Porter Air of Canada is going retro.
Posted on 10/22/2011 6:47:51 AM PDT by jmcenanly
One of the more intriguing shows of this fall's tepid television season is "Pan Am," which focuses on a gaggle of young stewardesses - as they were called then - flying for the unofficial American flagship airline during its early 1960s heyday.
The series has been derided as "Mad Men in the Sky" for its obvious slipstreaming of the popular show set in a New York advertising agency during the early 1960s. From the two weeks of "Pan Am" I've watched so far, there's a lot of thematic overlap. Strong women beginning to push back at a male-dominated culture, New York as the center of the universe, and really sharp clothes.
(Excerpt) Read more at bnd.com ...
Ah yes.. I long for the days when the stewardesses were pretty and friendly, and flying was an enjoyable experience.
I watch and like this show, but I watch it with a bit of melancholy since I’m old enough to remember when Pan-Am was the air travel powerhouse and the stews dressed like that! It does painfully remind us what all we’ve gave up in the name of safety. Flying now is like taking a Grey Line bus or worse.
Buck up, there’s hope. My daughter is 15 and two of her favorite shows are “Mad Men” and “Pan Am”. She also mixes Frank Sinatra and John Coltrane on her MP3 player with whatever modern crap she listens to. The younger generation (meaning much younger, I guess.) is getting a glimpse of just what half a century of political correctness has cost us in terms of manners, quiet strength, style and artistic talent.
It may be a slim hope for the future, but it is a hope nonetheless.
Good looking women at that time versus sturdy looking ones today ! And some airlines, people are pretty rude like United.
Porter Air of Canada is going retro.
I share that hope. I have teens that at times are more conservative than me! And they have Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald on their mp3s. My eldest teen daughter adores the fashions of the 50’s and 40’s. The fight to retrieve this country is going to fall to them.
...or Vaseline.
I do quite a bit of flying on USAir, and I'm pretty sure that a large percentage of their flight attendants started their career 50 years ago.
It’s tough to keep the storylines straight when the four main characters all have to dress in the same outfits. I’d fly anywhere with the breathtaking “Laura”, the younger sister who somehow snags the cover shot in Life Magazine.
The one who has had the best part so far is the stewardess who has the French accent who has had some meaty parts to play - first as the mistress who must uncomfortably confront her lover’s wife and son, then having to confront her childhood separated from her family by the Nazis and how she still hates the Germans even 20 years later.
The drawback to the show is that it hasn’t really tied the characters together yet in a way that you really care about them. The plots seem a little contrived and the ladies, while pretty, seem a little too girlish at times to be believable.
I’ll still watch awhile longer, if just to see more views of the gorgeous Laura in 1960s garb that still looks incredibly sexy today even as it seems overdressed by today’s standards.
Make it early 70's Southwest Airlines and maybe I'll glance at it during football commercials.
...and travelers dressed to travel. Walking into today’s airports is no different than walking into any NY or DC subway station.
They had to treat you like royalty. Back in the day, the prices to fly was very high, which is why it rarely involved taking the family. And strapping yourself inside a flying aluminum tube going 550 miles an hour was also a new idea to get use to. The percentage of people that said they would never fly was still very high, my own parents among them. Our vacations always involved jaming 5 kids into a station wagon to see the country by road.
Yes it was very expensive to fly.
And the safety was not nearly what we have today.
I’ve often said if we had the panic stricken media back in the 50s that we do today, commercial airline travel would have never become widespread.
It requires a bump up to business class or better on Singapore Airlines, but a similar experience can be had.
I like Pan AM, but am disappointed The Playboy Club was cancelled.
PS...if you have Starz Movie Channel, don’t miss Kelsey Grammer in “Boss”.
My family flew Pan Am when we lived overseas. My first air line flight was with my Mother on a Pan Am Lockheed Constellation from San Fransisco to Honolulu, Hawaii to meet up with my Father in 1956. After 4 years on Oahu we returned to the U.S. on the passenger ship SS Lurline.
Later when my Father was working in Laos 1963-1972 we regularly flew on Pan Am, on their flight 001 West, San Franscio - Honolulu - Tokyo - Hong Kong - Bangkok. and their 002 flight East which just reversed the order of the cities.
My last flights on Pam Am were in 1990-1991 Miami to Maracaibo, Venezuela for work and their return flights.
Absolutely! It was a big deal. My first flight was in 1968 to Ohio, I wore my good Sunday dress (the light blue plaid!) Mom wore her Sunday best and Dad wore a suit. I still have my wings pin from that flight (American airlines) they used to hand those out to the kids.
It is extremely easy to tolerate abdominal conditions if you have never known better.
Of the international airlines I flew on between 1962 and 1982 I would only book flights on the surviving foreign flagged companies. Sorry, but on them I feel as if I am a human not a piece of cargo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.