Betty Boop Shall Lead the Way : Macy’s Annual Thanksgiving Parade Has 59th Outing

She’s five stories tall and her fashionable figure is 34x24x36--feet that is. No, it’s not the female version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man; it’s Betty Boop, the newest balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

She will be the lead balloon but she will not be alone. Along with her 40 handlers and captain, Betty Boop will be joined by eight other giant (average size, five to six stories) balloons, 16 major floats including Santa and his reindeer, 12 marching bands from all over the country, and the casts of five Broadway shows. There will be TV stars Betty Thomas of “Hill Street Blues,” Philip Michael Thomas of “Miami Vice,” and more than 2,000 Macy’s employees and their families who tether the balloons, pull the floats and play the clowns.

Millions Will Watch

About 2 million people will line the 2 1/2-mile parade route. Millions of others will see the spectacle on television--the parade has been broadcast nationally since 1948. Preparations for the 59th edition began last January in Macy’s warehouses in Hoboken, N.J. Once a part-time job for some of the department store’s workers, construction has become a year-round occupation. In an old candy factory on Hoboken’s waterfront, nicknamed the Float Palace, a crew of 20 work all year on floats that appear in the parade.

Overseer and designer of all the floats is Manfred Bass, “the heart, nuts and bolts,” as one worker put it, of the whole operation. Since 1960, when he joined the parade crew, he has been involved in what he calls “the Jules Verne notion of reality as fantasy and fantasy as reality.”

Two of the new floats for this year are perfect examples of the expression of this idea--the Game Train and the Masters of the Universe. The train, what Bass calls “a historical unit,” is an exact copy of the steam locomotives of the last century. Once a part of everyday life, the locomotive is an object of fantasy, existing only on the Monopoly game board and now in the Float Palace. The other part of the equation is the Masters of the Universe float, a children’s cartoon come to life. Good and evil fight it out, swords flashing, atop the float, while a huge green dragon threatens all with destruction, belching synthetic smoke.

Logistics Problems

Logistics are a major concern when the floats are designed and built.

“I worked the Rose Bowl one year--they’re fortunate. They put them (the floats) together in a warehouse and then roll ‘em out,” said worker John Cheney. “These (floats) have to come through a tunnel.”

Starting at 1 a.m. parade morning, the floats begin their trip through the Lincoln Tunnel. Nothing larger than 12 1/2 feet high and eight feet wide can pass. Most of the floats are more than 40 feet high.

“These floats have to come apart and then come back together secure enough that they don’t wobble,” Cheney said.

Whether things wobble is important. The floats carry singers, dancers and actors, performing for a nationwide audience. Steadiness is a virtue.

“It is theater in the round,” Bass explained.

Made in Sections

The massive balloons are constructed in another warehouse in Hoboken. They are made of urethane-coated nylon and filled with a mixture of helium and air. The balloons are made in sections so that a leak or tear in one section of the balloon will not endanger the whole creature.

The balloons are inflated, a section at a time, on West 77th Street in Manhattan the night before the parade. They arrive in trucks and are laid out flat on sheets of cloth on the street. Nets are placed over the balloons so they won’t escape when inflated. Gradually, the gas is pumped in. In a bizarre spectacle the creatures, some 100 feet long, slowly rise up from the street, restrained by nets.

That same night, traffic lights are removed and lampposts are turned away from the street to permit the balloons’ passage. But there are still trees and buildings to reckon with. During the parade, the responsibility for keeping Betty Boop, Garfield and the other balloons out of danger belongs to the handlers and their director.

No Major Glitches

Each balloon is tethered by 35 to 40 people--depending on its length and width. The director, who leads them down the street, must have special skills--the ability to judge the wind, walk backwards and guide the balloon’s release if it snags. In the history of the parade the balloons have usually made it without any major glitches.

But veteran balloon handlers still remember what happened in 1956. Forty-five m.p.h. winds buffetted the parade. Balloons were pushed into buildings, into trees, finally collapsing in masses of fabric on the street. Only Mighty Mouse made it to the finish line in Herald Square. In 1971, because of high winds, the balloons were not even allowed to start.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1924. Consisting of floats, horses and marching bands, the parade started on Convent Avenue and 145th Street and ended at the Macy’s store on 34th Street--a distance of almost five miles. Then, as now, Macy’s employees organized and took part in the parade. The first giant balloons, which included Felix the Cat, the Turkey and the Serpent, made their debut in 1927. The Mickey Mouse balloon took its first bow in 1934.

At first, the balloons were released at the end of the parade. Macy’s offered a prize to whoever could recover them.

“Small private airplanes began to try to capture them and it became a hazard in the sky,” said Dick Schneider, producer and director of NBC’s annual parade coverage. “They had to stop that practice.”

Cancelled by War

The parade was held every year until 1942 when Macy’s cancelled it for two years because of World War II. It began again in 1945. In 1946, the parade switched to its present course down Central Park West to Broadway.

With its nationwide debut on NBC television in 1948, the format of the parade began to change. Television celebrities such as Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca appeared. The Radio City Rockettes performed for the first time in 1958. Organizers began to take into consideration the parade’s larger audience.

Over the years since the first broadcast, Macy’s and NBC came to work closer and closer together. For this year’s parade Dick Schneider, the producer and director of NBC’s coverage, coordinated planning with Jean McFadden, the executive in charge of Macy’s special projects.

There is one element of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that has not changed in all the years, despite the stars and the stellar floats. It’s the department store’s employees.

“They could be elevator operators or salesmen or clerks but on parade day, they’re whatever it takes,” said McFadden. “Then they’re all talent, they’re all stars.”