A Halloween Treat

Let's take another deep-dive into the cavernous VistaVueLounge video vault for another gem from 1986. ABC's Our World presented a classic and award winning episode entitled Halloween: 1938. Here's a description from the book Special Edition A guide to Network Television and Special News Reports, 1980-1989 by Daniel Einstein:

Recalling Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre broadcast of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds on 10/30/38. Featured are interviews with Welles and one of his rapt listeners, Steve Allen. Also examined: the world prepares for war. Emmy winner: Outstanding Individual Achievement (writing: Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf).

Other events covered included the Hurricane of '38, and a prelude to the upcoming war in Europe. This is a great show! Enjoy (and Happy Halloween) !

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One More Toy !

I remember seeing this commercial over and over again in the late 60's. The toy looked so good on TV, but was somewhat disappointing when you unwrapped it on Christmas day.

Yet More Toys !

I loved this one when I was a kid. Although the commercial shows that it ran well over a carpet, it really didn't. The battery lasted a lot longer if the track was setup over a hard wood floor. This was a great toy!

More Toys !

My friend up the block got this one for Christmas. I loved the sound of the fake engine. He put it on his Schwinn banana seat Stingray bike. I was so jealous!

We want Toys !

During the 60's and 70's, kids were bombarded by toy commercials, especially during the lucrative Saturday morning hours. Some good (and definitely some bad) toys were pitched in between showings of such classic cartoons as Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour, Johnny Quest, and Space Ghost. The big toy makers were all represented; Mattel, Ideal, Marx, and Remco. Here's a great commercial from that era (I still remember the song) !

Supersonic III

We'll close out this short diversion to the supersonic era that never was, and look at the original Boeing design. In competition with Lockheed, Boeing submitted a winning design that included a massive swing wing. The Boeing 2707-100/200 was revolutionary in all aspects; titanium structure, a powerplant that was capable of propelling the aircraft to Mach 3, and an internal seating arrangement that included onboard television. Here is how the original mockup looked on display, all done up in Boeing house colors.

Unfortunately, the swing wing doomed this design. It made the aircraft way too heavy. As shown in this video, Boeing engineers said the aircraft would fly....only without the added weight of passengers! The following are segments taken from the PBS/Nova episode entitled "Supersonic Spies."

Supersonic II

The supersonic mockup was the highlight of the SST museum, but there were other interesting things on display. Inside the building, there were several glass cases containing scale models built by local modelers. There was even a factory model of the SST in Delta airline livery.

This is a photo taken inside the Boeing SST plant showing the 2707-300 mockup as it was being fabricated. The mockup was complete, but was missing the starboard wing and tail plane.

Another interesting display was one of the original Sea Dart prototypes. How this ended up in Florida, is a mystery to me. I recently saw another nicely restored Sea Dart at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. I'll show a picture of that in a future post.

Supersonic

Speaking of the world of tomorrow, here is something that was promised in our future, but never came to be. In the early '60s, the US embarked on a competition to build a civilian supersonic transport. Both Lockheed and Boeing submitted designs, with the latter being awarded a contract in 1966. The initial design, however was deemed to heavy to fly. A new concept was unveiled, but pressure from environmental groups, and a cutoff of funding from the the US Congress doomed the program (which was cancelled in 1971).

The full scale mockup of the 2707-300 was purchased from Boeing, and was transported to a site in Kissimmee, Florida. A small museum opened with the mockup as its centerpiece, along with other hardware. I visited the museum in the fall of 1980.

Visitors could walk through the entire length of the fuselage and up to the cockpit. All of the seating, and most of the instrumentation, however, was stripped out.


Due to the immense size of the mockup, the tail actually protruded from the roof, and could be seen from the outside.

The Florida museum eventually closed. A portion of the mockup (i.e. the restored nose and cockpit section) is now on display at the Hiller Aviation Museum in California.

The World of Tomorrow

I'd like to close out this short series about the New York Worlds Fair by taking a trip backwards in time to the 1939-40 Fair. My father remembers visiting that fair, which was also located in Flushing Meadows. Highlights included the iconic symbols, Trylon and Perisphere. There have been quite a few documentary films about this fair, but the best one (in my humble opinion) is The World of Tomorrow. This film was first broadcast on PBS (WNET in New York) on November 22, 1984.

Here is the description from TV Guide:

The year 1939 was a good time for dreaming. In "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy escaped her dreary Kansas existence and found herself "somewhere over a Technicolor rainbow." And millions of other Americans visited the New York World's Fair to glimpse a future of peace and prosperity "that was visible for just a moment between the Depression and the war."

Jason Robards narrates this 1984 documentary...which uses archival footage and stills to juxtapose the Fair's rosy predictions with the dark realities of the time. The film covers the exposition from conception through construction, and tours the major attractions, including General Motors' "Futurama."

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