Elfrieda Mais

Elfrieda Mais was a star of the early 20th-century fairground race circuit in the USA. She died in 1934 when a driving stunt went wrong.

She raced in the USA between 1912 and 1934, initially alongside her husband Johnny Mais. She was born Elfrieda Hellmann in 1893 and married Jonny in the summer of 1911. She always raced under the name “Miss Mais”, although her marriage to Johnny was short-lived and the first of four. 

As women were prohibited from driving in sanctioned events, she mostly did speed trials and demonstration runs. The early part of her career is a little unclear as she was sometimes mixed up with Arline Mazy, another driver. 

It is in 1915 that her name starts to become a common sight in American newspapers. She took on another woman, Bunny Thornton, at the “Record Aviation and Auto Racing Meet” held as part of the Minnesota State Fair. Elfrieda was driving Johnny’s Mais Special. Bunny Thornton was referred to as the English champion, although she was probably not English. Their wheel to wheel race was over five miles and was won by Elfrieda. The pair renewed their rivalry at the Illinois State Fair, reputedly for a prize of $1000. Bunny was the first of many high-profile female rivals that Elfrieda had over the years.

Her first major male rival was De Lloyd Thompson at the 1916 Minnesota State Fair. This race was even more remarkable because Thompson was flying an aeroplane and Elfrieda was in the Mais Special. This was one of a series of car vs aeroplane races that Elfrieda did, including one in South Dakota shortly after her match with Thompson. She may have even raced against a female pilot, Ruth Law. It was reported in the Springfield News-Leader that noted aviatrix Katherine Stinson defeated Elfrieda by an eighth of a mile in a similar race at the Tri-State Fair.

At around this time, she set a series of speed records, but as she was not part of the motorsport establishment, these were not official. Nevertheless, she periodically bragged in the papers of how she was the "champion woman driver of the world". She continued to work with Johnny and the Mais Special, sometimes presenting herself as Johnny’s sister. In a syndicated 1928 newspaper article she claimed that another Mais sibling, Dolores, had been among her rivals. Elfrieda did have three sisters: Lui, Margaret and Alice, but their name was not Mais.  

For the time being in 1918, Elfrieda and Johnny were still publicly a couple and they began promoting their own car and motorbike race meetings. Both the Mais Special and a Mercer were usually on the bill. They put on events in Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona. In 1919, Elfrieda also drove an Essex car for speed record runs and in 1920 she added a Dodge to her stable.

After a couple of years spent attempting speed records, she made a return to wheel-to-wheel competition in 1921. A women’s race was organised at El Paso between Elfrieda in the Essex, Marie Jones in another Essex and Lottie Sanders in Stutz, probably all owned by the Mais family.

During the 1920s, Elfrieda competed less, partly due to the increasing professionalism of the US motor racing scene and its continuing sidelining of female drivers. She had also separated from Johnny by this point. She still attempted a series of record runs, often in her adopted home state of Kansas where she and Johnny were the leading promoters. These were not sanctioned events and reporting of them is inconsistent, with times stated as new records that contradict earlier ones. The fairground racing scene owed as much to show and spectacle as to sporting principles and promoters were not above stage-management of their events. The skill of the drivers is not in doubt although race results are not hugely reliable.

Ditto drivers’ backstories: Elfrieda claimed in her 1928 interview that she retired from the circuits in 1923 after seeing off another woman driver called Phoebe Miller. I have found no evidence of the mysterious Ms Miller, supposedly a ”millionaire sportswoman” from Memphis who retired herself following her marriage. Elfrieda was certainly less active as the 1920s wore on. She did find herself some more female rivals in 1924 in the shape of Jane Stanage and Mrs Robert H Radtke, who raced her at the North Shore Polo Club speedway. Only Jane Stanage turned up on the day and Elfrieda defeated her.

She took on another female driver, Marion Martins, in Canada in 1925. The two went head-to-head at Regina, Calgary and Edmonton fairgrounds, all half-mile dirt ovals. Elfrieda won one race at Victoria Park, Calgary. Her car was a Briscoe. Marion was almost certainly the driver who went on to become Joan La Costa. 

