| Intl. Notebook | Jul 6 2021 |
She could have simply gone to the grocery store to get them, but where would be the fun in that?
Back in 1924 the Florida Citrus Growers industry group decided they needed to do more to promote the Florida citrus industry. Getting people to drink more orange juice obviously meant more profit, so they created a goodwill ambassador known as the Florida Citrus Queen, who extolled the virtues of Florida citrus products nationwide. She was always beautiful and young, often a show business hopeful, and appeared at trade shows and fairs, hobnobbed with celebrities and politicians, and ruled over the annual Citrus Expo & Florida Citrus Festival. Above is a photo of Francis Layton, the 1957 Florida Citrus Queen, acrobatically reaching for an orange while speeding along on waterskis.
This photo is so strange. In fact, we aren't even sure how it was made. Did Layton actually waterski while reaching for low hanging fruit? It seems unlikely. How many attempts would that have taken? How many wipeouts? For that reason, we suspect the orange branch was held by someone standing on the same platform as the photographer, and the perspective sells the illusion. Or maybe the oranges were superimposed later. What's doubly interesting, Layton went on to marry champion water skier Dick Pope, Jr., a pioneer of barefoot skiing. Notice Layton is barefoot here. Was Pope somehow associated with this photo session? Possibly, but there's no info to that effect, so we'll have to mark this as another minor vintage mystery. What a cool shot.
