Not sure if this belongs in celebrities in canoes or if it is just a bit of canoe culture.
Last night I was watching "Born Yesterday" -- a 1950 comedy set in Washington, DC, starring William Holden and Judy Holiday. There's a scene where Holden and Holliday decide to go to a National Symphony Orchestra concert down at the Watergate Steps -- those are steps on the back side of the Lincoln Memorial that go down to the Potomac River.
In the movie, the orchestra plays from a barge on the Potomac. While most of the crowd is sitting on the Watergate Steps, Holden and Holliday listen to the concert, bobbing up and down in a wood-canvas canoe and they are surrounded by dozens of other folks in wood-canvas canoes. You wood-canvas officiandos could probably identify the models and manufacturers if you rent the movie.
I've lived just outside and worked inside of DC for 23 years now but had never heard of these concerts down at the Watergate Steps so I decided to find out if this was mere Hollywood make-believe or if it was a real thing. Turns out the concerts and the canoeists were indeed real.
According to the National Park service, these concerts ran during the summer from 1935 until 1965. The concerts were cancelled only because the noise from jet planes flying into National Airport overwhelmed the orchestra. If you've ever flown into National Airport, you know the airport is right on the Potomac and the flight path comes straight down the river and over this location. While the concerts are a thing of the past, this is still a great location to watch the 4th of July fireworks from a canoe, as I can personally attest.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a still photo of Holden and Holliday in a canoe from that movie, but I did find several archival photos showing these concerts and canoes.
The first picture looks quite a bit like some of the scene-setting footage used in the movie, which I expect was actual footage instead of staged. But the close-up scenes of Holden and Holliday in their canoe surrounded by other canoes appear to have been taken in a studio tank, from above.
The second picture is from the inaugural concert in 1935. I can see at least two canoes -- one is very dark but just below the powerboat at the far right of the photo. The other is very near shore between the boat on the right and the barge.