Joan La Costa eclipsed Elfrieda in the next few seasons, both in speed and in flamboyance. Elfrieda attempted to gain prominence once more in 1928 and her already-mentioned, largely fabricated media interview was part of this. She was now a German driver and had won a ladies’ title in 1927, although she had actually been relatively inactive. 

Increasingly, she turned to stunt driving at fairground dirt tracks to earn money and satisfy her taste for danger. She had tried to enter official AAA events in California in 1931, but her entries were refused and the leading US motorsport authority reiterated its ban on female drivers. In May, she was one of three women who tried to enter the Indianapolis 500. She continued to challenge both male and female drivers on dirt tracks, sometimes in a Duesenberg. 

She was killed in 1934, when one of these stunts went wrong. Having survived driving through a burning wall, her car went through a guardrail and overturned on a bank at the Alabama State Fair. She had previously performed the act successfully on several occasions. 

She is buried in Indianapolis. 

(Image from theoldmotor.com)

Zenita Neville

Zenita Neville  raced in the USA and Canada in the 1920s. She was one of IMCA’s earliest “Champion Woman Drivers of the World”.

IMCA (International Motor Competition Association) was America’s leading promoter of oval racing from about 1910 up until WWII. Many female drivers competed in their events after the “official” US competition board, the AAA, banned women from taking part in sanctioned races and trials. Zenita Neville was one of its earliest female stars.

In 1920, she won her first race, at Combination Park in Massachusetts. The track was a half-mile dirt oval. A couple of weeks later, she won again at Fitchburg Fairground, also in Massachusetts. Her car was a Hudson and this was her regular car between 1920 and 1922. During this time she won at least nine races, all in the northern states and mostly on the East coast. 

In 1922, she also raced a Peerless and an Essex. She travelled to Canada this year, appearing at tracks in Calgary and Edmonton, where she raced against Sig Haugdahl. Photographs show her with a Peugeot at Daytona, but I have been unable to find any results for her in this car. A Canadian paper (the Leader Post from Regina) claims that she won a long-distance race “the Florida beach” the year before. In 1921, Zenita herself claimed to have driven “close to 100mph on the beach at Daytona”. News reports local to Daytona itself make no mention of her at all.

Her normal racing venues were fairground tracks, and she often competed against a driver called Bill Endicott. Their match races would sometimes be preceded by a public disagreement in the local press, usually with Endicott in his capacity as IMCA’s “Dean of Racing Drivers” wishing to bar women from competing and “Miss Neville” defending herself and other women drivers. It was a less well-known fact that “Wild” Bill Endicott, previously known as “Farmer Bill”, was Zenita Neville’s husband.

She was described as the “Champion Woman Driver of the World” and IMCA publicity sometimes claimed she was the only professional female driver in America. 

It is hard to assess how good a driver she actually was. IMCA and other dirt-track promoters were not above stage-managing their events to create more drama and column inches. There are no records of Zenita crashing her car; she seems to have been competent in her handling of it. She often took part in speed trials as well as races, these were harder to influence and may prove a better way of assessing her talent. She won one of these trials at Combination Park, Medford, in 1921, completing two half-mile laps two seconds faster than her nearest rival and appears to have got the better of Endicott over similar distances.

After 1922, she disappears from the entry lists. Her post-motorsport life remains a mystery but we do have some clues as to her previous occupation. Newspaper articles from 1911 talk of a young actress with the same name. The Marshall County News-Democrat described her as hailing from Chicago when she played the lead role in “The Wyoming Girl”. A year later, she crops up in Iowa in the Denison Review, playing the trombone in the Aulger Bros Band. 

(Image copyright Minneapolis Star)

Joan La Costa

Joan LaCosta was a flamboyant French driver (apparently), mostly noted as a daredevil and speed triallist in the USA in the 1920s. Her usual car seems to have been a Miller special.

