In “Washington vs. the Bunny,” Dick is flying from DC to NYC on a 1961 jetliner (probably a 707). On each seat, there’s an apparatus that looks like a loudspeaker or signalling device.
Anybody know what these are? Are they for listening to music, or calling a stew for coffee, tea, or milk?
As I recall from my first flight back in about 1964, it’s a reading light for the passenger in the seat. Such lights weren’t overhead then, as they are now. It looks like a speaker, but that’s just the way the lens was made, so it would direct the light down into the passenger’s lap.
I was a kid then, and quite enjoyed all the buttons there were to play with. At first, my mother didn’t care how many times I played with the buttons on the light, but drew the line at all the buttons after I used another to call a flight attendant three times for no reason.
Thank you! So it could be used as a lamp and a signalling device. I also thought it might have been used to make PA announcements in the days before they started handing out earphones to passengers.
Do you have any idea as to which plane it was? They showed it only briefly—not long enough for me to make a positive identification, other than it had four jet engines.
There weren’t a lot of options back then. A large four-engine jetliner flying within the US back then could really only have been a Boeing 707 or a McDonnell-Douglas DC-8.
ETA: Superficially they looked very similar. You could mainly tell them apart because they had differently shaped engine pylons, and on the 707, the outboard and inboard pylons were different from each other. Also most (not all) 707s had a great big honking spear sticking out of the top of the tail, pointing forward. I’m told that this was most likely a long-range antenna.
Very good, thank you! I was basically thinking along the same lines.
The range of knowledge here is amazing, and old TV shows are filled with artifacts like these.
I haven’t seen the episode (well, I probably have, but it would have been 50+ years ago). I was just going on the photo on the IMDB page, and recognized the reading lamp immediately.
I agree with wolfpup–it would have been either 707 or a DC-8. Both had four wing-mounted jet engines, and both were in service at the time.
Very good! 
The Internet Movie Plane Database would be the place to look but they don’t have anything from the show.
Could have been Convair 880 or 990, but those were relatively rare.
Now that the answer has been found, wasn’t flying in the 60s and 70s (and perhaps earlier) such a treat? I remember being treated like royalty.
It was really special, not like the sardine can, cattle-car-packed experiences of today.
I remember hot meals served even in coach, with metal utensils and everything. Paper tickets in little folders with the airline’s logo. When you picked up your luggage there was an actual person there who checked that the number on your claim ticket matched. When you were meeting someone on an incoming flight you could go out to the gate.
On the downside, there was one movie for everyone, projected on a screen at the front of the cabin. The headphones were hollow plastic tubes that plugged into the armrest.
The whole airport experience has changed. It’s interesting to see them adapt with things like cell-phone waiting lots and ride-sharing pickups.
Yes, it was so different. The 60s and 70s were a gracious time for flying, and I remember the flight attendants distributing real silverware for meals, pillows, woolen blankets, souvenir badges and pins.
I have photos of my parents flying in the 50s before I was born and they’re beautifully dressed, he’s in a suit with tie and she’s wearing a hat and gloves. When we flew with them we wore nice clothes too, no T-shirts or jeans.
My father could never get used to the more casual days of flying. The last time he flew, in 1994, age 82, he still wore a suit and tie.
Flying was still delightful in many ways as late as the 1990s. I have memories of my son visiting the cockpit (and spending quite a bit of time there, in fascinated awe) and getting little souvenir gifts. Or of some of the fantastic multi-course meals that were served in business class on long-haul flights.
It’s all been getting steadily worse. 9/11 marked a major turning point, but it was getting steadily worse both before and after. Where will it all end? How about passengers perched on what are basically bicycle seats (not a joke)!
But what did people pay for flying back then? As I understand it, flying was much more expensive and it was regulated so no discount fares.
Yeah, it may have been special, but it was also unaffordable for most people. From the 1960s until 1977, we only took 3 plane trips. Starting in 1977 we could fly regularly. This was not a coincidence. Airline deregulation occurred in 1978.
