Palomino Horse History: Lyle V. Williams, Alla's Lei Lani, and The Silver Saddle Inn

Lyle V. Williams on his Palomino mare Lei Lani

When I go to estate sales, I am always on the lookout for items that show the small details of the rich history of horses in California. 

I went to such a sale in Simi Valley recently, where someone had saved a postcard that sheds light on one of those small details that might otherwise be forgotten. It shows two photos of Lyle V. Williams' Silver Saddle Inn, in the Southern California city of Downey.

In the years following World War II, much of America was in love with itself and also with cowboys and their horses. It was not uncommon during this time for the owners of restaurants, hotels, and motels to promote their properties using postcards. And for such a property to have an equestrian motif -- particularly a "cowboy" or "western" theme -- was not unusual in the Western US. 

But the Silver Saddle Inn had pretty unique exterior design elements that made it stand out: horseshoe-shaped door frames and a very large horse weathervane on the roof. 

The back of the postcard gives us the details:

Lyle V. Williams

Silver Saddle Inn

7339 East Florence Ave.

Downey, California

TOpaz 1-8246

Lyle V. Williams on his Champion Palomino, Lei Lani

Posed in front of his Famous Restaurant

Owner of SILVER SADDLE INN

One of California's finest & most interesting restaurants

Luncheons - Dinners - Banquets

Our Famous Sunday Las Vegas Brunch

"The Family Favorite"

And to the right of the Inn's exterior, are Williams and Lei Lani. She was registered as a half-Arabian mare, Alla's Lei Lani; more on that in a minute.

Apparently Lyle V. Williams (1914-1993) was involved with one or more car dealerships in Downey before he got into the restaurant business.  A newspaper article on the Palomino Exhibitors Association of California, from 1950, says the address 7339 E. Florence Ave. was his residence.

The first mention I see of the Silver Saddle Inn in local newspapers, is in 1956.  The inside of the building must have been as visually interesting as the outside.

Long Beach Independent, 7 June 1956

"One of the most unusual restaurants in California has been built by Lyle Williams in Downey... Named the Silver Saddle Inn, there is on exhibition the silver saddle used by Williams in rodeos and major parades, including President Eisenhower's inaugural parade. Williams is also a member of the Long Beach Mounted Patrol, and the Trophy Room in the restaurant holds the various trophies and awards he and his prize palomino mare, Leilani, have won. The interior is of glowing mahogany planks, with the walls covered half way up with hand-picked rocks from all over the world, collected by Williams."

The silver saddle on display was said to have been worth $7,000.

Another newspaper article said the Inn also featured a "celebrity walk" in which Williams' friends, including TV and film stars, had placed their footprints. It noted that the Inn was the culmination of a dream Williams had had in 1932 when he was working as a waiter in Minnesota.

On September 4, 1961, local TV station KTTV aired a feature program on the Silver Saddle Inn. 

Williams took out a full-page ad in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on 14 August 1962:

(I could editorialize about the non-Western/Cowboy-themed "entertainment" mentioned in this ad -- a "lingerie luncheon show?" -- but I don't want to digress too much from the horse aspects of the story.) 

I tried enhancing the picture of Williams on his Palomino, without much success.

On Sundays, the Inn offered free stagecoach rides (a photo of the stagecoach appears later in this article), free train rides, and "Indian singing and dancing." 

Lyle Williams was involved with Palomino horses in Southern California from the late 1940s. This ad in the 16 September 1948 Southwest Wave newspaper shows he had a mare for sale, in foal to the famous Arabian stallion Alla Amarward. The chestnut Alla was renowned as a sire of half-Arabian palominos. I'm not sure what happened to the foal the mare was carrying.

Alla Amarward, chestnut Arabian stallion, 1935 (Stambul x Makina, by Letan). 
He was owned by Herbert H. Reese. Photo from the Western Livestock Journal,
15 January 1942.

