By Hunter Fuentes and Jon Stordahl
I Love a Parade
In his lyrics to “Open the Door, Homer,” Bob Dylan wrote, “Take care of all your memories . . . for you cannot relive them.” The holidays are a time particularly rich with memories. A favorite recollection is eating pancakes with my family, watching the Rose Parade every year. I loved the equestrian groups and the marching bands, but especially the floats. Those spectacular, colorful apparitions seemed to levitate down Colorado Boulevard. This year’s showstopper was an entry from the San Diego Zoo that featured two playful pandas perched atop a bamboo forest. Businesses, civic organizations, nations, states and cities spend vast sums to gain recognition and build reputations. For several years during the Great Depression Laguna Beach also sponsored our own float entries hoping to entice visitors to our little corner of paradise.
California mission wedding float. Photo provided by the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection.
Laguna was formally incorporated on June 29, 1927. The 1930 census estimated the town’s population at 1,981. Our small community’s first float was built for the January 1930 parade. The theme that year was “Festival Day in Flowers.” The float we entered was designed by a Laguna businessman, Harold E. Reed, sponsored by the local chapter of the American Legion and christened “A Mission Wedding.” A January 10, 1930 article in the South Coast News noted that Laguna Beach Lumber Company loaned their largest truck for the effort and that a replica of a Spanish mission was built as the float’s centerpiece. Nine local residents made up the wedding party: bride, groom, padre, three bridesmaids, the best man, and two Native- Americans. The celebrants gathered in a flower strewn courtyard with an actual working fountain. The float was covered in aloes and succulents of many varieties and the city’s name was spelled out in over 2,000 white carnations. The float was built with donated labor and materials and had a stated cost of only fifty dollars. By contrast, the float entered that year by Beverly Hills was valued at $7,000. Laguna was awarded the Silver Cup!
“Sirens”, float from 1935 featuring Frank Cuprien. Photo provided the Los Angeles Photographic Collection.
In 1935 the city entered a float named “Siren” that celebrated both our beautiful coastline and our rich artistic history. This float, like all the others entered by the community, was designed by the talented Harold E. Reed. A January 2, 1935 article in the Register said our entry “… was among the most novel in the parade.” Three mermaids waved to spectators from the front of the float while famed artist Frank Cuprien stood with palette in hand before a massive floral representation of one of his seascapes.
The following year’s float was a memorial tribute to the nation’s most popular entertainer, Will Rogers. Often compared to Mark Twain, the Oklahoma born Rogers was considered the voice of the country’s common man. He was also a frequent visitor to Laguna Beach. The Register reported on a September 13, 1933 visit to our town where Rogers and his wife ate at the White House and charmed locals with his humor and accessibility. Rogers and his good friend, Wiley Post, were killed in a plane crash in Point Barrow, Alaska on August 15, 1935. Post was a noted aviator and credited with the first around the world solo flight. Both men were national heroes and their loss was widely mourned. Reed designed a float that featured a large easel with a portrait of Will Rogers crafted, according to the Pasadena Star News and Post, from Cecil Brunner roses, candytuff and flowers of pastel colors. In tribute to Post’s aviation feats, Reed designed a floral terrestrial globe with a mechanized plane circling. Three young Laguna women, one clad as Lady Liberty, rounded out the entry.
1936 tribute float to Will Rogers. Photo provided the Los Angeles Photographic Collection.
Reed’s design for the city’s 1937 float, “America’s Sweethearts,” featured six young women from the community. A December 18, 1936 issue of Laguna Life mentioned a casting call for “… ten pretty girls …” to staff the float; four in period costume, two in contemporary dress, and four alternates. One and a half million people lined the parade route to see the third Laguna entry in as many years. The Los Angeles Times opined “What youth could view the “Sweethearts” float representing Laguna Beach and not wish for himself a Valentine as sweet?”
“Sweethearts”, float from the 45th Tournament of Roses, 1937. Photo provided by the Los Angeles Photographic Collection.
But, it was the 1939 float that left the greatest impression on parade enthusiasts. The city entry, the last of the five designed by Harold Reed, celebrated our annual summer festival, the Pageant of the Masters, then only in its seventh year. As every Pageant goer knows, the finale each year is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” This masterpiece was the subject of that year’s float. Unlike the Pageant, each of the thirteen human figures in the work were not actors but rather were crafted from Cecil Brunner roses and over twenty other types of flowers. The figure of Christ was clad in crimson bougainvillea. The city petitioned parade organizers and was granted the right to have the float serve as the closing exhibit of the parade, a fitting symmetry with the Pageant. There was a minor controversy about the religious subject matter of the city’s submission being “inappropriate,” but that was quickly drowned out by widespread acclimation.
Tournament of Roses pictorial, 1939. Photo provided by the Pasadena Star-News and Post.
50th Tournament of Roses, 1939. Photo provided by the Los Angeles Photographic Collection.
The city’s association with the Rose Parade ended with both a whimper and a bang. Harold Reed had completed the design of an entry for the January 1, 1942 parade and the necessary funds had been raised, but the float was never built. The attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of the Second World War for the United States and the end of Laguna Beach’s participation in the Tournament of Roses Parade. But, for a brief time, Laguna had succumbed to parade fever best captured in the words of one of the parade’s founders, Charles F. Holder. In an 1890 speech he boasted that, “In New York, people are buried in snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.”
Back of the 1939 float. Photo provided by the Los Angeles Photographers Collection.
