History can be inspiring, profound and amazing. Also fun. Want to tell a good story at the Thanksgiving table? Try these tales about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
First, some vocabulary. This week, start casually dropping these terms into conversation. A “balloonicle” is a combination of balloon and vehicle. “Falloon” = float + balloon. “Trycaloons” are balloons on tricycles. Balloon Pilot is the job we all aspire to, aside from being a Rockette, or in a marching band. All require strong legs, and the Pilots have to be able to walk backward for the entire route without stumbling.
The Parade has always included Santa, and originally culminated in a reveal of the world-famous Macy’s Christmas windows at the store in Herald Square. Giant balloons were added in 1927 to great enthusiasm. For a few years, they were designed with slow leaks and released into the sky after the festivities, with a letter attached in a waterproof envelope, inviting finders to return them for a $100 reward, the equivalent of about $1,845 today. News stories alerted people downwind to watch the skies. One balloon, a tiger, landed on the roof of a Long Island home. Another came down in the East River, where it “broke in two and was pursued by tugboats.” A 25-foot high ghost was last seen headed seaward over the Rockaways, pursued by a flock of gulls.
The gulls were likely astonished, as was an aviation student who spotted an enormous balloon, reported as a “tom-cat”, at an altitude of 5,000 feet. She rammed it and sent the plane into a spiral. The instructor took over the controls and saved the humans, but that was the end of the tom-cat, and of the balloon releases.
As the balloons got taller, there were more reports of them “greeting” spectators in third and fourth and fifth floor windows along the route. There were mishaps: lampposts, punctures, rough winds. One wet year, Donald Duck’s jaunty hat filled up with 50 gallons of rainwater. When the balloon tipped in the wind, the spectators were drenched. In 1931, Felix the Cat burst into flames after getting caught in some telephone lines.
Broadway musicals have been featured in the Parade since at least 1980, when The Pirates of Penzance cast performed atop a pirate ship float. And yes, you’re right. The performers are lip-synching.
Vintage footage of the early parades, with their wonderfully awkward balloons and floats, and real glimpses of New York and New Yorkers through the years, can be found on YouTube. Real footage also opens what might be the greatest Christmas movie of all time.
The original Miracle on 34th Street film was shot in part during the Parade in 1946. (Background shots and a bit of dialogue point out a giant balloon baseball player, re-painted that year after having appeared as a clown.) Actor Edmund Gwenn, perhaps our most iconic film Santa, actually rode the sleigh during the parade that year. That’s in the film, too. Both Maureen O’Hara, who played the Macy’s harried parade coordinator, and eight year old Natalie Wood, playing her daughter Susan, talked about the shoot in their autobiographies.
It was a bitter cold Thanksgiving day that year, and the street scenes shot on site for O’Hara and Gwenn were frigid. The movie, of course, wasn’t out yet, so there was no special press mention of Gwenn riding the parade route as Kris Kringle; one next-day newspaper story referred to the actor climbing down from the sleigh “half-frozen”. Interior scenes were shot at night, when the holiday-decorated store was closed. Little Natalie was happy to stay up far past her bedtime and on breaks she and the famous O’Hara would walk through the quiet, closed store and look at the toys and girl’s dresses. One of her biographers revealed that, having never seen Edmund Gwenn without his beard, the child actually believed the actor was Santa Claus.
The adult stars, including male lead John Payne, used their breaks to walk the streets of New York to see the Christmas decorations. O’Hara recalled that “Edmund, John (the male lead) and I went for a walk up Fifth Avenue. Natalie had to go to bed, but we didn’t. We stopped and window-shopped at all the stores, which were beautifully decorated for the holidays. I got such a big kick out of seeing the expressions of window dressers who saw Edmund peering in at them.”
I love this story of movie-making overlaid on a sleeping city, and actors on downtime slipping out to stroll the sidewalks, glimpsed by a late-working window dresser, who might have peered out on the sidewalk, artificial snow in hand, to see both Santa and O’Hara, Tarzan’s Jane, peering back. Macy’s, the world’s largest department store, was at full holiday speed. I suppose when the store closed at night, the movie folk came in, and the next morning, the store had to be ready to open for customers. I would have liked to see that two-way transformation.
For your Thursday dinner, here is more arcane knowledge you are welcome to casually employ, no attribution necessary. What character balloon has had the most appearances in the Macy’s parade? (Snoopy, more than forty) What size box does a folded balloon have to fit in to be transported through the Lincoln Tunnel to the parade site? (12’ x 8’) What profession did the original balloon designer Tony Sarg, who also made the world-famous Macy’s Christmas windows, come from? (Puppeteer, and what a career!)
You’re welcome. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Sources: mybucketlist.com, mentalfloss.com, slashfilm.com, Wikipedia, “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” (Grippo and Hoskins, Arcadia Publishing 2004.) Caveat emptor: author has done zero fact-checking. (!)
Photo of A Felix the Cat balloon in the 1927 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was the first balloon to appear in the parade.| Public Domain