Travel Thursday!
Where would you like to go this week? Would you like a relatively short trip to someplace that hadn’t become a banana republic at the time?
Okay then. From our favorite defunct airline, Pan Am, “Wings to New York”. circa 1948.
Bonus: I’m probably fudging the definition of “travel” a bit here, but I don’t have a better place to put this. Here’s a Pan Am promo film documenting their history of crisis and emergency response, including the 1979 airlift out of Iran.
Travel Thursday!
If you’ve figured out what my theme this week is, you’re probably wondering: how do military history and military heroism fit in with travel?
Answer: This is an episode of a documentary series called “True Adventure”, which according to the YouTube notes, ran in the 1950s and 1960s.
This episode is “Return to Guadalcanal”. One of the men in this video, Martin Clemens, was on Guadalcanal when Japan invaded: instead of evacuating, he stayed behind and became a coast watcher. He later wrote a book, Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatcher’s Story (which is available in reprint and Kindle editions from Amazon).
Bonus: from the Kadena Air Base channel, members of the 18th Wing tour Iwo Jima.
Travel Thursday On Friday!
How would you like to visit exotic Central America? And Mexico?
“Wings To Central America and Mexico”, from Pan Am about 1959.
Bonus: “Some Impressions of Travel In Central America” by Quintus Curtius.
I’ve heard good things about Lives of the Great Commanders (affiliate link) and it is on my Amazon wish list to purchase eventually.
Travel Thursday!
Today’s feature: “Flagships of the Air”, from American Airlines sometime in the 1940s. I picked this for one big reason: it features transcontinental flight on the DC-3, and I love me some DC-3s.
Bonus: We haven’t done a Pan Am video in a bit, and this even fits in with the America! theme. “Wings to Alaska”, from 1965.
Bonus bonus: Nothing to do with travel really, but I remember this song from one of the 8-track tapes we had kicking around in our old Suburban.
Travel Thursday!
How about…America?
“Canyon Country”, from FoMoCo and 1954, visiting the Grand Canyon. This crosses Arizona off the list.
Bonus #1: “Pacific Paradise”, another Hawaii travel film from the 1960s. This is a Universal production, and I don’t think it is tied to any specific airline.
Bonus #2: I think this is stretching the travel theme just a little, but this is RoadRich bait: “Flight Plan”, a promo film for American Airlines showing how the airline develops flight plans. “There are no actors in this picture. Every one is an American Airlines employee working at his regular job.”
Travel Thursday!
Today: “High Road to the Orient”, from Northwest Orient sometime in the 1950s.
Bonus: The “I Will Always Travel For Food” channel takes the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto…and eats along the way.
Travel Thursday!
Today: the Philippines! “New Horizons: The Philippines” from our favorite airline, Pan Am, sometime in the 1960s.
Bonus video: another point of view, from the 1950s and Northwest Orient, yet another defunct airline. (Northwest Orient merged with Republic in 1986 and dropped the “Orient”. Northwest filed for bankruptcy in 2005, and merged into Delta in 2008.)
Travel Thursday!
Today I thought we’d all go out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline.
“The Swiss Rivera”, sometime in the 1950s.
Bonus #1: Also from the 1950s, “Switzerland – Land of Contrasts”.
Bonus #2: This has little to do with travel, but I’m throwing it in here as a diversion: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention play “Cosmik Debris”.
Bonus #3: Bringing it back around, a short interview with Frank Zappa about the Montreux casino fire. This is in French, but has English subtitles, and you can hear Zappa speaking under the translation.
Travel Thursday!
I thought we’d go back to France this week. But this time, in English, and on one of our favorite defunct airlines, Pan Am.
“Voici La France”.
Bonus: since I’ve kind of been neglecting my responsibilities to the United States, “The First and the Small”. This is a 1960s episode of a TV series called “America!” and covers Delaware and Rhode Island. (I think that’s four states down, 46 to go.)
