Billy Rose's Aquacade

Billy Rose's Aquacade was a music, dance and swimming show produced by Billy Rose at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, Ohio during its second year, in 1937. The show featured Olympians Johnny Weissmuller, Eleanor Holm Jarret, Dick Degener, and other performers in a 5,000-seat amphitheater that could seat 2,000 diners. There was a 128 foot wide floating stage constructed on barges that could be moved to shore electrically for use as a dance floor. Dance bands such as Wayne King, Shep Fields, and Glen Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra performed there.

Later Aquacade moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, where it was the most successful production of the fair (Lowe). The Art Deco 11,000 seat amphitheatre at the north end of Meadow Lake was designed by architects Sloan & Robertson. Shows were staged by John Murray Anderson to the orchestrations of Ted Royal. The pool and the 300 by 200 ft stage could be hidden behind a lighted 40 ft high curtain of water.

In addition to Weissmuller and Holm, Gertrude Ederle, a Flushing, Queens resident and the first woman to swim the English Channel, appeared in the Aquacade in 1939. Morton Downey, Frances Williams, and Bill Robinson appeared on stage. In late 1939, Rose married Holm after Holm had divorced singer Art Jarrett and he had divorced his first wife, comedian Fanny Brice. Buster Crabbe replaced Weissmuller in 1940, for the second year of the Fair.

In 1940, Aquacade also opened in San Francisco at the Golden Gate International Exposition where Esther Williams and Virginia Hopkins joined the show.