of 1829 and the DeWitt Clinton from 1832. There were canal boats, clipper ships and the Wright brothers airplane Kitty Hawk. The car collection itself ranged basically in age from 1896 to 1907, but newer cars such as the recently introduced Chrysler Airflow were included. The "Wings Of A Century" production took place daily on an open air stage opposite the Travel & Transport Building which housed the displays. The production cast included 200 actors and 100 horses!

For the Big Three automakers, it was a time to pull out all the stops. At the General Motors pavilion, Chevrolet set up a complete assembly line. There new Chevrolets were built from scratch before the very eyes of the fairgoers. It was possible to place an order for a new Chevrolet at your hometown dealer, travel to the Fair, watch your new car being built, and drive it home. The first such Chevrolet built was awarded to a lucky ticket holder from among 400,000 Chicago school children. The winner was an eight-year-old girl named Dorothy Maciejewska. Dorothy's family had never owned an automobile before!

The largest exhibitor at the Fair was the Chrysler Corporation. Its pavilion and grounds covered over seven acres of land on the Fair site. It included not only the Chrysler building, but sunken gardens, the Cyclorama, display areas and a race track. The building (which was considered one of the great showpieces of the Fair) was described in period literature as "belonging to the modern idyllistic school of architecture." The body of the building, white with suggestions of yellow and lavender pylons, was illuminated at night with floodlights at more than one million candlepower. It was called the "World's Largest Showcase." In the building were scores of exhibits ranging from the scientific to the "spectacular," including a huge drop forge where workmen made parts for new cars right before the fairgoers' watchful eyes. There was a steel furnace, the frozen battery show, the making of Duplate safety glass, an automatic loom, a "Belgian Roll" road testing device, and an actual operating wind tunnel.

Outside was the quarter mile track which was built especially for the show. The track, 18 feet wide at its narrowest point, had banked turns for fast driving. The west straightaway had a 100-foot long ramp with a 25% grade, while the east straightaway had a 45 degree incline. Six times daily, Barney Oilfield and his crew of "Hell Drivers" would perform on the track. Between shows, the fairgoer could take a demonstration ride around the track in a car of his choosing with one of the Hell Drivers at the wheel.

And then there was the sand pit in the center of the track. At the end of each show, Oilfield, or one of his drivers, would deliberately roll a new car to show the strength of the all-steel body built by Chrysler. It was quite a show.

As the Fair continued, promoters took to coming up with new events to keep the crowds coming through the gates. One such event took place at the Chrysler exhibit on Friday, July 13, 1934. Appropriately enough, given the day, it was called the "Jinx Day Auto Derby." It was to be a race of the antique cars featured in the "Wings Of A Century" show. And what a race it would be! It would consist of 13 cars in a 13-lap race around the Chrysler track. It was a race officially sanctioned by the American Automobile Association (Sanction #0013). As in all such events, a protest of the winning car would be allowed. A letter of protest, accompanied by a check in the amount of $13, would have to be signed by 13 drivers and 13 mechanics before it would be considered! For some unexplained reason, there were 18 - not 13 - track officials.

Starting positions for the "flying start" of the Jinx Day Auto Derby would be chosen by drawing numbers from a hat. Passing would be allowed only on the right, and not at all on the curves. A car could be disqualified for various reasons, such as taking more than four people to push it off the track! It was to be quite a spectacle, broadcast coast-to- coast live from the fairgrounds by both NBC Blue Network and the CBS systems.

The drivers chosen for the Derby included Barney Oldfield, perhaps the best known of all the drivers, as well as W.8. Chenoweth, Cliff Woodbury (an Indy driverl, Charles Coey, Harry Cooper, Adolph Monsen (another Indy driver), Arthur Gardner, Andy Burt, E.H. Snazenberg (another Indy pilot), C.E. Engelbeck (who drove in the first Indy 500), Curtis Betts, James Levy and Harry Hunt.

