Rose Parade float builder pushed bold presentations
Bill Lofthouse, a primary builder of Rose Parade floats who over more than a half-century helped expand the boundaries of the once-boxy creations through elaborate animation and such simple materials as sesame seeds, has died. He was 68.
Lofthouse died July 5 at his son’s home in Arcadia after a short bout with pancreatic cancer, said Larry Palmer, a spokesman for Phoenix Decorating Co., Lofthouse’s float-building business.
“Somebody pays us a whole lot of money, and we build these big toys,” Lofthouse told The Times in 1988. “It’s all fun, and we have fun doing it.”
One of several commercial builders, Phoenix often produces about half of the parade’s approximately 50 floats.
After hearing a Rose Parade broadcaster comment that TV cameras lingered longer on floats that incorporated movement, Lofthouse made animation integral to his floats.
He once acknowledged that clients, who now spend $85,000 to $400,000 on what amounts to a lavish motorized advertisement, “weren’t in it for the flowers.”
Primitive animation in the 1960s -- two kids inside a float using sticks to make a character’s eyelids flutter -- gave way to computers that could be programmed to move a dragon’s head 42 ways.
“Bill was always looking for the newest thing, the biggest and the best thing that would make the crowd go ‘Wow,’ ” Palmer said. “He always wanted people to wonder: ‘How did they do that?’ ”
Courting the spectacular supplied entertaining stories.
During the 1983 parade, Lofthouse’s float for the International House of Pancakes caught fire when the hair -- made of pampas grass -- of a giant sculpted dog found its way into the engine’s manifold. Flames and smoke shot skyward as the dog was consumed. Horrified TV announcers speculated about whether the driver would escape. (He did.)
The next year, Lofthouse capitalized on the news value of the near-tragedy by building a float with the same dog lying atop a stretcher.
When a unique wheel snapped off one float’s axle hours before the parade was to start, Lofthouse relied on instinct to fix it. He banged the now egg-shaped wheel back into shape by dropping it from a 25-foot-high platform.
In a parade that requires every surface to be covered with organic material, Lofthouse pushed to broaden the concept beyond flowers.
“He reinterpreted what qualified as ‘organic material.’ Rice, beans, sesame seeds, seaweed, spices . . . allowed him to get additional textures and details,” Palmer said. “He pioneered doing portraits with such materials.”
William Flinn, chief operating officer of the Tournament of Roses Assn., said Lofthouse’s ingenuity was readily apparent in the way he “always stretched what natural substances from around the world could be used on floats.”
“His overall legacy is the tremendous contribution he made to the development of float building,” Flinn said. “He knew how to unite people in a common goal.”
Noted float designer Raul Rodriguez said Lofthouse’s “quest was to be better than the year before,” a goal he accomplished with “a wonderful sense of humor and camaraderie.”
Born Aug. 15, 1939, in New Bedford, Mass., Lofthouse came to Los Angeles in 1955.
That year, he followed a girl who caught his eye into the barn of pioneering Rose Parade float builder Isabella Coleman, whose first entry debuted in 1910. Thinking he wanted a job, Coleman put him to work. At 18, he married the girl, Gretchen, then 16.
With his wife, he founded Phoenix Decorating and built floats for the Orange Bowl Parade in Florida and the Fiesta Bowl Parade in Arizona before focusing exclusively on the Rose Parade.
About five years ago, his son, Chris, took over the day-to-day running of the company, which allowed Lofthouse to focus on his many philanthropic interests.
After his wife died in 2004, he moved from Bradbury to Pasadena.
For the last of his 53 Rose Parades, Lofthouse built a crowd-pleaser for American Honda, a longtime client. The 2008 float featured a pickup truck that transformed into a spacecraft complete with rocket engine and real fire.
“He loved the process. He loved the creativity,” Palmer said. “He always said he had an absolute favorite float -- the next one he was going to build.”
In addition to his son, Lofthouse is survived by two daughters, Michelle and Cindy; a brother, David; and two grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donating to the Methodist Hospital Foundation, www.methodisthospital.org.
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