Brenna Malloy's "Rocket" film

is a treat for racing historians 

The author was a guest at the recent showing of Brenna Malloy’s short film “Rocket,” as part of Race Car Day at the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo California one of the many 2019 LA Speed Week events.  Ms. Malloy’s charming film takes the viewer on a nostalgic trip back into nineteen fifties dirt track racing that follows the adventures of young racer named Annie Pankratz. The film was made as Brenna’s master’s thesis in Film Studies at Chapman University has captured numerous awards, including a 2016 Student Academy Award.

For the car lover, the movie features ten of her grandfather Tom Malloy’s vintage open-wheel race cars, including midgets, sprint cars and track roadsters but the star of the film, the Myron Stevens built Chapman Special that was driven by Ed Elisian in the 1954 Indianapolis 500-mile race. Befitting the star, the car was on display in the corner of the Packard Auditorium where the film was shown. 

After the screening of the film, Brenna and her grandfather took questions and shared stories.  Ms. Malloy revealed that the genesis of her film came when she heard the heartbreaking story that Bill Vukovich Junior was listening to the radio broadcast of the 1955 Indianapolis ’500’ in which his father perished. She also shared that she used the name of her film’s lead character, Annie Pankratz, from the famous three-generation racing family because she thought the name “very cinematic.”

Tom Malloy, a noted vintage racer, shared memories of his father, Emmett’s race track, Carrell Speedway, and as a young man working alongside Bob Pankratz, the family patriarch as he built Emmett’s Indianapolis car. Tom also shared that “Rocket” was a family project, as the racing scenes were shot at on a temporary track bulldozed into the hills of his brother Mike Malloy’s farm near Lompoc, California.  

        

In addition to the Malloy family, other guests at the event included midget racer Jerome Rodela, who briefly appears in the film as a driver of a vintage Kurtis-Kraft midget, and famed sports car racer John Morton who both shared terrific racing stories.