I was researching J. Cheever Cowdin, a polo player of note, when Google directed me to a Spanish-language site dedicated to horror films and this photo of Louise Allbritton as a southern heiress waiting for a warm glass of milk in The Son of Dracula (1943). Needless to say, I was fascinated by this turn of events, and the possible linkage of polo to vampires.

As it happened, there were two sides to J. Cheever Cowdin. On one hand, he was the son of John E. Cowdin, 10-goal legend from Rockaway, and grew up playing polo with the likes of Malcolm Stevenson and Tommy Hitchcock Jr. On rainy days, however, he was a financier who, by 1936, had loaned so much money to Universal Pictures that he had to sit down and run the studio for 10 years, during which time he produced The Son of Dracula, set in the Deep South and directed by film noir’s Robert Siodmak, recently relocated from Berlin.

It all makes sense to me now.