Miami launches first Florida TV station and a few long television careers

                    Below; Early WTVJ News crew:
                    *Leslie, Thurston, Tucker
                    State of Florida Archives

By Jane Feehan

Florida’s first and the nation’s 16th television station, WTVJ, began broadcasting with a 25-minute news show March 21, 1949. At the time there were roughly 2,000 TV sets in South Florida.

Key Wester Mitchell Wolfson*, communications pioneer and president of Wometco Enterprises, brought his idea to reality at a studio established at the Capitol Theater on Miami Avenue in Miami. He tapped Ralph Renick*, fresh out of the University of Miami, as the station’s first news director. 

Renick, who had no one to direct in the first days, remained the news ratings leader in the South Florida market for 35 years. He closed his news broadcasts with “Good night and may the good news be yours,” until he left WTVJ for an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1985.

Bob Weaver*, an early friend of Renick's, joined the staff in 1949 as an intern from the University of Miami and was tasked with a variety of duties. He delivered the station's first weather segment and established himself as “Weaver the Weatherman.” Weaver worked at WTVJ for 54 years until retirement in 2003. Pennsylvanian (but born in Indiana) Chuck Zink* came to WTVJ in 1956 where he became known throughout South Florida as "Skipper Chuck" for the children’s show he headlined for 23 years. He left the station in 1980.

In its TV pioneer days, WTVJ's signal was normally received within a radius of 75 miles. At times during certain atmospheric conditions, television sets as far away as Pennsylvania and New Jersey received WTVJ broadcasts.

Television leaped onto center stage of South Florida living rooms within three years. By 1951 Orange Bowl organizers blamed WTVJ for the decline in football game attendance. Today the station, formerly an CBS affiliate, is known as NBC 6 Miami.

Ralph Renick far left - Florida State Archives

Video:
Check out Florida Memory's Fifteen Years with 4-WTVJ
http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/245398

*Leslie appears to be Renick in top photo. Identification by State of Florida Archives may be a mistake. 

* Wolfson died in 1983 at 82.
* Renick died in 1991 at 62.
* Bob Weaver died in 2006 at 77.
* Chuck Zink died in 2006 at 81.

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Sources:
Palm Beach Post, Jan. 29, 1983
Miami News, Sept 1, 1978
Miami News, Dec.22, 1951
Miami News, June 11, 1949
WTVJ at:

http://www.nbcmiami.com/on-air/about-us/WTVJ-Station-History.html

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Tags: South Florida history, South Florida TV history, first television station in Miami, Miami history, WTVJ, film researcher

Arrests for bicycle sirens in Fort Lauderdale?

Posted by Jane Feehan

Kids have always managed to find mischief. These days arrest-worthy shenanigans may be computer, drug or gun-related. During the mid-1940s in Fort Lauderdale, law enforcement was concerned about kids on bicycles.

Bikes weren't causing problems; it was the sirens youngsters mounted on them that sounded like ambulances, fire trucks and police cars.

The Fort Lauderdale Daily News found the problem noteworthy enough to publish a brief front-page story about it June 5, 1945 when law enforcement announced an initiative to do away with sirens.

"Owners of bicycles with sirens will be arrested," said Police Chief R.A. Addison.  He warned the public that sirens were to be used  only by emergency vehicles and police cars.

"I don't like to arrest a bunch of kids," said Addison, "but these unauthorized sirens cause too much trouble."

Those halcyon days ...

Fee-based license tags were required for bicycles in the 1940s and into the 1960s. In 1945, 2,608 bike tags were purchased for about a dollar each at local police stations or schools. By August of the following year, sales slumped to 1,138. By the early 1960s, tags were issued for $10 for two years. Today, registration is required but there is no fee. The Fort Lauderdale Police Department recently reported nearly 2,400 bicycles have been stolen over the last five years; that number does not include thefts of unregistered bicycles. 

And ... there have been no published reports of arrests for nuisance bicycle sirens, no doubt a short-lived fad.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, Fort Lauderdale crime in the 1940s, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale history

Sources:

 Fort Lauderdale Daily News, June 5, 1945

Fort Lauderdale News, July 26, 1946

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Aug. 20, 1946

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 18, 1950

First hotel built in Fort Lauderdale after WWII ... offers other firsts

Fort Lauderdale Beach circa 1950
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory/Postcard collection

By Jane Feehan 

Touted for its new architectural features, the Holiday Hotel opened in January, 1948. It was the first hotel constructed in Fort Lauderdale after World War II.

