A little tale from 83 years ago that I have to post since two of their modern professional descendents are having a friendly battle of some sort over the weather in the cities of Los Angeles and Minneapolis this week.

When John L. Herrmann, Paramount Sound News man, left California around New Year’s en route to Minneapolis for the purpose of recording winter sports and dog derbies it seems he took his weather with him. It was not the kind he craved at all. With the accompanying temperature there was nothing in common with the camera of Byrd and South Pole antecedents, Herrmann’s fine sense of prevision had impelled him to bring along in order to be the better fortified against sub-zero drops into the roaring forties.

His preparedness was quite unnecessary. In Minneapolis the mild winter fractured records right and left, the reading of 59.5 above zero being January’s highest for forty years. The month’s lowest was 5 below.

While the temperature was around 40 above one of the local theatres planned a stunt with an iceboat and six girls in bathing suits. The half dozen femmes were to be recruited from the chorus of the theatre. On the day the stunt was to be put over the temperature took a flop to 28, or four degrees below the freezing point.

Three of the girls decided bathing-suits and iceboats did not look so good to them. An SOS to a sorority house at the University of Minnesota brought a response from a trio of volunteers, and the stunt was put on.

It was found the girls could work only from two to four minutes at a time, due to the cold, at the end of which period they would be bundled in blankets and placed in heated cars. When thawed out they would return to the battle.