The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 154

A62 THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 26. 1987 1 The balloon goes up today for Macy's Parade JUeiianer fashions Jasliion is Jt's ilit wlu i a necessity when (I vweliy IS l)3ecaaSe not a uxuni Vlon.Sat. priced propi a proper I 4 10 hoJon fist U. 443-5343 San.

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Edward Pollak at 329-0804 rade is to see it live." Manny Bass agreed. "If you see it on television, you don't get the oh-h-h-h-h and the ah-h-h-h-h of it," he said. He was standing in his third-floor office, 25 or so feet above the Parade Studio floor, wearing his customary overalls while laboring among the mounds of kids' stuff that clutters his office: ship models, comic books, puppets, etc. Visible book titles included "The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were" and "Nymphets and Fairies." Nearby, scale models of this year's four new balloons -Snoopy, Snuggle, Ronald McDonald and Spiderman were lined up on a table. The.

balloons were manufactured in Sioux Falls, S.D., but it was Bass and his crew who turned out the drawings, the initial clay models and these fiberglass replicas. "We make three fiberglass models of each," Bass explained. "One of them is used to teach the handlers how to tow it. Another is used by the cutters. And the third is used to test coloration." If the balloons are lighter and more rip-resistant than they were in parades past, much of the rest of Macy's annual slice of American pie has changed, too.

Kids raised on TV are not going to settle for a static float. They want action. They want names. "The en tertainment values are very high today," said Bass. "You have to have special effects, special stars, special moments.

Years ago, the floats were smaller and simpler. Kids expect so much more today. Like The Hulk pushing over a building. It's really become the-ater-in-the-round." Outside, beneath a sunny sky that Bass would have killed for come Thanksgiving, one of his crew was tuning up the liquid-cooled generators or the Barbie The Rockers float, the one sponsored by Mattel. Nearby, the Teflon ice rink for the Peanuts float Charles Schulz's daughter, Jill, would do the skating honors while Metropolitan Life would do the paying had already been folded inward for its journey through the Lincoln Tunnel.

Bass was a satisi-ficd man, even though he noted nervously that the Farmers' Almanac was predicting snow for Thanksgiving. "The moment of relief comes at 6 a.m. on Thursday," he explained. "That's when I walk down the parade route. That's when I see that everything has gotten there.

That's when I see that everything is set up. That's when I know everything is all right." minus 47 hours. Getting things Parade Ready. Kermit the Frog balloon was, as McFaddin puts it with a long face, "badly injured." Blown Into a tree and punctured, Kermit wasn't so much sailing down Broadway as swimming. McFaddin rushed to the balloon's handlers Macy's employees all to see if they thought their charge should be scratched from the proceedings.

Not a chance. "Finishing the parade Is a big thing to these people," McFaddin explained. "You must get your balloon through the entire line of march." (As McFaddin was talking, there was a short break in the rehearsal. A Cabbage Patch boy snuck up behind a Cabbage Patch girl and did something you will not see on TV today. Behind the police lines, the audience tittered.) It Is McFaddin's responsibility to create the concepts that Bass executes.

"I try to come up with things that kids recognize through promotion and television," she said. "Basically, that's where kids deal from: television." It should come as no surprise, then, that the 10 balloons in this year's parade are all trademarked characters. The generic balloons of the early years Turkey, Crocodile, Serpent and so on have been replaced by the likes of Snoopy and Ronald McDonald. (A new Snoopy balloon has been created this time around and, not co-incidentally, Macy's is heavily promoting Snoopy stuffed figures for $10 each with a $50 proof-of-purchase. McDonald's, meanwhile, is a major sponsor of NBC's parade telecast.) Further, sponsors of floats Macy's won't say how much they pay for the privilege include Coleco Industries Mattel Toys and Sea World.

"We are not selling products," McFaddin nevertheless insisted on Monday night. "But we are promoting image." Meanwhile, an estimated 55 million people are expected to view the event on television, probably 20 times the number that will line the streets of New York. "We try to keep it a parade." said McFaddin, "and it's very much a parade from 77th Street (where it begins) to 34th Street (where it ends). But when It gets down here, the medium changes. It's television.

