Mario Andretti was not the only Italian-born American to become a race driver. Italian immigrants, searching for a new life in our still new-world, found racing as exciting in America as did their friends and relatives who remained in Italy. Andretti was proceeded by the great Ralph DePalma, who was born in in 1883, Dario Resta , born in Italy in 1884, and of course Luigi Chinetti, a native of Italy who found fame and fortune in post WWII America.
And not only were the Italian immigrants who donned racing suits men, but as we will see, women as well. Patricia Lee Yongue relates the tragic story of a true pioneer, born in Genoa, Italy.
Italian immigrant Nina Vitagliano. Photo courtesy Stockton, California Library.
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Offspring of noble Italian stock, Nina Vitagliano had emigrated with her parents to (smogless?) Los Angeles reportedly for the sake of her father Colonel Angelo Vitagliano’s health. Always a free-spirited girl, Nina had driven cars in her native Italy and had no intention of giving up this freedom in America of all places. After she married shipping executive Stephen Torre (Torre Shipping Co.), not only did she continue to drive, much to her parents’ distress she determined to race. She also declared her ambition to fly airplanes, like sister race car driver Ruth Wightman, and eventually to return to Italy to drive for the ambulance corps. Unfortunately, she did not live to fulfill these latter goals.
Behind the wheel of the Roamer at Ascot, Nina looked happy and excited. Photo courtesy Stockton, California Library
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Ascot and the Speederettes
The first Ascot circuit, Ascot Park, was a one mile dirt oval between Central and Florence Avenue in Los Angeles, California. It was active from 1908 to 1919, followed by a new paved track opened in the 1920s. Then, as now, California was the hotbed of racing activity, and attracted the best drivers. The first all-women's track race, which took place on February 3, 1918 at Ascot Park, would provide a chance for the young Italian immigrant to show her mettle.
Predictably, the Los Angeles Times announced the event as “Sunday’s big girlie show” but recovered by applauding the women's increasingly improved practice sessions that promised an excellent and exciting race. Ten thousand spectators would show up to watch the seven women, dubbed the “Speederettes,” take off in their cars at the behest of race starter Mrs. Barney Oldfield. Nina Vitagliano raced against Mrs. P.H. Harmon and Ruth Wightman in the Saturday qualifications trials.
The Speederettes line up for a photo op prior to the tragic event at Stockton. Nina and the Stutz at right. Photo courtesy Stockton, California Library
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Ruth Wightman had won the Saturday trial run, but Nina proved her mettle in her “stock, stripped down” Roamer “with boards placed across the chassis.” The car “bounced alarmingly” on the track and, according to petite Nina, it took the foot of her riding mechanic, her cousin Marguerite Buletti, placed on top of hers to keep the throttle down (Stockton Record, March 2, 1918, qtd. in Harris). A few laps into the heat, chugging at 65 mph, her “thundering stripped Roamer swerved from [its] course, swung around in three complete circles, and bounded off the heavy steel rail that guards the outer fence” (LA Times, February 2, 1918). Amazingly, Nina piloted the Roamer to the pits on three wheels, the car (not badly damaged) was repaired, and Nina and Marguerite, nonplussed, were ready for “the big race” on Sunday. Accessible newspaper accounts following the Sunday race make no mention of Nina, however, so we do not know yet if she started, did not finish, or did not place well.
Stockton and the mystery Stutz
The Roamer Nina drove at Ascot Park was not a real race car, as Nina herself pointed out in the interview she gave the Stockton Record the day before her death, but the car she raced to her death on the one-mile Stockton dirt track was indeed a real race car, allegedly the famous #8 Stutz belonging to Earl Cooper. Ambiguity surrounds the identity of the car, however, and debate surrounds the issue of an amateur amateur like Nina taking the wheel of a “real race car.” Ruth Wightman piloted Eddie Pullen’s #4 Mercer. Erstwhile race car driver, Omar Toft, the promoter and organizer of the March 3, 1918 Speederettes race, figures in both narratives.
But the Stutz, detuned or not, was a horse of a different breed. Photo courtesy Stockton, California Library
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Although the Speederettes were wealthy women, like most American women racers they did not own their own race cars. Women did not race often enough to justify keeping a race car. Usually they borrowed or bought a ride. Their mind set, whatever their passion or reason for racing, could not possibly equal that of experienced male racers. Nor could their knowledge of the cars they drove. When Omar Toft organized the Stockton race for the Speederettes, billed “the world championship for women auto racers on a dirt track,” he negotiated to have the women drive well-known “big” race cars of well-known male racers. Promotion and attendances--hence profits--would get a boost. For their part, the male race car drivers could also realize extra profit and publicity by renting out their cars. Questions about the safety of the inexperienced Speederettes piloting professional cars apparently went unraised, although Omar Toft did assemble the ladies the morning of the race to caution them against certain maneuvers. We might also assume that an Eddie Pullen or an Earl Cooper would switch out engines and/or detune his race car before he turned it over to a very raw amateur driver.
