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January 10, 2008
Powerama
I should have my new show, On Beauty, up sometime tomorrow.
Incidentally, this beauty (who of course will be part of the show) was part of Powerama, a month-long fair put on in Chicago in 1955 by G.M. to promote their diesel engines.
From a description of the event from a 1955 article in Time Magazine:
In rainbow-colored Dieseland, divers will splash into four feet of water in the world's biggest dump truck (50 tons), and the public will tramp around a host of diesel-propelled attractions ranging from an 85-ton atomic cannon to a 63-ft. shrimp boat. The star of the show: G.M.'s new, 10-car, 400-passenger Aerotrain, which is twice as light and less than half as expensive as conventional passenger cars. To make the diesel debut complete, the company has built a grandstand where 7,000 spectators can watch an hour-long musical (title: "More Power to You"), featuring a top-hatted elephant in a test of strength with a diesel bulldozer (the diesel wins), French acrobats performing from a 70-ft. crane, 35-ton bulldozers doing the mambo, girls posturing on a fishnet held aloft by two giant cranes.
The entire article can be found here.
Sadly, I don't have any photos of the elephant/bulldozer tug-o-war.
Posted by nick at January 10, 2008 11:31 PM
Comments
Cool backstory, Nick! Where'd you find this photo, and how did you trace it to Powerama (another case, I might add, of life imitating a Simpsons episode)?
--Jeannie
Posted by: Jeannie at January 11, 2008 07:27 AM
Jeannie- It was part of a small lot of slides I recently got at an antiques market north of Chicago. There was another slide where a large banner for Powerama was visible so it just took a quick google search to place the photos.
Posted by: nick at January 12, 2008 03:10 PM
You know someone, somewhere has images of that elephant - dozer competition. They are just waiting to either be found, or sadly thrown away.
Posted by: Mike at January 14, 2008 12:31 PM