From the Aquacade

Due to the extremely cool weather during the Fair’s opening weeks, Billy Rose had to spend between $25 and $40 a day on coffee in steaming containers to warm up his chilled entertainers.

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Grover Whalen visited the Aquacade with this demand: “Listen, we have a young lady across the road in the Hall of Music named Grace Moore who is trying to sing. But all the audience can hear is your loudspeakers. Not do us a favor and tone them down.”

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Everett Marshall replaced Morton Downey in early August when the Aquacade’s popular vocalist contracted a sinus infection.

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Before one of opening week’s performances, John Murray Anderson, the producer of the spectacle, burned the suit he had worn for the previous eight weeks of rehearsal. This continued Anderson’s superstition to wear the same outfit until the first week’s receipts were in.

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Broadway designer Raoul Pene du Bois created the lavish costumes for the spectacle. The bathing caps were coated in Stroblite and glowed. Albert Johnson designed the sets.

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Jim Bell, the Aquacade’s barker, learned sign language from his deaf uncle and used it whenever he saw patrons signing to each other.

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Four young ladies went into one of the Fair’s higher-priced restaurants and ordered a pot of coffee and four cups. The waiter informed the manager the four were swimmers at the Aquacade and only had a few nickels each for food and cab fare until their first pay check. The manager provided a free dinner for the table and when the girls pooled their money for a tip, the waiter refused: “You need it more than I do girls. Keep it for car fares.” The waiter and manager found out later the four did not work for the Aquacade.

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Claire Silverstein, one of the swimmers, dove out of the second story window of the women’s dressing room into Flushing Creek. Her unsuccessful attempted suicide came about over a missing box of candy. She received medical treatment in Eleanor Holm’s (the star of the show) dressing room and returned home.

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Claire Silverstein, one of the swimmers, dove out of the second story window of the women’s dressing room into Flushing Creek. Her unsuccessful attempted suicide came about over a missing box of candy. She received medical treatment in Eleanor Holm’s (the star of the show) dressing room and returned home.

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A Greyhound bus driver’s spiel when visitors left between the Aquacade and the Florida Building: “All out here for lemonade, orangeade and Aquacade.”

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Here is a collection of the “other” names for Billy Rose’s Aquacade heard on the Fairgrounds: acade, applecade, arcarde, escapade, cavalcade, awacade, attelcade, eascade, diving tower, water Fair, water parade, water carnival, water exposition, water department, water circus, accolade, articade, affelade, waterade, Roseade, appitude, aquitade, Rose Bowl, Billy Rose’s World’s Fair, Billy Acquacade’s Rose Bowl, Eleanor Holm Building, Hal Rose’s Tarzan Show, aquadshow, axacade, Roseacade, aquitarium, swimming pool enterprise, allacade aparacade, animade, africade, escalade, aquaeade, aquaplane, Weissmuller exhibit, acrobat, water hole,w water hole where Tarzan swims, watering place, waterarium, swimarium, Rosie’s Exhibit, State Swimming School,and arrowcade.

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In an unusual twist of fate, after 271 performances, the swimmers had gained between eight and ten pounds while the chorus girls lost between five and eight pounds.

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Gene Ashley, a dancer in the chorus, complained about the sanitary conditions in that the 100 men performing in the Aquacade had to use a single washroom with two toilets and three basins.

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The Aquacade initially cost $350,000 but Rose’s investment was paid off by July 1. The weekly costs ran $38,00 but the show frequently grossed over $150,000 a week. Lines extended twenty blocks alone. Billy Rose later admitted “the biggest star of the Aquacade was a thing called 40-cents.” As the attendance continued to soar, Billy Rose added an additional 1,000 seats priced at forty-cents after the 400th performance.

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Sophie Tucker, veteran vaudeville blues singer and president of the American Federation of Actors, faced an open revolt when Mike Lewis, the spokesman for the Aquacade employees complained the union had done nothing about their complaints over the conditions of the water used in their performances. Lewis insisted his fellow employees constantly were afflicted with ear infections due to the foul water.