Joan’s origins are obscure. She appears in the mid-1920s, and by 1925, was proclaimed as the “women’s international champion”, as reported in the Santa Cruz Evening News. The Danville Bee, a Virginia newspaper, elaborated on this, claiming that she won her title in a women’s championship meeting at Indianapolis that year. No details of such a meeting are forthcoming, and Indianapolis was not a welcoming venue to women drivers. The event must have been held somewhere else. Reports from this time suggest that she was most active in Florida. Later, she would claim to have been racing on dirt tracks since about 1923, but this is proving hard to confirm.

There is more concrete evidence of one of the most dramatic incidents of her short career, from 1926. Whilst practicing for a speed record run on Daytona Beach in April, her car caught fire, travelling at about 130mph. The cause of the fire was a broken fuel line. A photographer was on hand to capture Joan leaping from the car, as she steered it into the sea in an attempt to douse the flames. She was not seriously hurt. Only a few days later, she made the record run in a different car, and set a series of new female records, driving at 138mph. The dramatic photos were reprinted in newspapers all across the United States.

Later in the year, she made another record run at Jacksonville beach, also in Florida. This time, she got up to 145mph, smashing her own record. The car was a Miller Special, although not much detail about it is available.

Her talents did not stop with record-breaking. In 1926, Joan entered a match race on a half-mile dirt track, as part of an IMCA (International Motor Competition Association) event in Toronto, Canada. IMCA was the only sanctioning body that allowed women to race at all. She won, beating Louis Disbrow. The two had considerable history, having raced against each other twice, in Canada and Mississippi. The same year as their Toronto battle, Disbrow apparently led a protest against Joan’s inclusion in a Lakewood starting grid. His objection was overturned, partly because her speed-trial times proved that she was faster than several of the male entrants.

IMCA’s leading promoter of the time was J. Alex Sloan, who believed in motor racing as spectacle, and used several woman drivers to add controversy and a touch of glamour to IMCA meetings. At the same time as he was promoting Joan, he was also using Elfrieda Mais, usually as a stunt performer, although she did race occasionally. The row with Disbrow must have had him rubbing his hands together with glee. Disbrow’s position on female drivers was also rather puzzling; his own career had been launched in the 1900s, as a riding mechanic to Joan Newton Cuneo, the first notable American female racer.

Her activities in 1927 are unclear. Her name does not appear on any published start lists for IMCA meetings, but she may well have continued to race at fairgrounds and horse-racing tracks.

In 1928, Joan won a women’s race in Milwaukee, but this was one of her last triumphs. At the end of the year, she announced her intention to retire and take up flying.

This did not happen, although she continued to appear in the news due to a conviction for robbery in 1929. She attempted to steal jewellery from another woman, using a replica gun in a hold-up situation. In defence, she claimed that she had lost “all of her money” at a horse race, and was unemployed. During her court appearance, she fainted and burst into tears of remorse.

By 1931, she had married a meat salesman called Joseph Maurer. At the time, she worked in the offices of a stationery firm, and pronounced herself “through” with both motor racing and aviation.

Joan LaCosta was almost certainly not her birth name. Marriage records show that Joseph Maurer married a woman named Marion Martins in 1931. There was a racing driver named Marion Martin or Martins active in Canada in the summer of 1925, just before Joan LaCosta appeared. She raced against Elfrieda Mais three times, winning once, over a mile, at Regina. Her car was a Frontenac-Ford. She also took part in open races at Edmonton, and set a speed record at Toronto. At the Canadian National exhibition at Toronto the following year, Joan LaCosta makes her confirmed debut. On her arrest for robbery, she was named as Marion Carver. Reports of her trial mention parents living in Memphis, and a former husband named Waldo Martins.

Her original nationality is not clear; she was probably not French, but American or perhaps Canadian. Given the showmanly nature of IMCA’s promoted events, it is not completely surprising that some drivers hid behind noms de course, or exaggerated their origins to make themselves stand out. There was perhaps an element of hiding from a disapproving family or a grudging husband.