And television reduces the scope of it. The truth is, the only way you can really see or understand this pa- yfepg ISItar quality lyWJp BE CENTER STAGE! 7sNvy YOU'LL BE FASCINATED WITH VV THE LARGEST SELECTION OF AV i SHORT, LONG, WILD OR SOPHISTICATED I VS fl CLOTHING i I () ALWAYS AT A 1 fVv. 20-40 I I A SAVINGS! i I 0 WH lew Lji 3 75 KNEELAND ST. 10th BOSTON HRS. M-F 10-6, SAT.

9-5 in i ii i i AMERICAN POP Continued from Page 61 they would join the 10 balloons, which had been sent ahead in canvas and vinyl hampers and which were being filled with anywhere between 10,000 and 14,000 cubic feet of helium and air. It would then be the job of Bass and his 20 or so year-round employees to reassemble said floats by 6 a.m. On Tuesday, Bass was clutching his Crew Operations Checklist most closely, but what it really came down to was this: "We'll try to get a little sleep tonight, then it's Go for two days." And where would Bass watch his 28th Macy's parade unfold? Actually, he wouldn't. Not for awhile anyway. "As soon as I assemble that last float, I run downtown and disassemble the first unit as the parade begins to finish." he explained.

(His checklist warned his workers to "dismantle the floats when they arrive with tender loving care," as most will be used next year.) "I won't see the finished product until about a week later. Then we'll look at it on tape." Several hours earlier, across the Hudson River near Broadway and West 34th Street, Jean McFaddin was watching nine short people dressed as Cabbage Patch Kids, courtesy of Coleco Industries prance around the pavement to the tune of "Ain't We Got Fun." The Texas-born McFaddin is vice presidentdirector of Macy's parade and annual events, as well as Manny Bass' boss. As she stood there in her full-length mink coat, watching the evening's TV rehearsal unfold in front of her employer's labyrinthian main store, she allowed as how she was worried about only one thing. In a word: wind. "It can injure the balloons," she said, speaking as if nylon coated with urelhane is capable of great pain and suffering.

"Those cross streets, they're like funnels." She winced. Indeed, the famous balloons have been grounded due to high winds on more than one occasion, although not during McFaddin's 11-year reign as parade queen. (She literally marches at its head, resplendent in a red hunt coat, in order to set its precise timing.) Still, there was that fearsome downpour two parades ago, when MATERNITY FASHIONS is Wve Arrived! Shirley K. Maternity now open in COPLEY PLACE Our for the fashionable, innovative, Presidential FASHION Continued from Page 61 said Babbitt's New Hampshire manager Caroline Rauch. She said that as far as she knew.

Babbitt never changes shirts in the middle of the day. "One of the first things he says after a 10-day campaign trip is 'Hi. Here's a bag of dirty noted his Arizona staff head Vada Manager. Calling herself "valet press secretary or valet political aide," with regard to her shirt duties for Babbitt, she recalled the time she had to run to a store to find a blue shirt that would fit the Arizona governor, because he was about to make a television appearance and the program director did not want him to wear his white one. The governor usually buys his white oxford cloth shirts from The Custom Shop, a national chain with many branches, including one on Boylston Street and one in Copley Place.

From his photographs, it looks as though he is partial to wide spread collars. Robert Dole: Campaign spokesman Katy Boyle said the senator manages to be in Washington from Tuesday through Friday morning for his work in the Senate, before flying out of town on Friday afternoon to campaign until Monday night. He takes with him just three fresh shirts In his bag, one for each day. They arc ther blue or white and have been purchased from The Custom Shop, which keeps measurements of Its regular customers on hand so they can order new shirts without constantly re-measuring. "He doesn't change during the middle of the day," Boyle said, adding, "he doesn't need to; he doesn't spill." Someone on the campaign staff takes the senator's shirts to the Lustre Cleaners, located three blocks from I he Capitol, on a regular basis so that Dole will have enough shirts for his campaign trips.