The hotel garnered attention because each room faced the ocean, a “startling” concept. Its through-ventilation was also unique at the time.  Visitors to Fort Lauderdale today would take those features for granted.

Once located on Mayan Drive, where part of the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort sits today, the Holiday Hotel was built in a U-shape with the ends splayed outward. New in those days was its outdoor access to rooms and cantilevered balconies over room entrances. Stairways on the four-story building were covered. It was an expensive construction but outdoor entrances completely eliminated the need for fire escapes and the dangers of guests being trapped in hallways.

An article about the 50-room Holiday Hotel claimed “all rooms are provided with baths, and end rooms are equipped with elecrtric refrigerators …” It also had a cocktail lounge, dining room, dining terrace and large ground-floor lobby. Its horse shoe shaped bar was built of bleached mahogany. Guests could also expect central heating and complete phone service. Two penthouses and a large sun deck sat atop the building.

The Holiday Hotel became a popular place to book social functions and Chamber of Commerce events.

There was other booking, so to speak. The hotel nearly lost its liquor license in 1951 after a bartender was convicted of bookmaking, the second such arrest and conviction in 1951. The state didn't (or failed to) carry out the liquor license revocation.

Designed by Clinton Gamble and Associates, and built by Leonard Brothers, the popular Holiday Hotel sat 100 feet from the water’s edge ... at the best beach in Fort Lauderdale.

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 4, 1948.

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 18, 1951

Tags: Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale architecture, post WWII Fort Lauderdale, film industry researcher, Fort Lauderdale history

Howard Johnson's opens its first Fort Lauderdale site and a link to the U.S. franchise concept

Shuttered HOJOs on A1A before it was torn down. 

By Jane Feehan

Orange roofs of Howard Johnson restaurants were as much a part of the American tableau of the 1950s and 60s as were wide skirts, rock n’ roll and Russophobia.

Howard Deering Johnson (1897-1972) started out in Massachusetts in 1925 with a soda fountain. Competition was tough but he bumped up sales with his own concoction of high-fat vanilla and chocolate ice cream that quickly became popular; business boomed. 

Within a few years he opened additional stores. Some say he pioneered the franchise concept with the opening of his restaurants in 1935. (Retail histories point to founding father Ben Franklin as a franchising pioneer with his printing shops and Martha Matilda Harper with her hair care stores in 1891 Rochester.)

By the time Johnson made it to Fort Lauderdale in 1950, he owned 252 restaurants throughout the nation, many on turnpikes. He celebrated his 53^rd birthday in Fort Lauderdale Feb. 2, opening his 253^rd restaurant at 317 North Federal Highway. On hand for the occasion was Mayor F.R. Humphries, other city officials, and R.H. Gore, president of the North American Company, builder of the then-new structure which he leased to Howard Johnson of Florida, Inc.

By the 1960s and 1970s, Howard Johnson’s was the largest restaurant chain in the U.S., with more than 1,000 units. He and son, Howard B. Johnson, also opened motels beginning in 1959. Today, Wyndham Worldwide owns Howard Johnson motels and the rights to the name. By 2018 only one restaurant was operating and that was in Lake George, N.Y.

How many HoJo restaurants and motels can you remember in Fort Lauderdale? Was it the ice cream or clam strips that brought you back?  None of the frozen entrees or ice cream products are manufactured today. Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources: 

   Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 3, 1950

   www.hojoland.com

   https://www.franchise.org/blog/the-history-of-modern-franchising

Tags: Howard Johnson restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale history, Howard Deering Johnson, Fort Lauderdale restaurant history, Fort Lauderdale hotel history

Fort Lauderdale's first drive-in theater

Public Domain

By Jane Feehan

Reported by the Fort Lauderdale News as a "new entertainment feature," the city's first drive-in theater opened in January, 1948. It was owned and operated by Floridale Company and located “two miles west of town” on West Broward Boulevard. Mayor Reed Bryan was on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The opening was a big event for the town; Mayors Turbeville of Oakland Park, Haymaker and Schwartz of Hollywood, Bland of Pompano, and Frost of Dania also participated in the celebration. The Fort Lauderdale High School band played and the entire inaugural program was recorded for playback on radio station WFTL.  The feature movie was Centennial Summer. Refreshments were delivered at cars upon signal.