Alla Amarward was bred to a palomino mare called Williams' Golden Dolly, who produced the palomino filly Alla's Lei Lani in 1951. I think it's reasonable to assume that Williams' Golden Dolly was also owned by Lyle V. Williams. Here is a color closeup of Alla's Lei Lani, from the postcard:

Alla's Lei Lani (Alla Amarward x Williams' Golden Dolly)

When researching subjects like this, I often turn to other equine historians for help. Dee Adkins saved two photos of Alla's Lei Lani. This one is from an old Horse Lover's magazine from the mid- to late 1950s.

And this one from Arabian Horse News magazine in 1962:

And Pat Mefferd pulled this photo of Williams and his mare from an old issue of Western Horseman magazine.

Lyle V. Williams served as the head of the Palomino Exhibitors Association of California. In this photograph in the Wave from 3 August 1950, he is seen with other club members Jordon Dunaway and Cecile Turner, and horse trainer Mark Smith, who had worked for years at the Kellogg Ranch in Pomona.

A palomino mare owned by Williams, who may have been Lei Lani herself, appeared in the 4 November 1955 Los Angeles Times, with a young ventriloquist.

It appears that Williams put "my famous Pal [omino] parade mare" up for sale a few years later, based on this 10 August 1958 classified ad in the LA Times. I don't know if he actually sold her or not, nor what happened to the foal:

Williams also owned a stagecoach-and-four that participated in regional equestrian activities and may have been the one that appeared at the Silver Saddle Inn during the early 1960s. Here, the team is ready to perform in the mountain community of Wrightwood.

San Bernardino County Sun, 3 July 1960.

Williams is listed as participating in numerous parades and equestrian events in Southern California during the 1950s and early 1960s, including several Tournament of Roses Parades in Pasadena.

By April 1967, however, the Silver Saddle Inn's days were numbered. A classified ad in the LA Times shows that  the property was up for sale.

In 1968, Williams put the Silver Saddle Inn itself up for sale.

And a local newspaper reported on the closure of the "once-magnificent restaurant."

By Spring 1969, the Silver Saddle Inn had been purchased by Warren L. Ward, remodeled, and renamed The Raffles (after the legendary English highwayman).  It was said to have been built on the site of a "one-time Downey farmhouse" of 12,000 square feet, seating 500 people.  Ward got into the catering business in 1985, out of the same location.

By the 31 July 1988, The Raffles' days were over. The building was demolished, according to this ad in the Los Angeles Times.

It appears that Lyle V. Williams eventually ended up in Riverside County, California. According to Arabian Horse DataSource, Williams co-owned and bred several other horses, including Arabians and part-Arabians, between 1956 and 1980.  He died in 1993.

_______________________________________

Thanks to Dolores "Dee" Adkins and Pat Mefferd for the photos of Alla's Lei Lani.

And thanks to the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library, part of Special Collections, Cal Poly Pomona University Library, for access to their back issues of Western Livestock Journal.

___________________________________________________________

Sidebar, since so many people took organ lessons during this time period: Williams employed the Philippines-born musician Porfirio "Pomping" Vila (1912-1995) to play the Silver Saddle Inn's Hammond organ.  

Vila entertained Southern California audiences on the keyboard in lounges, restaurants, music stores, benefit concerts at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles and the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and on the Crown Theater in Pasadena's (okay, I'll say it) Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s.

Following the Sparkle: An Arabian Horse Costume Story

This story was updated in February 2023.

Many of my horse-loving friends and I enjoy going to yard sales, estate sales, antique malls, and flea markets. Those are the places we search for vintage horse-related items -- model horse figurines, old horse magazines, artwork, photographs, horse show programs, and the like.

But sometimes we find something larger, that warrants further study. That was the case earlier this summer when my friend Lynn in Arizona -- egged on, aided and abetted by me on Facebook Messenger in real time -- rescued some Arabian horse history from an estate sale. The items included photograph albums, Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show programs...and the mid-1970s "native" costumes worn by the half-Arabian Saracen and his rider, Robin Peters.

Saracen won the 1975 U.S. Reserve National Half-Arabian Champion Native Costume trophy. His sire Rasakkla was foaled at the Kellogg Ranch in Pomona, California in 1942, a son of one of the most influential Arabian sires in the first half of the twentieth century, the Crabbet Arabian stallion *Raseyn, by Skowronek. Saracen was foaled in 1962. Saracen's dam was a mare called Speckled Mama I; I have not been able to find a pedigree for her.  