Pierre duPont: "lle-'s the quintessential full time campaigner." noted Ann UrackbllU', his campaign Kxkcswoman. "he has a of of shirts." which are either white, off-white, blue or occasionally strljMtl. They are not custom shirts nor are they button down collar shirts, but the candidate usually changes at the end of the day's campaign for tin evening one. which might explain why he looks so at the cud of the day. Richard Gephardt: As campaign Mark Johnson put It, "Not that It matters one Inla, but congressman Gephardt does what most ix'oplc do; lie puts on a shirt In the morning and he takes It oil at the end of the day." Paul Simon: This candidate has his shirts dune at home, hut, as campaign spokesman David Carl explained it, Simon has a reputation "for rumpled suits and luMnii(r lintel (l ull fi brinlmrr) Stained Ql llSS vxty Rl it Wril.m ana wi.i7 Ki an shirt tales shirts, especially when he's on the road campaigning." Carl recalled the week that the campaign schedule was so hectic that Simon had to say to his staff: "I need two hours in the next two days, to put my shirts through the washer and dryer." Simon is also unique in that he is the only candidate who regularly wears bow ties, his trademark.

Recently, when actress Whoopi Goldberg met Simon, she asked for one of his bow ties. "He had a problem, because he was down to two ties at the time," Carl said, "but he gave her one anyway." Albert Gore: "A lot of starch" is Gore's secret in looking always bandbox fresh, according to his campaign spokesman Michcal Kopp. But Kopp was quick to add that Gore carries extra shirts with him and will change into a clean one before an evening event. This practice backfired on him in 1984, however, when, Kopp recalled. Gore was in a Nashville hotel getting ready to accept his election to the Senate and he found that all of his clothes shirts, suits, everything were still at the dry cleaner's around the corner from the hotel, and the dry cleaner's had already closed for the evening.

His staff members rushed around the block banging on doors to see If by chance the owner of the shop lived nearby. By pure luck, he did. and was persuaded to rc-o)en the shop to get the senator's clothing. Sen. Gore does not buy custom shirts: Instead, Kopp said, he'll buy "whatevcr's on sale." Pat A pocket square Is Rolx-rtson's trademark.

Campaign aide Scott Hatch explained that "it is not a fancy fold: he bunches, sort of stuffs. It In." RolxTtson has been on television for 25 years and during that time the station has handled his TV wardrolx1. His off-camera ward-rolx" consists of off he-rack, sale shirts In white, sometimes with a blue strljK. Hatch said RoIxtIsou will change shirts "a couple of times In a day," and he also strides that a lot of starch Ix1 used in their laundering. Alexander Haig: He was the only one of the candidates who said his shirts are hand-Ironed by his wife.

She uses no starch. Jesse Jackson: "He's never home." noled campaign aide I'iim Smith, "so I'm sure they're not done at home." Michael Dukakis: His blue or white or occasionally Ix'lge oxford cloth button-down collar shirts arc laundered at home. "We're talking wash and wear here," noled the governor's spokesperson James iJorsey. Jack Kemp: Kemp occasionally takes his dirty shirts to Lustre Cleaners, but, noled Brian Groz-Ix-an, Lustre owner, "not lately." Kemp's shirts receive an extra dose of starch from Grozlx-an. and perhaps because of that, he "never changes shirts during the day." according to his deputy director of communications Mary Brunette.

George Bush: "It's part of his private life," according to Scan Walsh, the vice president's campaign sxikcsiiian. Because of Its lix atlon. Lustre Dryclcancrs handles the shirts of many Millllclans In the Washing Ion D.C. area, and Grozlx'an could probably write a Ixnik based on what he knows alxitit some of his customers, He ailed Kemp "very nice; a very well dressed man." As for whom he will vote, Grolx-an said "I'm bipartisan, It's the only way to make money In this lixa lion." r-p-k 1 'v. a IK i Copley Place 262-6600.