She and Maurer had children at some point. Her life after her marriage was spent as a private individual.

(Image source unknown)

Female Drivers in North American Circuit Racing, 1910-1950

Joan LaCosta

Female drivers were banned from competition by the USA’s main motorsport authority, in 1909, but between then and the 1950s, a number of women found ways to race. Many of them competed in speed trials, which were still allowed, and these were often part of fairground “daredevil” exhibitions. The International Motor Competition Association (IMCA) presided over many of these fairground meets, usually run on dirt tracks, and they allowed men and women to race together, as well as putting on women’s races, particularly match races between female drivers. IMCA also promoted motorsport in Canada. Below are profiles of some of these racers. See also The Speederettes for details of an early group of dirt-track racers. Zenita Neville now has her own profile, as does Elfrieda Mais.

Marion Martins - French driver who raced in the 1920s in Canada, usually in IMCA events and driving a Frontenac Ford. In 1925, she competed in Edmonton, Calgary and Regina, on the half-mile dirt oval tracks there. At the Edmonton Exhibition, she won a match race against a driver called Al Cotey. At Regina, shortly before, she defeated Elfrieda Mais in a ladies’ match race. As well as various races, usually of very short distance, she took part in speed trials. For at least one of these, at Ottawa, she used a Bugatti. After 1925, she seems to disappear. Marriage records suggest that she and Joan LaCosta could have been the same person, racing under different names. However, they will remain as separate entries until this is more certain.

Arline Mazy - American stunt driver and occasional racer who was active in the 1910s and is sometimes mixed up with Elfrieda Mais, against whom she competed. In 1918, she claimed in the Muncie Evening Press, and Indiana paper, that she had never been beaten by another woman driver. The same year, in July, she won a race on the Lima Driving Park dirt oval, driving a Hudson and defeating seven other competitors. Two months later, she won another race outright at the track and her car was described as “easily the snappiest car entered.”

May Smylie - raced a Lyons Motor Special at half-mile dirt tracks in the US in 1923 and 1924. She first appears at the North Shore Polo Club in Chicago in July, competing in two races against five other women. She entered the same event in 1924 and despite a dramatic spin in qualifying that nearly ended in a roll, she was second in the first race. In September, she returned to the polo club for a ten-mile challenge race against eight female drivers, including Elfrieda Mais. The winner of this event was set to take on the winner of a men’s race, but the result is not forthcoming.

Simmone Soudan - raced at dirt tracks in Illinois in the mid-1920s. She was active in the series of women’s races that took place at the North Shore Polo Club in Chicago, competing there in 1923 and 1924. The results of these races are not fully forthcoming, although she appears to have been unplaced in 1924. Later, in 1925, she hit the news when her husband of one month, Clyde Beetley, was accused of bigamy by a former wife.

Helen Temme (Pyott) - raced in Chicago and Indiana in the 1910s and 1920s, usually under the name “Mrs. Oliver Temme”. She raced on fairground dirt tracks in a single-seater, and may well have raced in mixed events at least once. A press clipping from 1923 describes a meeting at the North Shore track, where the winner of the ladies’ race would take on the men. She may also have raced at North Shore in 1924. She may have begun racing as a teenager, in 1916, although details of this race have been lost.

Bunny Thornton - racer and daredevil who was a star of the dirt track scene in the 1910s. She was an early rival to Elfrieda Mais. 1915 was her biggest year in a car and she took on Elfrieda Mais several times in states as far apart as Minnesota and Missouri. She earned more media attention when she used her “dainty” Scripps-Booth car to tow Louis Disbrow’s burning car to safety at Michigan State Fair. She acquired a Sunbeam for 2016, but it is unclear whether she ever actually raced it. She later worked as a car sales demonstrator and flew with Katharine Stinson. Bunny was usually referred to as being English and in her early twenties, but a newspaper report of a divorce case involving her gave her real name as Frances Goate, who had first married in 1904. She had previously been an actress.

(Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/shushmuckle/7002149122/. Originally from the Danville, Virginia newspaper, The Bee.)