Off Topic: Vintage Pan Am Travel Films

This isn’t AAdvantage related, but I thought you might find it interesting.

Colin Marshall hosts and produces the podcast Notebook on Cities and Culture, and in between his twice weekly podcast, he manages to discover some fascinating, but overlooked, internet videos and write about them over at Open Culture.

Among his recent video finds were some vintage Pan Am films that were produced in the 1960 and 70s for the purpose of promoting international travel.

He writes:

ABC’s period drama Pan Am may have come to an end two weeks ago, but if you look hard enough, you can still find a few Pan American World Airways-inspired media.

Back in the sixties and seventies, at the height of the long heyday that would cement its place in the lore of Cold War American culture, the airline commissioned New Horizons, a series of ten- to fifteen-minute documentaries on their various exotic destinations.

Eleven of these short subjects have surfaced on YouTube, so you, too, can feel the midcentury aspirational thrill of motoring across the rolling Irish countryside in a powder-blue Austin-Healey, handling creatures snatched fresh from the sea floor by a Fijan diver, or gazing upon Sydney‘s imposing new modernist apartment complexes.

Here’s a look at one of the films: New Horizons: Ireland, 1960

To view them all, go over to Open Culture read about the other Pan Am films that he’s managed to locate.