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Billy Rose

Billy often jokingly called “The World of Tomorrow” “The World’s AquFair.”

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Rose gloated that the Aquacade drew 180,000 patrons in the mid – June week while the San Francisco exposition’s total attendance for the same period was only 164,000. This seemed like a justified outcome as the west coast Fair denied Rose a concession at their Fair.

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Rose never seemed content with his success. When Damon Runyon complimented the entrepreneur on the attendance at the Aquacade, Rose replied: “Yeah, but I’d still like to have a hunk of that General Motors show.” However, one observant reporter noted that Rose would make more money than the total GM corporation during 1939.

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Billy Rose always was self-promoting. Louis Sobol informed readers of his column: his impression of the little entrepreneur: “Father Neptune in dry dock.” One Saturday evening reporters caught Rose strolling through the Amusement Zone in evening clothes and bedroom slippers. Billy revealed to columnist Dorothy Kilgallen the Fair named the entrance gate nearest to the Aquacade after him. However, upon further investigation, the guard insisted it was still known as Gate Number Seven.

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Eleanor Holm

Eleanor Holm, the 5'2", without heels, light brunette, often referred to as “the most photogenic girl in the country” headlined the Aquacade. Within two weeks in June, Eleanor appeared on three national photo magazines and Time featured her on its cover in August.

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While Miss Holm won numerous swimming medals, Avery Brundage kicked the champion off the 1936 Olympic team for appearing excessively drunk on board the liner sailing to Berlin.

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Reports now circulated quoting her as saying: “Even Hitler gave me a better break than Brandage!” supposedly she’d spoken with Adolph Hitler who told her if she’d been a German athlete, she would have been given the benefit of doubt.

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Eleanor refuted the Hitler claims: “Hitler is a monster and anybody knows that monsters and athletic officials can’t be compared. I’d rather have Brundage put me off the team again than let Hitler give me a medal.”

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Eleanor denied she ended one of her Aquacade performances in the nude. She insisted her shoulder strap simply slipped.

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The Aquacade’s highest paid stars, Eleanor and Johnny, at off the Fairgrounds at an Italian restaurant for fifty cents a meal.

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According to columnist Dorothy Kilagllen, Eleanor’s dressing room resembled a Vassar dormitory, “with neat curtains at the window, chintz covers on the couch, and pictures on the dresser.”

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The Fair’s information corps insisted 80% of the visitors asked, “Where can I see Eleanor Holm?”

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Columnist Walter Winchell declared: “Johnny Weissmuller and Eleanor Holm are the Astaire and Rodgers of the water.” And, another reviewer noted the pair “took our breath away and not because we can’t swim – or waltz.”

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Johnny Weissmuller

The 6’4’, 185 pound thirty-two year-old had won every major swimming speed record in the world – seventy-five by 1932. The former Olympic medalist was now a major movie star and a draw for the Aquacade – billed as “Aquadonis Number One.”

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Johnny did his famous Tarzan yell live in the opening weeks, but, it put a great strain on his vocal chords. Thomas L. Valentine, a sound effects expert, recorded the much-anticipated yell for the following performances.

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What was the proper Tarzan look?

Johnny Weissmuller could only have his hair cut after an official OK from MGM. Reportedly this was his first haircut in five years.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs, the original author of the Tarzan stories, telegrammed Johnny Weissmuller: “I would like to register a complaint about the white satin bathing suit you are reported cavorting around in STOP the one legitimate Tarzan has no business going around looking like an aquatic chorus man doing the Tarzan yell STOP take my advice STOP regards STOP please stop STOP

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Billy Rose sent this memo to his swimming star: “Not swimming fast enough, you ought to SPLASH more!”

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By October, Weissmuller fell under a doctor’s care. While he appeared nightly, he swam very little.

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The June 17 afternoon was delayed half an hour when fifty boys from the PAL organization arrived at the Aquacade to receive athletic medals from Johnny Weissmuller and jumped into the pool instead. The performance only began after the movie Tarzan removed the offending youngsters from the pool, two at a time.

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