A Day Called X
Google Video has a video up that’s apparently a documentary. A Day Called X is narrated by Glenn Ford (known to most people my age as Jonathan Kent in the first Superman film) and it talks about Civil Defense “in a typical American city-like Portland Oregon”. Portland Oregon! It’s about half an hour’s worth of video so get comfy and then get ready to kick it old school: According to IMDb this film is from 1957. Seeing as it’s almost 2007, if nothing else you should watch this with the sound off to see Stumptown fifty years ago.
Things I’ve seen so far:
* A newscaster on KOIN radio (yes, RADIO)
* A few beautiful shots of Portland
* Some fascinating footage of old PDX
* Kids in cars not wearing seatbelts
* It says these are all people portraying themselves, so the 1957 City Council
* Mayor Terry D Schrunk (wow! Google says he’s shady!)
* Someone who doesn’t live here pronouncing Oregon and Oregonian correctly.
What an interesting program! Make with the clicky already-you aren’t doing anything productive this afternoon anyway, right?
This is amazing!
Great stuff! I’m about to cover the Cold War in my US History class, my students would love this. I’m going to post it on my class website.
THANKS for posting this.
If anyone is interested in a great documentary about the insanity of the Cold War and atomic bombs, you should definitely check out Atomic Cafe. Great film. I show clips of it to my students. Wonderful footage of duck and cover drills. Funny, yet scary.
Guess none of you were reading Portland Communique when I did this in September 2003. ;)
Of course, back then, the only place you could find them was on the Internet Archive. Heh.
2003? There was an internet back then?
Heh. I remember seeing this on the video channel at Orycon (the Oregon Science Fiction Convention) a few years ago.