The only thing better than docs about old airplanes are old docs about old airplanes…or in this case ‘airships’, the fancy word for ‘Dirigibles’ which was the longer word for ‘blimps’. I haven’t watched this yet so can make no great claims for it, but I can’t imagine it isn’t
Hard to believe, but one-hundred years ago the future of air travel was thought to be found in what was known as the “Airship’, the fancy word for clumsy word ‘Dirigible’. We now know these bizarre aeronautical devices as ‘blimps’ and what we know of them is usually confined to
Here’s part two of the British-Pathe short film that I posted yesterday, showing us London in all its glory in 1950. But is it really showing us the whole story? My friend Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of the excellent, long-running JazzWax blog, pointed out to me
Here’s a lovely look at post-war London–1950 to be exact–as pictured in a British-Pathe travelogue, narrated by Rex Harrison, who I suspect was between divorces at the time and needed the easy money. I was last in London a year ago and was surprised how very much like London it
The Ferris wheel was the invention of a man named, well, George Washington Ferris. Come on, what did you think his name was going to be. Gustave Eiffel? It was designed for the 1893 Chicago Worlds Exposition, the first such exposition since the one in Paris five years earlier which
I’ve always hated everything Disney. Hated Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Hated Snow White and Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty. Hated the song ‘It’s A Small World After All’ and especially hated the score to ‘Mary Poppins.’ Worst of all was Disneyland, a theme park I was subjected to several times
One of the distressing things about nerding-out on vintage airplane videos are the soundtracks one has to endure. Either the person who posted the footage of the lovely old planes plasters ‘Top Gun’ style junk-rock over the images or they err in the other direction, maintaining the ‘purity’ of the
Take a look (and read the accompanying explanation) at yesterday’s blog entry. It’s a World War 2 pilot training film ”Learn and Live With Joe Instructor’, absolutely one of the most entertaining war movies ever made. To my dismay, the film ended rather abruptly, halting just as a plane was
Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up
On Monday I posted a British Pathe newsreel showing the local side of glamorous Rome in 1967. Although the twitty English announcers narration was a tad on the condescending side (more than a tad actually) the lovely color photography made the whole thing a delight to watch. Today we have