At the beginning of the Christmas season in 1934, the Cincinnati Enquirer announced it was sponsoring an expedition to find Santa Claus.
“The Enquirer is going to send an airplane expedition to the North Pole in an effort to locate Santa for the boys and girls who are writing letters telling why they love him,” the newspaper announced.
Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt, a noted Arctic explorer, commanded the trip, with Enquirer reporter and cameraman Glenn Easton along to report back to readers.
This was the middle of the Great Depression, when cheer was in short supply. It was the time of “A Christmas Story,” when asking for an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle from Santa in a department store was expected to get results.
It was also an era when international air travel was still exotic, done in prop planes that rumbled from station to station. It was 25 years after Robert Peary claimed to be the first person to reach the North Pole, and only eight years after the first confirmed polar visit by the airship Norge. A time when there were still uncharted lands on Earth.
The Enquirer could announce today it was sponsoring a trip to the moon and it would be as fantastical.
Reporter Easton, carrying a sack of letters from Enquirer readers under age 12, departed from Lunken Airport aboard an American Airlines Vultee transport plane on Nov. 10 to meet up with Kleinschmidt in New York.
“They’re on their way, boys and girls,” The Enquirer reported. “…All of those letters will be read in his home by the genial old ruler of the Christmas season if Captain Kleinschmidt succeeds in locating his abode.”
Travelogue to the North Pole
The expedition’s plane had a radio to send dispatches back to The Enquirer every day.
Nov. 12: Easton reports the Santa Claus Expedition departed from Mineola Flying Field, New York, the day before. Mrs. Kleinschmidt insisted on going along.
Nov. 14: “Santa Hunt Plane Unreported! Searchers May Be Lost, Fear.” The plane hadn’t arrived at Cape Churchill, a port on the Hudson Bay in Canada. Last contact was at 6 p.m. Nov. 12, reporting “extremely stormy weather.”
Nov. 15: Rescue at sea. Snow and ice had formed on the wings and the plane, equipped with pontoons, was forced to land on Hudson Bay. They floated for 12 hours until the steamer “Sea Lion” answered their S.O.S. and rescued the searchers. They thawed the ice from the wings and flew on.
Nov. 16: After a grueling 1,000-mile flight through Arctic skies, wearing electrically-heated suits over reindeer skins as thermometers registered 40 degrees below zero, they landed at an Eskimo village, Polazeruk, on Victoria Island.
Nov. 18: Reindeer pulled their sleds across hundreds of miles of tundra, then wolves attacked. They fended them off with rifles until lights in the sky spooked the wolves. Then, the explorers crossed an arm of the Polar Sea on a bridge of ice.
Finding Santa Land
Now, readers over a certain age may have been surprised when the expedition actually arrived at the ice castle in the North Pole and met the big man himself. The younger set, though, knew it was inevitable. That was the reason for the trip, after all.
The message came: “Santa’s Castle, Top of the World, November 19 – Have found the home of Santa Claus, and have just been received in his castle. Sending this message from Santa’s big wireless station. Details following later. Kleinschmidt.”
Guided to the castle by one of the diminutive helpers, they were greeted by hundreds of people described as gnomes and a taller fellow in a fur suit who welcomed them to his kingdom.
Santa Claus allowed a photograph to be taken and sent back to The Enquirer on his telephoto system (photos sent over telegraph wire). It ran in the newspaper the next day.
Santa gave the travelers a tour of his ice castle, with walls of solid ice coated with gold, and a gift room that went on for miles, with a moving stairway to access floor after floor of rooms where “armies of gnomes and fairies” made toys.
Kleinschmidt described the toyshop: “Great turbines were turning huge flywheels. Gigantic dynamos emitted electric flashes and sparks, and pulled long leather belts. Hydraulic presses were pushing up huge pistons, wheels on wheels and inside of wheels, cables and shafts and belting, buzzing and turning and moving in all directions, but there was order about everything and you felt the great mind of a genius behind it.”
Santa also took the explorers to visit Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny.
Nov. 28: Easton reports that after a long talk, Santa agreed to accompany the expedition back to Cincinnati to visit the children who wrote him letters.
Nov. 29: With Santa due in Cincinnati that night, the plane developed motor trouble and a leak in the oil line. They landed to make repairs, then severe cold caused a wire to snap, and they made it as far as Ottawa, where Easton radioed an update. The Enquirer contacted American Airlines to send a plane to retrieve them so Santa could arrive on time.
Nov. 30: “Santa Claus is in Cincinnati. He arrived at Lunken Airport last night after a fast flight from Ottawa in a speedy Vultee transport plane...” The Enquirer reported.
Easton and Mrs. Kleinschmidt were frostbitten and stayed behind at an Ottawa hospital for treatment. Kleinschmidt remained with his wife and the co-pilot oversaw repairs to the plane. Not wanting to disappoint the children, Santa finished the journey alone.
That morning, Santa greeted more than 5,000 children and their parents at the Taft Theater downtown for two showings of a motion picture filmed by Kleinschmidt and the team, “The Search for Santa Claus.”
Then, Mayor Russell Wilson presented Santa with a key to the city.
“And that was the way Santa greeted the boy and girl readers of The Enquirer. It was a grand and glorious time, a hint of the joys that are to come Christmas Day.”
Behind the magic
How much was true?
Frank Emil Kleinschmidt and his wife, Margaret Alaska Kleinschmidt, were real Arctic explorers and made a film about their Arctic hunt in Alaska. During World War I, he was granted access to film the Austro-Hungarian army and the amazing war footage was released as the film “War on Three Fronts.”
The movie shown to the children at the Taft was likely “Santa Claus,” a 29-minute silent film “presented by Mr. and Mrs. F.E. Kleinschmidt” and filmed in northern Alaska with real walruses, polar bears and reindeer. It is considered the first feature film about Santa Claus. Photos that ran in The Enquirer of Santa and his workshop match what’s seen in the film, which can be found online.
Glenn Easton never published another byline in The Enquirer and didn’t appear in the city directories.
Other newspapers sent Kleinschmidt on similar expeditions to find Santa Claus. The Indiana Times in 1927, Arizona Republican in 1929, Springfield Leader & Press in 1935, Fremont (Ohio) News-Messenger in 1937. Also, San Bernadino, Wilmington, San Antonio, Winnipeg.
It was the NORAD Santa Tracker for the 1930s. More than a marketing gimmick, it was an investment in a magical experience.
And the joy, the sense of wonder felt by the boy and girl readers who followed the exploits to find Santa and bring him to Cincinnati, that was real.
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