Yeah maybe it was crazy expensive back then.
My mom was a 1950s PAL flight attendant. She loves talking about those days. She loved the challenging training, and the travel.
In 1959 she was awarded as “Miss Aviation” for Philippine Airlines. They did a photo shoot of her, including a bathing suit cover photo for the Manila Times’ Sunday Times magazine cover.
Some time later my dad saw her on his flight (these were the DC-3 days) and he asked her out. The rest, as they say, is history. They were soon married. That was the end of her career. Within 10 years she’d pump out five kids. I’m the oldest.
Those were the days when flight attendants were not allowed to be married. Hard to believe today.
I can’t believe that my dad hit on a flight attendant! I would have loved to be there across the row and watch him start to flirt with her. That would be fun.
Here are some of her pics from those days. Including the bathing suit magazine cover. Sports Illustrated eat your heart out!
[quote=“wolfpup, post:4, topic:958936”]
A large four-engine jetliner flying within the US back then could really only have been a Boeing 707 or a McDonnell-Douglas DC-8.[/quote]Well-ll-ll, it could also have been a Boeing 720, a Convair 880 or a Convair 990. I will concede that four engines from DeHavilland or Vickers would have been an unlikely choice for stock footage for American TV of the time and the 707 and DC-8 (prior to any merger of Douglas and McDonnell) would have been far more likely.
Wow! Your mom was hot! I’d’ve hit on her too! My dad always said that jetliners took all the romance out of flying—the flights were over so quickly you no longer had time to flirt with the stewardesses.
I think the first time I flew on an airliner of any type was the spring of 1966, when I was in fifth grade. (I had flown in small planes many times out of Flying Cloud airport in Minnesota. I was allowed to take the controls once we were airborne but was never taught how to take off or land.)
My dad and I traveled from Minneapolis to Parkersburg, WVA, with a stopover in Pittsburgh. We transferred to an Allegheny DC-3, which was a beautiful airplane. (I like to think of it as a C-47.) It was a completely different experience from flying on a jetliner. For one thing, we flew much lower than 30,000+ feet and could see the ground quite clearly. There was also more of a sense of speed, compared to cruising above clouds. (I distinctly remember rainclouds, which form at very low altitudes, passing below the plane—it was a very grey day.)
I remember the food they served was delicious—it was the first time I ever tasted asparagus or sweet pickles.
A few years later, I flew from Minneapolis to Denver alone to spend the last month of summer vacation with my dad. My mother, who didn’t know the first thing about airports, put me on the wrong flight—a turboprop liner instead of a jet. It took a LONG time to complete the trip, with a number of stops along the way. (I remember only Oklahoma City.) Late in the evening, my dad was pacing back and forth at the Denver airport, wondering where the hell I was.
One thing that made the flight especially memorable was flying low enough so we could see a rainbow forming from above—the arc was inverted. I’ll never forget that sight!
My first flight of any kind, large or small, was in 1962 on a Constellation from Phoenix to Lake Havasu City with my dad when they were trying to sell property there.
When I was at Keflavik the navy’s last R4D – its equivalent of the C-47 – was there. It would be occasionally be used by the desk-bound to get their flight hours in, going north to an island bisected by the Arctic Circle so passengers could get their Bluenose Certificate.
Unfortunately the two times it left I was working, and the second time it ran out of runway and damaged the landing gear. They were stuck there until a Seahawk with a couple mechanics and a bin full of parts could be dispatched to fix it. After that it sat on the ground back at Kef until it flew away to the museum in Pensacola.
Keflavik was the place! The only international flights I could afford was on Icelandair, which flew from New York to Luxembourg with a stop in Iceland at Keflavik.
My most vivid memories of smaller prop planes in the US was how loud and shaky they were, especially on takeoff. Great fun, going from Chicago to Quincy, Illinois, I think we stopped twice on the way, Rockford and Davenport maybe? Loved it.
