Hollywood Christmas tradition still on parade

For more than three-quarters of a century, the Hollywood Christmas Parade has stepped onto Hollywood Boulevard, an enduring Los Angeles tradition that began as a promotional event to boost holiday shopping along the famed thoroughfare.

In the 1920s, Hollywood merchants, under the leadership of future Los Angeles County Supervisor Harry M. Baine, chipped in and bought two live reindeer to draw a sleigh on wheels down Hollywood Boulevard, with Santa piloting the vehicle with a different celebrity each night.

Merchants also decorated their boulevard with live Christmas trees and huge papier-mache Santa heads poking out of cardboard chimneys.

The event was named the Santa Claus Lane Parade in 1928 to showcase Southern California’s “star city.” Actress Jeannette Loff was the first starlet to ride shotgun with Santa and greet all of the shoppers.

During the rest of the year the reindeer were cared for by county parks employees and stabled in a barn at Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue for the public to view.

In 1929, Los Angeles Mayor John C. Porter officially christened Hollywood Boulevard “Santa Claus Lane.”

Two years later, a truck-pulled float of Santa and his workshop replaced the reindeer.

The one-sleigh act had turned into a full-blown parade by 1932, with bands and equestrians. Comedian Joe E. Brown served as first grand marshal. The live Christmas trees formerly used along Hollywood Boulevard were replaced with 16-foot-high, 750-pound metal trees, each with 160 lights. Tinseled wreaths bedecked the lampposts, each bearing a photograph of a celebrity participant, including Claudette Colbert and Gloria Stuart. (Decades later, the latter portrayed the elderly Rose in the 1997 film “Titanic.”)

During World War II, the metal trees were donated to aid in the war effort, and the parade was discontinued.

But it made its comeback in 1945. That parade, which cost a then amazingly high $120,000, drew 300,000 spectators to watch as Bob Hope switched on the trees’ multicolored lights and Jack Benny cut the ribbon.

In the talent-laden parade, such celebrities as George Burns and Gracie Allen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Abbott and Costello and Dinah Shore waved from cars, and Hoagy Carmichael played a piano mounted atop a float, singing a medley of his tunes.

The following year, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy superstar of the silver screen, rode his horse Champion ahead of Santa’s float.

He said later that he could hear the children yelling with excitement: “Here Comes Santa Claus!” It was an inspirational moment, he would later say, and the following year, he and composer Oakley Haldeman wrote and recorded the song “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

Television coverage began in 1948 for a strictly local Hollywood audience.

But by the 1960s the parade had lost its luster and could not attract crowds or prominent celebrities.

It was in a downward spiral until John F. Golden, the longtime head of Western Costume Co. and Hollywood’s biggest booster, along with future “honorary mayor” Johnny Grant, stepped in in 1978 to restore glamour to the event.

Recently reminiscing about his 25 years as parade director, Grant recalled: “One year Santa’s float got stuck behind paramedics delivering a woman’s baby. Tinker Bell got hung up on a wire for about 15 minutes as the Disney float continued down the boulevard without her. Another time, a Santa got here early and got bombed with too much holiday cheer. And one time I had to arrange for a Fire Department helicopter to get Stevie Wonder to the parade on time.”

Under Golden’s and Grant’s leadership, the name of the parade was changed from the Santa Claus Lane Parade to the Hollywood Christmas Parade, turning the event once again into a marketing tool for Hollywood and Southern California.

Autry became a major parade sponsor and hosted a lavish party for participants. KTLA and other television stations around the country signed on, and the 1978 parade was the first to be seen by a national and international audience.

Together, Golden, Grant and Autry roped in a long list of celebrity grand marshals to roll down the boulevard, including Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Jimmy Stewart, Sammy Davis Jr., Charlton Heston, Bob and Dolores Hope, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

In 1979, the parade route was lengthened to include Sunset Boulevard, because 50,000 people had to be turned away the previous year for lack of room on Hollywood Boulevard.

While the parade continues to draw big crowds, its ability to attract giant Hollywood stars in recent years has been harder to come by and the event has financially struggled. But this year’s parade -- the 75th -- will feature two grand marshals: Comedian George Lopez and television personality Regis Philbin.

For the past three years, Tim Connaghan of Riverside, who has 38 years in the professional Santa business, has reigned as Santa with a smile--and belly-shaking ho-ho-ho greetings in five languages to cheering ovations.

cecilia.rasmussen@latimes.com