The estate sale contained a scrapbook full of photos of the Peters family's Arabian horses. Here's one of Saracen, the year before he won the Reserve National Champion award, participating in the annual Parada del Sol in Scottsdale, Arizona. (I went to that parade, so I must have seen him, not knowing of course that decades later I would be blogging about him.) 

Saracen also apparently was shown in dressage and sidesaddle classes, based on the photos in the album, underscoring the fact that the half-Arabian horse's versatility was prized in the 1970s.

My friend picked up several other items from the estate for me, and some for herself.  And we pooled our resources to obtain the most unusual thing I've ever bought at an estate sale:

Saracen's actual costume.

Well, we couldn't leave it there...!

I traveled to Arizona in late Spring to pick up the costume and the photographs, so I could do additional research on them, including trying to find out who created this award-winning design. First things first: I wanted to see if the costume was intact, or if there were any pieces missing. The easiest way to do this was to find an absolutely "bomb-proof" horse to try on the costume, and bring a friend to help me put the costume on the horse.

So I enlisted the help of my local model horse collector friend Melanie, and one warm afternoon last month we drove out to Calabasas Saddlery to meet up with the company's most iconic employee: they call him Lackomotion. (I hope I spelled that correctly!)

Lackomotion is a great example of the fiberglass Quarter Horse designed by Gladys Brown Edwards for Prewitt's; the design dates back to the 1960s, although this example is apparently from the 1970s.  He was, predictably, very patient as we tried Saracen's too-small costume on his sturdy frame.

If the costume did not come with a custom-made saddle, then it's pretty much intact to this day; only one black yarn tassel is missing. Some equestrians from "back in the day" tell me that they used a flat (English) saddle covered in cloth to match the costume. This photo in the scrapbook implies that the saddle for Saracen's costume may have been one of these.

Other Arabian horse costume riders tell me they would rebuild an Army McClellan saddle to use with the costume. For the amount of time the rider spent in the saddle, they say, either would suffice.

The bridle is intricately designed. But Saracen's head was much smaller than Lackomotion's!

The stirrups that came with the costume appear to be regular Western saddle stirrups, decorated with the same materials as the costume. Above the stirrup in the photo below, you can see a slot in the fabric for the saddle leather that would connect the saddle to the horse under the costume.

Importantly, the costume came with a couple of boxes of spare parts -- skeins of black yarn, silver string, tiny mirrors, sequins, etc. In the boxes with it were the almost impossibly small rider's costume as well -- vest, harem pants, headdress, silver shoes, and all.

The idea of Arabian horse costumes was intriguing enough to justify making a return trip to the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona, which just reopened for researchers a few days ago (as I write in early September 2021).  When I made my online reservation, I asked the staff to set out the documents and photos from the Lois Ann Kroll Collection. She was arguably the best-known Arabian costume designer of her day, and WKKAHL holds her papers, photographs, and even some of the actual costumes for horse and rider that she designed.  She also wrote a well-known book on how to make your own Arabian costume.

The online Finding Aid for her papers notes:

Lois Ann Kroll was an Arabian horse trainer and owner. She also was the author of a book on show costumes for Arabian horses and riders. Kroll was born on December 1, 1932 in North Dakota. In 1963, Kroll wrote a book called Arabian Costumes, which taught readers how to design costumes for Arabian horses and their riders. She revised the book in 1999. In addition to designing costumes, Kroll also trained and owned Arabian horses and rode horses in various shows and events, including the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. She was owner of Silver Shadows Arabians in the community of Canyon Country in California. Kroll died of pancreatic cancer on August 8, 2006. She was 73 years old.

Lois Ann Kroll and Royal Shadow,
Arizona Republic, 15 February 1971.

I reviewed three boxes of file folders of Lois Ann's writings, drawings, and photographs, as well as the "proof" copies of both editions of her book on Arabian costumes. 

Lois Ann said she always provided a box of spare parts when she designed a costume.  But she also noted that she didn't recommend putting decorations under the saddle area, since they would be covered up by the saddle and the rider's costume.

