The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (then known as the Macy’s Christmas Parade) was held in 1924 and culminated in front of Macy’s department store in New York City, where the elaborate holiday window displays were unveiled. Thousands gathered to see the displays, which were designed by Anthony Frederick Sarg, a noted puppeteer and theatrical designer. Sarg was also the artistic director / mastermind of the parade and, during the fourth annual Macy’s Christmas Parade in 1927, he introduced the enormous inflatable cartoons and caricatures that would become almost synonymous with the annual holiday tradition. Sarge a creative genius was also a celebrated prankster….

[dropcap]”I[/dropcap]t was the summer of 1937….stories started appearing in the local papers of Nantucket carrying photographs of giant footprints found on a local beach. With the region of New England’s long history of sea-serpent sightings, rumours quickly began to circulate reporting that, at last, one of the elusive creatures had come ashore. Copies of the photographs were even sent for scientific analysis, though Dr. W. Reid Blair, director of the New York Zoological Society, was sceptical:

“No marine mammal could have left the tracks as they do not move so much on their flippers as they do on their second joint and on their bellies. Evidence of their passage would be seen on the beach only in a slight indentation. As for a land mammal, there is nothing on Nantucket Island that could leave such large tracks.”

A few days later, however, a gigantic creature was indeed spotted on South Beach. People came flocking to investigate but instead of the long awaited New England Sea Serpent they found something quite different – although most definitely a serpent of some kind, it turned out to be of the inflatable balloon variety.

The Nantucket media went along with the hoax, sighting to create public interest in what would become the unveiling of the sea serpent balloon Sarg had created for the thirteenth annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Playing into the prank, a local businessman and a local fisherman were photographed measuring prints left by the elusive creature. The department store founder R.H. Macy was said to have anonymously backed the hoax, believing it would bring about good publicity for the island. Although some felt that the hoax had gone overboard and depressed the island’s economy by scaring off potential tourists.

Pictured in the centre of the last picture below, Tony Sarg’s creation was a great success and stayed for several weeks on the beach before it made its way down to New York City to star in Macy’s famous Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sarg had made his name (earning him the accolade, “father of modern puppetry”)

Resources

• Public Domain Review: The Nantucket Sea-Serpent Hoax (1937)
• Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Natural History – the Sea Serpent in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• Photographs courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association.

1937 in Retrospect

• May 6, 1937 – The German airship Hindenburg bursts into flames while attempting to moor at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
• May 12th 1937 – At London’s Westminster Abbey, George VI and his consort, Lady Elizabeth, are crowned king and queen of the United Kingdom as part of a coronation ceremony that dates back more than a millennium.
• May 27, 1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge was opened to great acclaim, a symbol of progress in the Bay Area during a time of economic crisis. At 4,200 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world until the completion of New York City’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964.
• June 3, 1937 – The British Duke of Windsor and American Wallis Warfield Simpson are married in a small ceremony in France.
• July 2, 1937 – Amelia Mary Earhart mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigation flight
• July 20, 1937 – Guglielmo Marconi, founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom, dies in Italy.
• August 13, 1937 – November 26, 1937 – The Battle of Shanghai was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.