By coincidence, as I was writing the previous posting, my pal Stu Shostak e-mailed me a link to a video taken outside the Pantages Theater in 1960. It's 24.5 minutes from that year's Santa Claus Lane Parade — an annual ritual back then to promote Christmas shopping in Hollywood. It usually took place the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving so it didn't have to follow the Macy's Parade with its huge floats and balloons. The promenade down Hollywood Boulevard lacked glitzy, expensive things like that but usually managed to compensate somewhat with local celebrities.
If you sit through this video, you'll see (among others) Chucko the Birthday Clown, Soupy Sales, Don DeFore, Bozo the Clown (Vance Colvig), Johnny Crawford, Sheriff John, the casts of many then-current shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Untouchables, newsman George Putnam (who always rode his horse in the parade) and even Del Moore, the gent I've mentioned here for his appearances in darn near everything Jerry Lewis ever did. You may even spot Bullwinkle. Around 12:30 into the proceedings, you can catch a quick glimpse of an unidentified June Foray and Bill Scott sitting on either side of someone in a moose suit. It was probably the Berkowitzes.
The announcer is Bill Welsh, who was a fixture of L.A. television from its inception through his death in 2000. He was the longtime president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which was the group behind this parade. Welsh was one of the guys who did everything in early TV but was usually a sportscaster. In 1948, he covered the first telecast of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, then ran over and called the plays for the first telecast of the Rose Bowl game. Shortly before he died, he pushed through a major redevelopment project for Hollywood Boulevard that has cleaned up the place considerably…though not enough.
The parade, which has changed names a number of times, started in 1928 but didn't become a big deal until the mid-forties when Gene Autry, who rode it in every year he could, wrote a song about it. It went "Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane," and it was a pretty big hit. Then when the parade went on television, it became an important annual event in Los Angeles…all the way into the seventies when interest fell off and it stopped being on TV. They discontinued the parade at one point, then brought it back as a smaller event…and I hear it's even televised on small channels now. But apart from hearing that Hollywood Boulevard is going to be closed for the evening, you never hear anything about it. It's not like the old days…