I thought it might be fun to visit France. But this time, on Air France!
“Discovering France”, from the 1960s.
I apologize for the fact that this is in French, without English subtitles. I feel the virtues of the vintage French scenery outweigh this.
But as a bonus: an old TWA promo film, “World On Parade”. This has three things going for it:
Travel Thursday!
Upstairs in my “to read” pile, underneath my three volumes of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I have both volumes of Pierre Berton’s books about the construction of Canada’s transcontinental railroad (The National Dream and The Last Spike). What can I say, they were cheap at Half-Price.
I thought it might be fun to put this up: “Great Canadian Railway Journeys ‘Kamloops to Banff'”. I’d like to visit both Kamloops and Banff one of these days: I’ve been to Vancouver, but Kamloops is about three and a half hours away. Also, I kind of like saying “Kamloops”.
Bonus: “Port Moody to Kamloops”.
Travel Thursday!
I can’t find that I’ve done this one yet: as much as I try to keep track, after 157 of these, it is starting to get hard.
Today: “Wings to Germany” on Pan Am! Berlin in the 1960s!
They had me at “over which we pour bananas and flaming brandy”.
(Wow! I managed to find this on the Wayback Machine, and it is now moved over to the new SDC site.)
Bonus: in the interest of equal time, TWA’s “Flight To Germany” from the 1950s.
Bonus #2: Just to give you that feeling of being there, a Lufthansa safety video for the 747.
Bonus #3: First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
(Apropos of nothing in particular, this Reddit thread gave me a few much needed laughs night before last.)
Travel Thursday!
Here’s something a little different: “To Catch a Dream”, a visit to Spain by way of Iberia Airlines. I could go for Spain right now. Sherry! Tapas!
Iberia merged with British Airways in 2010, according to Wikipedia, but both airlines still operate under their own names.
Bonus video, for two reasons: in keeping with the Spanish theme, “Morocco to Madrid by train & ferry”.
The other reason is that I like The Man In Seat 61. One of these days, if I can ever get the time and money together, I want to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and his site has a lot of useful information on doing that (as well as other train travel).
Travel Thursday!
I thought I’d do something different today. Instead of planes for our first video, trains. And instead of visiting a relatively civilized country, a fifth world banana republic.
“The California Zephyr”! With VistaDome! And courteous waiters!
To be fair, this is from the 1950s, prior to the decline and fall. And somewhat interestingly, Amtrak still runs a train called “California Zephyr” over a similar route (According to Wikipedia, the original Western Pacific Railroad, Burlington Railroad and Rio Grande Railroad incarnation shown here was discontinued in 1970, and Amtrak began running their version in 1983.)
Bonus video #1: More trains, this time the Santa Fe railroad. “Southern California Holiday”. Both of these videos also include some footage of the happiest place on Earth.
“You may cross here from country to country, with no passport problems.” I remember those days. (Never been to Tijuana, but when I was young, my family walked across the border between Texas and Mexico more than once. And when I was older, I made a couple more cross-border trips with friends. Then Homeland Security.)
Bonus video #2: Okay, travel by air this time. “California: World In a Week”, from the 1960s and United Airlines.
It is almost like being there. Except you don’t have to step over the needles and feces. Marineland of the Pacific operated until 1987, when it was bought by the people who owned SeaWorld. The new owners promptly moved all of the animals to SeaWorld San Diego, shut down Marineland, and poured concrete into the drains.
(Also.)
Travel Thursday!
I know we went to Singapore last week, but here’s a different view, from a different airline that still exists and is one of my personal favorites. Why?
“Singapore Stop Over”, from Qantas sometime in the 1960s.
Bonus video: in all our travels, I’ve been neglecting the United States. So let us fix that. And it is the time of year when I want to visit someplace slightly cooler.
“This Land of Ours: Montana”, from 1947.
To be fair, yes, I probably picked this just so I could use the Frank Zappa video.