The drive-in movie business began with the opening of the first theater June 6, 1933 in Camden, NJ. Tickets were 25 cents per vehicle and 25 cents per person. By 1948, 820 drive-ins were open

First drive-in theater NJ 1933
Public Domain (Wikipedia)

throughout the country. According to the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, the peak year for drive-ins was 1958 when 4063 were showing movies. By that time, they were nicknamed “passion pits” for known back seat activities.

As of October, 2019 UDITOA.org reports 305 open air theaters remain in the U.S.  Seven drive-ins  with a total of 25 screens, operate in Florida. In Fort Lauderdale, the Thunderbird or Swap Shop Drive-In Theater still packs them in on West Sunrise Boulevard.

Sources: 

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 14, 1948

Christian Science Monitor, June 6, 2012

United Drive-In Theater Owners Association at www.uditoa.org

Wikipedia

www.driveintheater.com/history/1940.htm

www.driveinmovie.com/FL.htm

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, Fort Lauderdale history, Drive-in theater Fort Lauderdale, drive-in theater history, film industry researcher

Lauderdale Manors and the 1950s boom ... of square dances and midwesterners

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale grew significantly during its second real estate boom.  Work began in February, 1950 on a ‘huge new development” - Lauderdale Manors - in the northwest section of the city. The first permits for Lauderdale Manors that year were issued for 15 houses on the 1500 and 1600 blocks of NW 11^th Street. The dwellings were to cost $7,000 a piece. 

The development, which originally took up one fourth of the old mile-square Chateau Park subdivision of the 1920s, was platted without any through streets. After the first real estate bubble burst in the 1920s, mortgage holders for the five or six houses built in Chateau Park came to pick up the pieces. According to builders of those first few homes, the mortgage people found things to be so bad that even the houses had been stolen. 

The more successful attempt of 1950 included houses planned on courts that ran east and west, a unique footprint at the time. The entire project was platted from NW 10^th Place to NW 14^th Court and from 15^th to 20^th Avenue where hundreds of houses were eventually built. The footprint expanded to about 24th Street (perhaps beyond) by the mid 1950s.

In 1955, other builders bought lots for new homes, expanding the Lauderdale Manors neighborhood. The Albert Construction Company built between 19th and 24th streets. As a sales promotion, they held free community square dances with free prizes. The builder collected names of attendees from dance ticket stubs and contacted them later about houses for sale for under $6,000. No doubt this marketing promotion appealed to the many midwesterners flocking to Fort Lauderdale at that time. 

Later in 1955 ads for resales appeared for a variety of houses in Lauderdale Manors, including a three bedroom, one and a half bath (CBS construction) house for $11,250 furnished or $10,500 unfurnished with a down payment of $2,500.

It's unlikely square dances would appeal to today's home buyer in Lauderdale Manors; the demographics and dances have changed. And prices in 2024? Closer to $500,000 ... 

For more on Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, see index.

Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

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Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 4, 1950.

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 22, 1955

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 7, 1955.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, film researcher, Fort Lauderdale communities

Beer-drinking pig draws customers to Fort Lauderdale restaurant until ...

After World War II tourism gained a strong foothold in Fort Lauderdale. But this seaside city had not yet earned the sophisticated reputation of Miami Beach with its fancy hotels and floor shows. It was not easy to climb above the noise of the competition beckoning visitors with all sorts of roadside attention grabbers.  But one operator of a restaurant off State Rd. 84 in Fort Lauderdale did get notice of new patrons – and a sanitary inspector. It’s a story that made the front page of newspapers as far west as Kansas, and as far north as Ohio.

A pig-in-a-parlor act in a restaurant run by Gina Riva featured a sow named Suzette who, on command, would sit on her hind legs and drink scotch, beer or soda from a bottle. The act, no doubt, was hilarious, but sanitation inspector Ray Almeida declared it unhealthy for customers and cited Ms. Riva. 

She appeared in Broward County criminal court where Judge W.T. Kennedy may have appreciated the skills of Suzette or the humor of the situation. He withheld Riva's sentence after she pleaded guilty and told the court the pig was sent back to her pen. Never mind the health or rights of poor Suzette; these were the days before PETA. 

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami News, April 6, 1951

Miami Herald, April 26, 1951

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Florida tourism, Fort Lauderdale tourism, film industry researcher