After examining photos of Nina's Stutz, Joe Freeman suspects that the car was probably a replica “Stutz,” a modified Stutz Bearcat with some Maxwell parts, including the radiator, that was intentionally constructed to pass as the celebrated #8, a charade about which Nina herself probably knew nothing. In any event, some have asked, why would Earl Cooper permit so fast and famous a car (now in the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles) to be raced by so greenhorn a driver, even for an extra few dollars (Radbruch and Yongue, page 2)? George Ktsanes of Wisconsin, however, believes that Nina’s car was in fact the #8 Stutz Cooper had won with at Point Loma in San Diego in 1915. This #8 was built on a modified Bearcat chassis and would have been ready for “pasture” and Omar Toft by 1918.
Tragedy and the end of the Speederettes
Famous #8 Stutz or no, when Nina heard about the race in Stockton, which would proceed from the checkered flag according to AAA rules, she was not to be deterred. Ruth Wightman promptly issued her a challenge, one Nina delightedly and promptly accepted. The Italian community of Stockton rallied to her support by raising funds for a silver trophy cup, presuming, of course, that their favorite daughter would triumph. And Nina did win the first race, a one lap sprint. But in the second race, a five lap contest, Nina seemed to abandon Omar Toft’s vigorous pre-race admonitions, especially about passing on a turn. Ruth Wightman led the race from the start and increasingly picked up speed. Not to be slighted, Nina gave the throttle all she had and tried to overtake Ruth going into a curve. Suddenly, Omar Toft’s fears became reality. The Stutz bounced into the air, struck a pine tree, lost its front axle and front wheels, “bounded over the embankment . . . hurdled a ditch, crashed through the fence, injuring three spectators, and finally turned over, a mass of steel” (Stockton Record, March 4, 1918, qtd. in Harris).
The wreckage of the Vitagliano Stutz. Both Nina and her co-pilot were killed. Photo courtesy Stockton, California Library
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This time, Nina could not pluckily right her car and steer it to the pits. She had died instantly, her neck broken, her chest crushed. Her riding mechanic, Bob Currie, died of his injuries two days later. In addition to the spectator injuries, a child died. Some post-accident analysts attributed the car's sudden leap to a blown tire, a theory fueled by reports that Nina had commented at practice that she felt the retread tires, standard post-war equipment, were unsafe. Others said she was going too fast to pass on a curve and that, perhaps imitating Marguerite Buletti at Ascot, Bob Currie may have pressed his foot on Nina’s at the throttle. Still others felt that Nina was a victim not of unsafe retreads, Omar Toft’s promotions, Ruth Wightman’s dare, the Stutz’s power and weight, or her unfamiliarity with handling a “real race car”--all contributing factors--but mostly of her own characteristic incaution, recklessness, and/or ferocious determination to win.
Stockton's Italian community did not pass judgment, only mourned the tragedy and took pride in their countrywoman’s adventurousness and courage. They ordered massive bouquets of flowers for Nina and held a funeral procession on March 5 that proceeded from El Dorado Street to the Southern Pacific depot, where Nina's body was transported by train to Los Angeles.
Nina Vitagliano Torre’s death ended the short life of the Speederettes.
Notes and Credits:
This unprecedented tragedy in women’s history, is foregrounded by a history unearthed by Southern California motorsports historian Harold Osmer (see “Speederettes at Ascot,” The Alternate, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 15, 1997, pp. 1, 3) and by former University of the Pacific student Sonja Harris and her advisor Professor Caroline Cox (“Roaring into the Twenties: The Story of the Speederettes, Female Automobile Racers of the1910s and1920s www.pacific.edu/cop/history/Roaring%20Twenties.htm). The Harris-Cox history evolved into a featured exhibition at University of the Pacific Library, Stockton, in 2003. What turns out to be for auto historians a mystery about the car Nina drove on the tragic day is distilled from correspondence and conversations with American motorsports historians Joe Freeman and Don Radbruch (see Radbruch and Yongue, “Nina and the ‘Stutz’: A Disaster at Stockton,” The Alternate, Vol. 17, No. 5, May 15, 2005, pp. 1-2, 4, 12), and from Don Radbruch’s correspondence with George Ktsanes