The cars chosen from the "Wings Of A Century" display included:

• No.1 - 1897 Stanley Steamer-5 horsepower, tiller steering, wire wheels.
• No. 2 - 1907 Intemational- 12 horsepower two-cylinder aircooled, chain drive, hard rubber tires. (Made by the International truck company still in business today.)
• No.3 1900 Lincoln - 10 horsepower two-cylinder aircooled, friction drive. (It and the other Lincoln in the race were built by a Chicago company, not Ford.)
• No. 4 - 1907 Intemational- 15 horsepower.
• No. 5  - 1896 Chicago-built Tally-Ho - Two-cylinder water-cooled, friction and shaft drive. (Up to ten days before the race, the car had not been run for 34 years!)
• No. 6 - 1904 Cadillac-8 horsepower watercooled single cylinder.
• No.7  - 1902 Holsman - two-cylinder aircooled, hard rubber tires, rope drive(!).
• No. 8 - 1902 Chicago-built Lincoln -10 horsepower, two cylinder.
• No. 9 - 1904 Buick 15 horsepower two-cylinder.
• No. 10 - 1908 Maxwell- 10 horsepower, two-cylinder watercooled. (Driven to the Fair by its owners from South Dakota.)
• No. 11 - 1907 Staver - four-cylinder, hard rubber tires.
• No. 12 - 1906 Model N Ford - four-cylinder. (Reportedly the fourteenth such Ford built).
• No. 13 - 1904 Maxwell- 12 horsepower, two cylinder.

Who won the race, you say? Despite the wealth of information provided prior to the race, we don't know who won the race. But we're still trying to find out! When we do we'll let you know. Perhaps an even more perlexing question is, "what happened to all of those ancient automobiles used in the Jinx Day Derby?" Surely they must still survive somewhere. It would be sad to think that they have been destroyed following their rather priviledged stay at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair.

For those who were present then, it was a spectacle that will not be soon forgotten. 

More notes

Lindy Willis noted that, while Chrysler did not show an entire assembly line, they did show how components were made - include a drop forge exhibit with huge hammers and workmen manipulating red-hot steel ingots to make steering knuckles and connecting rods. Barney Oldfield's show highlighted the safety and stamina of Chrysler Corporation cars, with the drivers putting "ordinary" cars like the PC through their paces - demonstrating the fast, precise stops of hydraulic brakes, still unique to Chrysler among the Big Three. Pitcher Carl Hubbel through a fastball at a Plymouth windshield, with Barney Oldfield sitting at the wheel; the safety glass, still a wondrous invention, always protected the stunt driver.

Jinx Day mystery solved

Some things are just meant to be a mystery. Who was Jack the Ripper? Was there a second shooter on the grassy knoll? Who won the Friday the 13th Jinx Day Derby at the 1934 Chicago Worlds Fair????

The first two questions will probably forever remain a mystery. The last question we can now answer with authority...although the outcome of the "race" should have been obvious from the beginning, considering who the drivers in the Jinx Day Derby were.

I spent a great deal of time contacting people who maybe would have the answer. There are historical groups dealing strictly with the Chicago World's Fair, collectors of Worlds Fair memorabilia---even the Chicago newspapers. No one had the answer to the question. I thought perhaps there might have been a daily newspaper published outlining the Fair's activities but no such luck. Sometimes even the most brilliant of detectives runs into a brick wall. Sometimes......well, they just get lucky.

It was several years after I first became aware of the Jinx Day Derby that the answer finally fell into my hands. I had been granted the rare priviledge of going through the Chrysler photo archives--at that time a small room with a huge window to the east, which allowed the sunlight to pour into the NON-air conditioned room. In the room were row upon row of file cabinets, each filled to the brim with photo negatives. Not just any negative, but 8x10 negatives, many of which I recognized as they had been used in publicity photos, magazine stories, sales brochures and manuals.

If Chrysler had a filing method of "rhyme or reason", it was lost on this researcher. Each negative was in a brown envelope, marked on the outside with the negative file number, the date taken and the photographer's name. One photo in the file may have been of a certain year Plymouth, the next consecutive negative of a Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, truck, engine, piston, the assembly line or whatever. Suddenly, in one file drawer, came photos of the Chrysler Pavilion at the Chicago Worlds Fair....some showed it under construction, some at its completion, still others with people milling throughout the complex. Dignitaries and celebrities. Then three very interesting negatives popped up.

There was a car -- there was a driver -- there was the Jinx Day Trophy. None were what you would consider "print worthy" photos--and no doubt, probably still hidden in the photo archives are better quality photos. But what I had in hand solved the mystery of who won the Jinx Day Derby.

It shouldn't have been a mystery at all........his trademarks were a cigar clamped in his mouth and his famous motto, "You Know Me....

Click here for an in-depth look at 1934 Plymouths.

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