It’s hard to tell in a black-and-white, photo, but it looks like the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel was decked out in white for the 17th annual Candlelight Ball. It appears to have been a fundraiser for the Juniors of the Social Service Auxiliary, which was a branch of The Sisters of Social Service which was a charity group originally founded in the 1920s by Hungarian nuns. All the women appear to be in their fanciest white and the nightclub was decked out with white streamers and 6,000 white balloons which were released at the end of the night. Which probably looked good, but I pity the poor person whose job was it get them all down again.
Angelenos attend the 17th Annual Candlelight Ball at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, December 12, 1952
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I went to a Catholic elementary school, and I remember the Sisters of Social Service. They were not a teaching order, so they didn’t teach at my school, but they stopped by occasionally to help out with other issues. I never knew they started as a Hungarian order — my maternal grandparents emigrated from Hungary.
I just found out this week about a group of Jews in Budapest who were marched to the river, then shot, and their bodies allowed to fall in the water. There’s a memorial now on the banks of the Danube showing the people’s shoes made of iron and left on the embankment (as the Nazis made them remove their shoes before they shot them). And one of this group was the nun who started this order and had been hiding the Jews she was killed along side.
Interesting to have all this serious information connected to what appears to be a very frivolous event!