FROM AIRPORT TO MANHATTAN, 1940s STYLE

What are we to make of this delightful little color short film showing the arrival of a person at the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia Airport in the mid 1940s? The film is shot quite deliberately–a moving POV of the person entering the cab is technically adventurous though clearly the work of a home-movie enthusiast. The cab is apparently a 1946 eight passenger long wheel base DeSoto with the Skyview Plexiglas window in the roof (thank you, YouTuber, for providing this info). The drive into the city features carefully spliced together views from the Triborough bridge. Upon landing in Manhattan we get an excellent view of what Park Avenue and Grand Central Station looked like before the behemoth Pan Am building blocked the view. Once again a POV shot of the passenger exiting the cab at the Waldorf Astoria, with a nice doorman helping the camera–er, person–step out of the cab. Oddly, we are then taken up in the air, for closing aerial shots of the city. And that’s all she wrote/they filmed…

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