Jim Bradshaw: Even early birds were too late for Hadacol show

Hadacol made history in Lafayette on Sunday, Sept. 3, 1950, when its Good Will Caravan staged the biggest show the town had ever seen, and also created its worst traffic jam.
The first of two shows was at a packed Blackham Coliseum, where “would-be early birds” found they weren’t early enough, according to Laurraine Goreau’s account in the Lafayette Advertiser. “A good-humored crowd of 12,000” had already filled the seats.
All of them came in cars, “all choking every main route,” Goreau wrote. “Some folks never did get there — ‘cause they learned while still technically en route that a second show was going to be given in the Southwestern Louisiana Institute stadium. That reversed the flow, with enough cross-currents to rival the Mississippi.” The crowd that made it to the old McNaspy Stadium “overflowed seating and walking space and spilled over to the student stand on the opposite side.”
All it took to get in either show was a box top from Dudley LeBlanc’s elixir, that, according to testimonials published in a month-long build-up to the show, would cure practically any ailment.
“Before I started taking Hadacol I was troubled with colds,” said “a pretty young girl” from Ville Platte. “What Hadacol has done for me is amazing.” A businessman from Kansas was “generally run down,” but, after only his fourth bottle of Hadacol, his “energy and vitality” returned so much that he could do a day’s work, then fish until midnight. Just three bottles of the stuff were all a Baton Rouge lady needed to calm her nerves, gain weight and regain her lost appetite. A Nashville mother testified, “My four-year-old son had little appetite and his cheeks were pale. He now takes Hadacol and his cheeks are rosy and he has a wonderful appetite.”
Local stores did their part, advertising sales on Hadacol to make the coveted box tops easier to get. At Walgreen’s the big bottle, normally sold at $3.50, was on sale for $3.39; the $1.25 size went for $1.19. Either box top got you into the shows.
Film star Mickey Rooney was billed as the big attraction to the shows. Other performers were “the popular hillbilly star” Roy Acuff, country comedienne Minnie Pearl, Sharkey’s Dixie Land Band, “and 30 other great performers.”
The crowd loved them all, but, according to Goreau, “they gave their hearts to Connee Boswell ... a vivid personality, a voice like honey [that] poured both smooth and hot, all from a native Louisianan who had triumphed over physical infirmity by ignoring it.”
Boswell was crippled by polio as a child and sang from a wheelchair. She was actually a native of Kansas City, but was reared in New Orleans, where she began a career as a jazz vocalist. She was said to have been a major influence on the great Ella Fitzgerald.
At the SLI stadium, “despite the fact that the stage consisted of the beds of two trucks parked end to end, the troupers gave a show that made up in zest what it lacked in trappings.”
When it was all done. LeBlanc, “jubilant over the reception Lafayette gave Hadacol” promised, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” He’d announced at the beginning of August that he was retiring from active participation in Louisiana politics to devote more time to his business, “because almost 600 people depend upon me for the best livelihood they have ever enjoyed.”
After the Lafayette shows he promised that in 1951 he was going to “charter a streamliner train of 25 or 30, or even more, cars” for the caravan.
He said he would spend $1.5 million “for the greatest show on [train] wheels” and that he would go “even to two million or three million if developments warrant it.”
He did charter the train in 1951, but, alas, it turned out that developments didn’t warrant it.
Almost exactly a year after the big Lafayette show, LeBlanc announced he’d sold his magic tonic, and only a few weeks later the new owners said the caravan, then touring in Iowa, would remove “free riders” from the train.
The tour was scheduled to continue through Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas before returning to Louisiana, but was canceled completely only a week after the first announcement.
It seemed there were a few debts to be paid before it could resume.
But that wasn’t LeBlanc’s problem any more. Freed from his business responsibilities, he “unretired” from politics to run for governor against Earl Long, Hale Boggs, Bill Dodd and some other colorful politicians in a campaign that turned out to be almost as entertaining as the Hadacol caravan.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.