WKKAHL had two of Lois Ann's costume saddles on display in the area of the Horse Library set aside for researchers. Both had purpose-built decorated saddles with metal stirrups, which Saracen's costume did not have when my friend found it. The red and black saddle is part of the famous "phoenix" costume shown in the newspaper photo above.

Side note: You really have to see the rest of the famous "Phoenix" costume to believe it, including the rider's cape.  A few years ago, the archivist at WKKAHL brought the whole costume out for me and some other visitors. It's huge. And heavy. And completely amazing.

Here is a link to video footage of a costume class in Pomona, California, from the Lois Ann Kr0ll collection. There are two, roughly 3 1/2 minute films available here.

https://archive.org/details/cpomcp_000090/cpomcp_000090_r02_access.HD.mp4

Lois Ann Kroll also taught classes in how to make costumes for Arabian horses. There are professional photos from at least one of the classes in the collection at WKKAHL, and newspaper articles from the 1960s mention them. On the back of one such photo, Lois Ann wrote that she was charging $2,000 and up even in the 1960s.

This 3 November 1964 article in the Van Nuys News tells us that Lois Ann was going to speak at a meeting of the Arabian Horse Association of the San Fernando Valley. By that time, she had already made more than 150 costumes for horses and riders, and was a regular participant in the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. 

(And Hagen-Renaker was doing a display of ceramic Arabians and horses of other breeds at the same meeting! Oh, to be able to time-travel.)

The 18 November 1965 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on the conclusion of a 15-week class taught by Lois Ann, for members of the Southern California Arabian Horse Association.  They were able to create their own costumes without having to spend as much money. 

The Monrovia Daily News-Post also wrote an article, this time with a photo of some of the class participants with the instructor.

In her book The Romance of the Kellogg Ranch, Mary Jane Parkinson reported, "New Arabian costumes designed and produced by Lois Ann Kroll of Reseda, California, a professional trainer and costume designer, added more dash and color" to the Sunday Arabian horse shows at Cal Poly Pomona. In 1970, newspapers reported that Lois Ann had donated two costumes to the program.

La Verne, California Leader, 5 February 1970

Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1970

Saracen's silver and black costume underscores the versatility of the Arabian horse and the importance of costume classes at Arabian and Half-Arabian horse shows. The fact that it has survived this well for this long, shows the level of detail and craftsmanship that went into its creation. 

Not knowing how to get in touch with Saracen's family (the house where the estate sale was held, was sold), I may never know the backstory of his costume, or whether it was inspired by Lois Ann Kroll's book. But the fact that someone saved the costume and the scrapbook full of photos of him for more than 40 years, tells me that Saracen was loved, admired, and appreciated.

The story of the costume has a happy ending: we donated it to the Arabian Horse Association of the San Fernando Valley. Their youth riders are using the costume, worn by Arabians, at parades and other equestrian events.

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Many thanks to the good folks at Calabasas Saddlery for kindly letting us borrow Lackomotion:  

https://www.calabasassaddlery.com/

Thanks, as always, to the staff at the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library: Katie Richardson, Head of Special Collections and Archives; Special Collections and Archives Coordinator Rob Strauss; and Library Assistant/Reading Room Coordinator Kimberley Erickson.  

Here's a link to the Finding Aid for the Lois Ann Kroll collection at the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona:

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8z03fjw/

And the link to information on the Library itself:

https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/wkkahl

Here's a link to the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Center's website: http://www.wkkelloggarabianhorsecenter.com/

My blog post about Gladys Brown Edwards' fiberglass Quarter Horse design is here:

https://californiahorsehistory.blogspot.com/2020/09/prewitt-fiberglass-quarter-horse.html

Thanks to my friend Tobi Lopez Taylor for the photo with information on Saracen's Reserve National Championship. I could not have done this research without my friend Lynn Lindgren, who tracked down the estate sale and partnered with me on acquiring the costume. And thanks to friend Melanie Teller for braving the summer heat, to help me try the costume on the fiberglass horse.

Equine history research is so much better with friends.

 

Lois Ann Kroll on Amir Dharan. Van Nuys News, 3 November 1964