With the election of the mayor of New York City just hours away, I thought it might be instructive to flashback to a very different city and time. This is a short news clip that aired on WPIX in the early-to-mid 70s in which New Yorkers are asked what they
Here’s a little reel featuring the opening credits of the Friday night network TV show line-up in the fall/winter of 1957–and what a load of crap it turns out to have been! Far from making us misty-eyed for the golden age of television, we are instead rendered inert with boredom
I’ve always loved the cumbersome nature of old film and recording technology. At the same time, though, I’ve never been able to truly grasp it. Nowhere is this more true than with the above fascinating reel showing the method by which sound and film are recorded in the early 1930s
Apropos of yesterday’s semi-deep-dive into food on airplanes of the past, here’s a silent reel of 1970s footage depicting a few meals served in a first class cabin of a United Airlines Boeing 747. The steak actually looks rather good though there are too many carrots and no steak fries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKaeIhGT368https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PF_bkJhoIE It’s easy to make fun of airplane food but frankly I’ve always (mostly) liked it. As a kid traveling on PanAm I looked forward to the Chicken Kiev, a scrumptious dish I never saw offered in a restaurant. If I’m traveling on Jet Blue Mint, I’m treated to a
In post-World War Two America, there was a strong belief that private aviation was going to sweep the country, and that small airplanes would soon become as common as cars. Partly this arose from the fact that thousands of men who were trained to fly during the war were returning
Yesterday we looked at two examples of the ‘upper berth as comedic set-piece’ genre. As far as I know, the first extended example of this routine is in Laurel & Hardy’s ‘Berth Marks’ (1929), their second sound film. To be honest, that statement is based on no research whatsoever on
Do trains still have sleeper cars? If so, do they still have upper and lower berths? Perhaps the bigger questions is: do people still sleep on trains other than falling asleep in their uncomfortable seat, jammed next to somebody with a service dog. (This happened to me on a long
It’s astonishing that World War 2 was somehow fought without the use of computers, cell phones and the internet. In fact, only the lowly Fax (‘Fascimile’) machine provided any true up-to-date technology. Somehow vast projects were organized and immaculately executed in record time–planes were designed as trainers to teach squads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-cHtE5AYQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJoiBRIxpwM The actor Robert Taylor was an avid flyer starting in the 1930s. He often flew himself and his co-stars to location, terrifying the studio executives who saw their valuable ‘properties’ vulnerable to sudden wreckage and instant death. (Planes then didn’t have built-in parachutes to guide them to the ground