Category Archives: Azalea Festival

Revealing X-ray

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Grady Cole and Neva Jane Langley

Grady Cole and Neva Jane Langley, Miss America 1953, during the 1954 Wilmington Azalea Festival

Today marks the discovery of the X-Ray . . . and a post that reveals the story behind A View to Hugh mystery from 2008.  On this day in 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen was the first person to observe X-rays.  This important scientific discovery ultimately led to the Hugh Morton photograph seen above, cropped as it appeared in the Wilmington Morning Star on March 31st, 1954. (You can see the full-negative version with its descriptive information by clicking on the photograph.)

Back in April 2008, Elizabeth Hull included this photograph in a Who Am I? post for the Azalea Festival.  Lots of comments from readers eventually led Elizabeth to discover that the woman was Neva Jane Langley, Miss America 1953.  One commenter speculated that Langley and Grady Cole might be holding an X-ray related to a tuberculosis display at the 1954 Azalea festival.

Today’s science anniversary prompted me to search for the word “X-ray” in the online collection of Morton photographs.  Two similar images of Cole and Langley were the only hits, so I turned to the blog post from four years ago.  The unresolved speculation in the comments about tuberculosis and that the event could be from the 1954 festival led me to the microfilm room and the Wilmington newspaper for March 1954.

Langley arrived in Wilmington at Bluethenthal Field on Friday, March 26th around 5:00 p.m.  Hugh Morton and Grady Cole formed the welcoming committee, with Morton at the wheel of the car that whisked away the reigning beauty queen from the airport.  The next day, Langley was to participate in the Azalea Festival Coronation Ball, and Cole was to be its master of ceremonies, so it was a logical choice for Cole to be her official greeter.

Saturday evening was rainy at Wrightsville Beach, where the coronation ball was to take place at the Lumina Ballroom.  Here’s the Sunday Star-News account of something that happened that night:

Cole’s Sir Walter Act Ends In Pain

Grady Cole—”Mr. Dixie” of Radio Station WBT Charlotte—did Sir Walter Raleigh one better with Miss America at the Azalea Festival Coronation Ball last night and was in the hospital today with what is believed to be a dislocated vertebra.

Hugh Morton, co-chairman of the festival’s invitations committee, said that during the downpour at Wrightsville Beach Cole carried Neva Jane Langley of Lakeland, Fla.—Miss America of 1953—over puddles of water and up the stairs of Lumina Ballroom.  Miss Langley was an honorary celebrity at the crowning of the Azalea Festival Queen—movie and television actress Ella Raines—by Gen. Mark Clark.

Cole carried on his duties as master of ceremonies of the Coronation Ball, then was rushed by the highway patrol to James Walker Memorial Hospital.  Morton said it is believed that Cole dislocated a vertebra with his gallantry.

A few days after the festival, the photograph above ran uncredited on the back page of the March 31st Wilmington Morning Star with the following caption:

POSITIVE PROOF — Grady Cole Radios’s “Mr. Dixie,” of WBT, Charlotte and the CBS Network, is shown holding an X-ray of his spine, which was injured at the Azalea Festival Coronation Ball Saturday night when Grady carried Miss Neva Jane Langley, “Miss America of 1953,” across a mud puddle in a heavy downpour of rain.  Miss Langley is shown holding the X-ray which revealed that Cole sustained what doctors call “a compressed fracture of his sixth vertebra.” Doctors told Cole he could “never lift a pretty girl again,” and he philosophically replied, “we all have to quit sometime and I’m glad I quit with the best.”

Where in Wilmington did Morton take the photograph?  On the right side of the full image, a few business signs are visible.  One appears to be for the Cape Fear Dining Room, which was in the Cape Fear Hotel at 121–131 Chestnut Street. Today the building is home to the Cape Fear Hotel Apartments.  In the background on the opposite side of the street, the shorter building on the left is the United States Post Office.  The building on the right is the Southern Building, which sat on the southwest corner of Chestnut and Front streets.

 

Picturing the Port City

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With the 63rd Annual North Carolina Azalea Festival kicking off next week, it seems an appropriate time to highlight the festival’s home turf: Wilmington, NC. Not only was Hugh Morton was born and raised in Wilmington, but he and his family played a major role in shaping the tourism industry and infrastructure of the charming, historic Port City.

Here to help us is another Wilmington native, author, and purveyor of all things Wilmington history-related, Susan Taylor Block. Susan is the author of a whole bunch of books and articles (including photographic histories) on Wilmington’s past, culture, and some of its residents. She’s also behind the latest entry in our Worth 1,000 Words series, entitled Wilmington: Faded Glory to Fresh Achievement.

We hope you’re enjoying the growing variety of the essay offerings, and the opportunity they offer to delve a bit deeper into the riches of the Morton collection.

Azalea Festival memories

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It’s that time of year again — the shrubs are blooming, the Queen has been selected, and Wilmington is all geared up for the 62nd annual celebration of “all that is Southern” — the NC Azalea Festival, which begins this week.

