BEAUTY AND THE BOWL
As time runs out on the old year, Miami spins through its annual Orange Bowl Festival, a lavish nine-day party where tennis matches, snarling motor boat races and pretty queens such as those pictured on the following four pages are served almost around the clock. This year the main course will be the barbecue put on by the Oklahoma and Duke teams on New Year's Day.
On new year's eve, under a bright splash of floodlights, a two-hour parade winds through Biscayne Boulevard and Flagler Street, its 30 bands blaring among the palm trees, 10 of its 50 floats carrying the festival queen and the nine beauties who make up her court.
The spectacular floats, whose skeletons are sheltered through the other 50-odd weeks in two enormous warehouses, have their own power plants, and cost, with all their sticks and canvas and papier-m√¢ché, some $4,000 or more.
Added fillip to the long party is the annual North-South football game played on Christmas night, as well as an international junior tennis tournament and a Grand Prix for inboards and outboards.
The pageantry that brings the celebration to a climax comes during Orange Bowl half time when the queen is presented to the 76,000 football fans. Last year Queen Adelaide Gonzales fairly bloomed from the top of her spangled and towering float.
Queen Adelaide (right), who attends the University of Florida, rides high atop the main float at last year's Festival
Float of Florida beauties (above) glamorizes golf, tennis, boating and swimming, while Betty Gaul (left) rides a magic carpet in keeping with the parade's theme, "Magic Over Miami." Judy Snyder (foreground, opposite page), Nancy Thompson wave from a luminous marine float, one of 50 sponsored by business and civic organizations at costs ranging between $3,000 and $6,000. Half a million spectators will witness these glittering spectacles on December 31
Orange Bowl Queen Adelaide Gonzales reigns at half time from atop a shimmering 30-foot tower
FIVE PHOTOS
JOHN G. ZIMMERMAN