Rose Bowl Postcard

A postcard of the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California during one of the venue's New Year's Day inter-sectional games from the 1920s.

The 1938 Tournament of Roses Parade

The City of Santa Barbara float in the 1938 parade.

On Jan. 1, 1938 the 49th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade was held in downtown Pasadena, California. The procession preceded the game between Alabama and California in the Rose Bowl. Below is a short home movie of the parade and, after the jump, there are a collection of photos of various floats.

The 1926 Tournament of Roses Parade

Photo: UCLA Library Digital Collections

Two girls dressed as flowers in front of a float presented at the 1926 Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. Alabama defeated Washington 20-19 in the Rose Bowl game later that day.

The 1938 Tournament of Roses Program

A 1931 Tournament of Roses Souvenir

An envelope that enclosed a series of picture postcards from the 1931 Tournament of Roses Parade. Some of the photos are shown below. Alabama bested Washington State 24-0 in that year's Rose Bowl game.

The 1946 Tournament of Roses Parade

The 57th Tournament of Roses Queen and her Royal Court

The 1946 Tournament of Roses was the first to be held following the end of World War II and the event's centerpiece parade garnered a extraordinarily large amount of attention and participation.

Admiral William F "Bull" Halsey was the grand marshall of the parade which was comprise of more than 50 floats. Officials said the crowds that descended on Pasadena to see the parade were the largest in the history of the event.

1946 Tournament of Roses
Queen Patricia Auman

The Rose Queen was Patricia Auman, a 17-year-old student at Pasadena Junior College. After her year-long duties concluded, Auman chose to attend Stanford rather than pursue a movie career like many other Rose Queens.

Years later, when interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, she said she greatly enjoyed the experience but had resevations about what it meant and the commercialization of the event.

“While the tournament has always stressed it wasn’t a beauty contest I don’t like the emphasis on looks," she told the paper in 1979. "I wish they would do away with it entirely or combine it with achievement; what a person is, now how they look."

Alabama defeated the University of Southern California 34-13 in the 1946 Rose Bowl, the final appearance of the Crimson Tide in the New Year's Day classic.

The color photograph above was taken by Huntington Park resident O.W. Sjogren. Several of his shots of this Rose parade and a few others have recently been uploaded onto Flickr.

The 1938 Rose Queen Cheryl Walker

Rose Queen Cheryl Walker and the 1938 Rose Court

The 1938 Queen of the Tournament of Roses was 20-year-old native of Pasadena, Cheryl Walker. The Pasadena Junior College student was selected out of more than 1,500 young women who vied for the honor. Alabama beat Stanford in the 1935 New Year's Day classic, 29-13.

The day after the Tournament of Roses she signed a film contract with Paramount that launched her modeling and film career. Walker worked as a double for stars such as Joyce Mathews, Madeleine Carroll and Veronica Lake until her first substantial role in 1940's "Chasing Trouble."

Walker's first starring role was in "Secrets of a Model"  later that year although she used the name Sharon Lee. From then until her retirement as an actress in 1948, Walker mainly appeared as a minor character in the films she worked on. The notable exception of her star turn "Stage Door Canteen" in 1943.

In the 1950s, Walker became involved in Southern California political activities traveling across the region giving speeches to civic and church groups on "the menace of communism". She founded Tuesday Morning Study Club that presented annual patriotism awards to anti-communist activists.

Walker died in 1971 of cancer in Pasadena.

Tragedy at the Tournament of Roses Parade

City of Pasadena officials inspect the wreckage of a grandstand
that collapsed during the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, 1926.

Jan. 1, 1926 was the deadliest day in the history of the Tournament of Roses. More than a dozen people were killed in a trio of tragic incidents on the route of the Rose Parade that year, the worst of which was the collapse of a shoddily-built grandstand constructed to view the procession.

A crowd of several hundred thousand people had gathered along the 5-and-a-half mile parade route on New Year’s Day morning prior to the football game that pitted the Alabama Crimson Tide against the Washington Huskies.

Several temporary grandstands had been constructed to accommodate the crowd and approximately 350 people were on the elevated structure erected at the southeast corner of Colorado and Madison as the parade passed at 11 a.m.

According to newspaper reports there was first a loud crack then the entire grandstand dropped slightly. The front end of the bleachers then rapidly began moving forward several feet.

"This was followed instantly by the total collapse of supporting beams and braces and the stand crashed to the ground, a tangled mass of men, women and children, broken timbers and bright colored decorations," reported the Pasadena Morning Sun.

Members of a Robert's Golden State Band were standing nearby after having been ejected from the parade for not being authorized to perform. They immediately began working to pull survivors from the wreckage.

The crowd on Colorado Street in
Pasadena after the 1926 parade.

Eight people were killed instantly and three more perished later from their injuries. News reports said 135 people, mostly women and children, were hospitalized due to their injuries while about 100 others were given first aid treatment at the scene.

The collapse was attributed to a host of structural flaws including poor-grade lumber, bad workmanship and a complete absence of cross bracing. Moreover, there had been almost no oversight during the design and construction by the city or tournament officials - both of whom later denied any responsibility for the accident.

Pasadena's deputy building and safety inspector, Charles B. Bucknall, and building contractor Paul F. Mahoney were both charged with manslaughter. Bucknall was acquitted and Mahoney convicted to ten years in prison. He served one year but was freed when the charges against him were dropped after a new trial was ordered.

The disaster spurred the City of Pasadena to install strict regulations for the design, construction and inspection of grandstands. The new standards required the use of that steel-reinforced frames for the structures.

The incident wasn't the only tragedy that morning. Susan M. Bowen, the wife of a prominent local real estate developer, died when she fell from a roof of a two story commercial building along the parade route on Colorado Boulevard. Her fall also killed a parade spectator on the street below.

The final fatality that day was Pasadena equestrian police officer John Fox who was working crowd control along on the parade route. As the procession approached the crowd pressed in and the officer's horse was spooked. Fox was thrown to the ground and trampled by the animal. He died from spinal injuries.

The 1946 Tournament of Roses Parade

Film of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena on Jan. 1, 1946 prior to the game between Alabama and USC.

The 1931 Rose Court

1931 Rose Queen Mary Lou Waddell and her court.
Myrta Olmstead, Alice Ashley, Myrna Wilson,
Fannie Arnold, Florence Dunkerley. 

The 1927 Tournament of Roses Program

The 1931 Tournament of Roses Parade

A silent home movie of the 1931 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. via The Legend of Pancho Barnes.

1935 Tournament of Roses program

Tournament of Roses Chariot Races

After the inaugural Tournament of Roses football game in 1902, event organizers decided to shelve the idea of a gridiron contest for almost a decade-and-a-half.  Instead, the tournament offered such spectacles as a rodeo, automobile races and even a race between an elephant and a camel. In 1908 the featured entertainment for the Pasadena festival was chariot races.