Stephen forwarded me a link to a charming article from last week’s Star News in which longtime Wilmingtonian Thurston Watkins, Jr. “remembers splendid, scandalous events from past Azalea Festivals.” In skimming through the article, I realized we had Morton images to illustrate many of the choice moments Watkins recalls. A few are included below.

Ted Malone doing his radio broadcast before a crowd at the Wilmington Azalea Festival, circa late 1940s-early 1950s

Watkins reports: “Announcement of our festival to all points was accomplished by Ted Malone’s coast-to-coast radio show. Malone had mastered the art of descriptive English and would be considered an equal to Charles Kuralt’s abilities many years later.”

Portrait of actress Cathy Downs, 1952 Queen of the NC Azalea Festival

Watkins reports: “I remember the festival having a ‘close call’ with Queen trouble. Janet Leigh had agreed to be our Queen, but just before she was to arrive, her husband, Tony Curtis, canceled the deal. Hugh Morton was aware of a movie star, Cathy Downs, accompanying her husband at the Azalea Golf Tournament and approached her with our problem. She agreed to be the ‘short notice Queen’ and they secretly took her to Fayetteville and put her on a plane back to Wilmington. The arrival ceremonies turned out just fine and her ‘royal subjects’ never knew she hadn’t made the trip from Hollywood.” (The year was 1952, and Morton took several stunning portraits of Downs, including the one above).

And finally, one Watkins memory I just have to correct. He recalls “a ‘tipsy’ Wilmington Mayor crowning a Queen Azalea at Lumina, Wrightsville Beach—with the crown upside down—then proceeding to almost fall off the stage.” That tipsy mayor was actually the Governor of North Carolina, R. Gregg Cherry, who crowned the very first Azalea Queen, Jacqueline White.

NC Governor R. Gregg Cherry crowning the first Azalea Queen, Jacqueline White, in 1948

As Susan Taylor Block recounts on page 26 of her book on the Azalea Festival, Belles and Blooms:

At her coronation ball at Lumina, Miss White’s composure was tested when Governor R. Gregg Cherry crowned her Queen Azalea I. The first citizen of NC had been in town all day, enjoying seeing a number of old friends. After spending hours socializing, the elderly gentleman was somewhat overdosed on Southern hospitality. He teetered dangerously close to the edge of the stage before placing the crown upside down on Miss White’s head.

This detail of Morton’s photo shows the upside-down crown:

NC Governor R. Gregg Cherry crowning the first Azalea Festival Queen, Jacqueline White, in 1948

Who Am I?–North Carolina Azalea Festival Edition

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Azalea blossomsWilmington’s 61st annual North Carolina Azalea Festival kicks off next week (April 9-13). Hugh Morton played an integral role in the event’s founding: while only in his twenties, he was selected to serve as president of the inaugural festival in 1948. (A letter from Morton on the festival’s website explains that when he missed a committee meeting, they responded by electing him president). As Susan Taylor Block writes in “Clan MacRae,” an article in the 4/2007 issue of Wrightsville Beach magazine, Morton deserves credit not only for Wilmington’s Azalea Festival, but also many of its azalea plants:

Morton had worked diligently since 1946 to make the 1948 Azalea Festival debut a success. He encouraged Wilmingtonians to plant azaleas, persuaded the local government to plant an additional 175,000 azaleas at Greenfield Lake and recruited garden clubs to transplant azaleas from their own private gardens to public spaces. Morton encouraged the festival fathers to be careful stewards of the event’s ticket take, seek out quality in celebrity guests and make the azalea itself the guest of honor. He knew that if the first festival ended up in the red, it would be the last.

North Carolina Azalea Festival negatives in the Morton collection are numerous and mostly in good shape, but not well-documented. The early years of the festival (from 1948 to about 1958) are best represented, but little identifying information is provided other than the year (if that). Fortunately, we have at least one good source to work from—historian Block’s 2004 book Belles & Blooms, heavily illustrated by Morton’s photos. Block’s time line will help us pin down some of the major details, like who was queen in what year, what celebrities attended, etc.

In the meantime, though, we’re asking you to help us put names to faces in some of these early shots.

Unidentified celebrities at the Azalea Festival, Wilmington, NC, ca. early 1950s
Judging from the enormous fur coat and all the cameras pointed at them, I’m guessing that these people are famous. But who are they?

Azalea Festival group at the airport, Wilmington, NC, 1950
The image above was taken at the 1950 Azalea Festival. I can’t read any of the name tags, but I do see that the man on the far right (in the headdress) has a program from “Unto These Hills” (an outdoor drama performed at Cherokee, North Carolina) in his pocket.

Grady Cole (L) and unidentified woman holding up an X-ray, Wilmington, NC, ca. early 1950s
The man in this photo is Grady Cole, talk radio celebrity with WBT Radio in Charlotte, North Carolina (and frequent Morton photo subject in the early 1950s). But who is the woman—and is she the same woman from the previous photo? Most importantly, why are they holding up what looks like an x-ray of somebody’s spine?!