300526 - Topic: Portland and the Rose Festival

This blog post ushers in the beginning of a general dearth of material about the final string of episodes of the second season of Empire Builders. The series was preparing to go into its usual summer hiatus in a matter of weeks. When next the broadcasts reappeared in the fall, they would be aired from new digs in Chicago. Of the last six broadcasts of the spring, I have just two continuities. For this and the other three, what little information I do have is limited to a few snippets of (sometimes contradictory) press information. It seems that at least two of the final episodes of this season were shuffled about for some reason or other. Perhaps on a future visit to the Library of Congress I can consult the NBC Master Logs in their collection, which might shed light on which episodes actually aired on each Monday night in these last few weeks.

What I do know – or what I believe I know – about this night’s broadcast is that it was slated to be a story centered on the annual Rose Festival celebrated in Portland, Oregon. The May, 1930, issue of the Great Northern Goat magazine, which obviously came out well before this broadcast, stated that the May 26 episode would be a story about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It turns out that story was postponed one week. I have located at least one newspaper published on May 26 that states the story for this night would be about the Portland Rose Festival.

This artwork was used in conjunction with the 1912 Rose Festival. I know that makes it pretty irrelevant to this Empire Builders broadcast, but I do like the juxtaposition of the rose festival motif and the trains.

The GN printed up small leaflets to alert listeners to upcoming programs, and the one that addressed this date included the following synopsis of the May 26 broadcast:

This program will be a happy little romance written around Portland's annual Rose Festival. Cinderella comes to life when a girl employee of one of Portland's flower shops is chosen as queen of the festival. The story was written by E. H. Bierstadt.

The original idea for a rose festival in Portland seems to have come from the Mayor of Portland during the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition held there. The mayor declared the city needed a “festival of roses.” By 1907, the festivals had begun. A parade of some form was a feature of the festival right from the outset, but it is the Grand Floral Parade – said to be second only to the annual Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena for the enormity of floral displays – that became the signature draw for the festival.



Newspaper photo of the 1930 Portland Rose Festival royal court.

In the early days of the festival, a queen or princess was anointed, and was typically the daughter of some local politician or prominent businessman. Things changed in 1930, the year of this Empire Builders broadcast. A tradition began wherein each high school in Portland selected one Rose Festival princess, each of whom would vie for the coveted title of Rose Festival Queen. In 1930, that lucky young lady was Caroline Hahn, representing Portland’s Lincoln High School.

Caroline Hahn, 1930 Portland Rose Festival Queen

As a tie-in to radio history, Portland’s NBC affiliate, station KGW (on which Empire Builders was heard), inaugurated on-location broadcasts of the Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade on June 10, 1929. The second such broadcast occurred just a few weeks after this night’s Empire Builders program, on June 13, 1930.

 

Until next week, keep those dials tuned to Empire Builders!