I had a model of this Greyhound bus, having traveled the country on them as a child – back when bus passengers were atttactive hollywood stars wearing suits and ties and long dresses.
If you have 40 minutes to kill, it’s interesting to watch. Your son didn’t die in Korea for no reason, after all.
Back in the 60’s my grandmother used to ride Greyhound 2 or 3 times a year from Hollywood FL to visit us in Chattanooga. Every year she’d bring me a new bus model. I coveted the scenic double-decker shown in the video. Airplanes, bah humbug. Going on vacation by Greyhound or a train with an observation car, now that was exciting! (It’s amazing how one’s view of what’s “cool” changes from age six to adult.)
PS- I was born in 1956 so I’ll definitely make time to watch the video. Thanks Art!
I was born after LBJ had already given us the “Great Society” so I have never seen that country (if it existed beyond celluloid).
Anyone else notice the very young Angie Dickinson in that film?
A couple of years ago my son was traveling with a friend and after a car breakdown had to ride Greyhound for 1000 miles to get home. He literally burned his clothes after the journey.
There are 100 different ways I could go with that video and what it says about America then and now.
It was produced by a guy of relatively little note who made industrial films, the kind of things Letterman and Saturday Night Live used to spoof back when I watched TV… he also went on to to some more obvious propoganda short films. He had made the mistake of going to work for this new thing called TV and Paramount gave him the boot. He did work for DesiLu, which had acquired the RKO studio in 1957 from Howard Hughes (via General Tire). RKO was right next to Paramount and eventually absorbed by it.
At 21:30, they mention the “Post House” on the Pennsylvania Turnpike – the last stop before Philadelphia. That’s a real reference – while “Post House” was the generic name used by Greyhound for its own cafeterias, Breezewood was a major facility. It was a geographic hub at the time where the routes going to the Northeast US and Washington DC and south diverged. Food was uniformly awful, but dumping in a busload of people at the same time and hoping to feed them and get back on the road in 20 minutes is a tall order (and everyone getting in and out of the bathroom to avoid using the horrid one on the bus)… Every Greyhound bus that used the turnpike stopped there
http://www.cardcow.com/209066/breezewood-post-house/
The Breezewood Post House closed in 2004
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04179/338195.stm