“Mr. Davis himself has a keen sense of money values.” Evening Post 1932
David John Davis was a short, bespectacled, loud talking Russian born Ashkenazi Jew from San Francisco who always believed success just a matter of planning and hard work. After venturing to Australia around 1921, he set himself up importing china and cutlery while running the Australasian Portrait Company selling photo enlargements and frames door to door. In an anti-Semitic, anglophile Australasia, Davis ignored prejudice and taunts with irrepressible humour, optimism and drive. His businesses boomed in both Australia and New Zealand. He became so successful he figured he would follow what other nouveau riche sometimes did. He employed a trainer who sounded like he knew what he was doing and asked him to buy some good horses. Even though Harry Telford was only 45 when they first met, Davis’ trainer presented, as Tom Waits once described, “…a broken down jalopy of a man he left behind.”* Their partnership limped along for a few years and, despite Telford not commanding huge fees, the American discovered horse racing to be an expensive, highly unrewarding sport. Or closer to the mark, he found Harry Telford an unrewarding person to be involved with. For a successful person in most other aspects of his life, Davis found a day at the races with Telford's hand on the tiller becoming an exercise in frustration and patience. And like many motivated people, where there are never enough hours in a day, patience was not one of Davis’ strengths.
* Invitation to the Blues – Tom Waits from "Small Change"
Many of their problems arose from David Davis knowing as much about horses as Telford knew about portraits, china and cutlery. After a few years of bupkis in the way of any real track success with the horses Telford picked out for him, Davis was beginning to think his trainer didn’t know too much about racing and horses either. During this dire pre-Phar Lap period, with everyday an uphill battle, every now and then Telford would surprise his dwindling motley crew of owners with a winner. Suddenly, a long odds jackpot popping up out of nowhere, such as when bookmakers Bob Price and Toby Emanuel’s Nuptial bolted to victory in the Canterbury Park Stakes, February 1928.* At 25-1, this win made the two bookies and trainer a small fortune, or at least enough for Telford to temporarily clear some of his debts. But these were so few and far between. In their partnership, from Davis’ point of view, the lack of racing success under Telford’s stewardship did not look like improving. So, when the idea of purchasing a yearling, sight unseen from a Trentham catalogue was first being presented, David Davis’ initial reaction is unsurprising.
“I’ve had enough no hoper horses without paying out cash for something I’ve never seen. I don’t want any part of it. It’s like buying a mirage.” Mirror, February 1954
*Northern Star 6 February 1928
By the time Davis did very reluctantly agree to extend his trainer a 200 guinea line of credit for the Trentham auction, it may have been out of fear his trainer would torture him with another boring foray into bloodlines. Tired of being told to back an absolute certainty that runs near last, seeing his trainer time and again almost at a point of destitution, only to be regaled how wonderful his horses were progressing, Telford held a strange fascination for Davis. He was not completely sure if Telford was delusional or just impervious to pain. Despite wondering if perhaps he was employing the worst trainer in Sydney, Davis saw an embattled optimism and strength in Harry Telford, he found strangely admirable. After fending off repeated requests for funds to buy Lot 41 at Trentham, David Davis may have relented when Telford suggested he would be paying for Lot 41 with his own money. After a strangled laugh, Davis understanding his struggling trainer owed money to just about everyone in Sydney, this might have been the tipping point. Just maybe, Davis didn’t want to read about his trainer being shot to death in a failed bank robbery. Because to David Davis, that would be the only way the Harry Telford he knew could conjure up 200 guineas in 1928. What Davis could be sure of, there would have been no other owner in all of racing foolish enough to have done the same.
Whether David Davis was fully aware of how he managed to be Phar Lap’s owner has never been wholly expressed. What Davis never mentions was knowing his frantic trainer had pretty much begged all his owners and particularly bookie Bob Price to put up some money to buy Phar Lap. Harry Telford repeated his story so many times to so many people he could recite Phar Lap’s bloodline by rote. By the sounds of it, David Davis should have been employing Telford to sell his china and cutlery, for he turned out to be one very persistent, albeit desperate, salesman. Most racing historians see the only commonality between Telford and Davis as Phar Lap. I suggest optimism being another. Both Harry Telford and David Davis were in their own way imbued with an abundance of hopes and dreams. Telford needed to be, otherwise he would have hung himself from a stable rafter years before. Davis believed anything was possible and success a foregone conclusion of setting your mind to something. While many racing critics are quick to point out Harry Telford as being lucky, they are equally dismissive of David Davis for the same reasons. But this is horse racing. An industry that is all about luck. It is also about courage and conviction.
David Davis was the one person in Harry Telford’s life who said “Yes” when someone really needed to step in and save him. Whether he believed in Telford’s yearling, before he saw it, is unknown. Or whether he just felt sorry for his worn-down trainer matters little. By the time that January auction came around at Trentham, Davis effectively placed a £200 bet on Telford. And as far as long odds go, Davis knew his trainer was running 1000 to one to pull this off. So, despite their fraught relationship, and initially regretting his decision, Davis did take a punt on Telford when no one else was prepared to do so. However, this makes the scene of Phar Lap’s arrival at Sydney docks no less harsh. When Lot 41 arrived, it was never going to go well. When he first landed eyes on what his trainer bought him, David J. Davis had a conniption. Harry Telford knew, even before his horse was lowered to the dock, he was in deep shit.
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