Well its Thanksgiving once again. Its a day we celebrate by doing many traditions besides eating a classic turkey dinner. Breaking wishbones, Running Turkey Trots, watching football games. but if there's one tradition that has been popular and most celebrated is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Over 20 million people gather around the TV and in the streets of New York City to watch the event every year. However this event didn't start out easy. It all started with an illustrator turned puppeteer who had to come up with a solution to a problem that could have jeopardized what was one of the largest retailers in the country.
Our story begins in 1915, when a man named Tony Sarg arrived in New York City.
Born in 1880 in Cobán, Guatemala, he traveled quite far and wide growing up. His father, Francis Charles Sarg, moved the family back to Germany in 1887. There Sarg entered a military academy at the age of 14 and received a commission as lieutenant at the age of 17. In 1905 he resigned and took up residence in the UK. There, he pursued a relationship with Bertha Eleanor McGowan, an American he had met when she was a tourist in Germany. They were married in 1909, and had a daughter named Mary two years later in England. In 1914, with the start of World War I, he sent Bertha and the children to Cincinnati, followed them soon after, and settled the family in New York City in 1915.
By 1920, he became a naturalized US citizen, and started work as an illustrator for high profile magazines like The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Collier’s, Vanity Fair, and many more.
He even had a hand in animation. In 1921, He animated a film called The First Circus for producer Herbert M. Dawley, who was credited as co-animator. Sarg went on to produce a series of cartoons known as Tony Sarg's Almanac, from 1921 to 1923.
But even with all his success, his passion truly lied with another artform, Puppetry. He loved puppetry from a young age, when he inherited a collection of puppets from his Grandmother. In 1917, he turned his hobby into a profession forming a traveling entertainment company called, "Tony Sarg's Marionettes" and in 1918, started performing shows on Broadway.
One of these shows eventually caught the attention of someone big, Macy's Department Store President, Herbert Straus. He was impressed by Sarg's work and asked if he was interested in creating a window display for the store for the holiday season.
Sarg agreed and created Macy's Wondertown, a mechanically animated series of window displays that appeared in Macy's Broadway store in November, 1923.
While Straus was pleased, He became concerned on how he was going to top it off the following year. His solution was to stretch the Christmas shopping season back into November kicked off by a city wide parade on Thanksgiving. Following the success of Wondertown, Sarg was brought on as Pageantmaster. Sarg created horsedrawn floats with giant puppets and paper mache heads. On Thanksgiving day, 1924, The Macy's Christmas Parade began it route from 145th street in Harlem, to Macy's at 34th street in Broadway. It was an enormous spectacle filled with floats portraying characters from popular nursery rhymes such as The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Miss Muffet and Three Men In a Tub.
However there was a problem, Everything was at street level. So while people in the front row were entertained, people in the back row were not, causing many left the parade disappointed and frustrated. Worried that he could lose customers, Straus turned back to Sarg to come up with a way to make the parade visible for people in the front and the back. Looking for inspiration, Sarg turned to his Marionettes and realized that with a marionette, the puppet master above has full control the puppet below. Suddenly he had an idea, What if he could do the opposite and make puppets that move above and the puppet master controls it bellow? And that's exactly what he did.
He created a series of balloon like puppets out of rubber that were light, durable, and easy to manipulate. Then filled them with oxygen and suspended them on long rods that could be carried along the crowd. His creations made their debut on November 24, 1927 to instant acclaim.
In 1928, Sarg replaced the rubber with silk and the oxygen with helium, allowing the balloons to grow in size and shape. By 1935 the parades name changed from The Macy's Christmas Parade to The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sarg Continued to work on the balloons until his retirement in 1941.
Today people still gather round to watch the parade every thanksgiving, and it was all thanks to a puppeteer who dreams of his profession brough Thanksgiving traditions to new heights. Happy Thanksgiving, and i'll see you next time!