Results tagged “Stewardesses” from Blogway Baby

I got this great comment from “Diane” on my Braniff post (Braniff Airlines: The World's Greatest Airline?), so I thought I’d share it with y’all:

WHAT A GREAT SURPRISE! I WAS SEARCHING FOR A POSSIBLE "ALUMNI" OF BRANIFF EMPLOYEES BUT FOUND YOUR SITE INSTEAD.

I BECAME A RESERVATIONIST IN KANSAS CITY FOR BRANIFF, TRAINED AT LOVE FIELD IN DALLAS FOR FIVE WEEKS BEGINNING JANUARY, 1967. WHAT A JOURNEY IT WAS. BEFORE COMPUTERS, WE USED A BUNKO-RAMO MACHINE IN AN OFFICE WITH NO WINDOWS NEXT DOOR TO TWA. A YEAR LATER WE MOVE TO A NEW BUILDING WITH IBM AND HAD TO LEARN TO USE THE NEW COMPUTER SYSTEM IN ONE WEEK.

OUR UNIFORMS WERE THE FUSHIA, POLYESTER, WITH A FRONT ZIPPER, MATCHING FUSHIA PANTYHOSE & THE FAMOUS PUCCI SCARF. AND THEY WERE MINIS.

WHEN OUR ROUTE TO HONOLULU WAS APPROVED, I HAD THE UNBELIEVABLE EXPERIENCE OF FLYING FIRST CLASS IN A 747. SHERATON GAVE EMPOYEES A WEEK'S FREE STAY AND I THINK MY FLIGHT PASS WAS $30.00 OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

MY GIRLFRIEND AND I USE TO TRADE DAYS SO WE COULD GET THE SAME FOUR DAYS OFF AND FLY TO ALCAPULCO WITH MAYBE $40.00 EACH FOR EXPENSES. SOMETIMES WE'D BRING OUR KIDS WITH US. FUN! FUN! FUN!

YOUR ARTICLE HAS REALLY BROUGHT BACK GREAT MEMORIES. IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES AT THE WORST OF TIMES. THE LAST TRIP I TOOK WAS WITH MY SON, MOTHER AND BROTHER. WE HAD JUST ARRIVED IN DENVER FROM COLORADO SPRINGS WITH 3 DAYS OF ADVENTURES AHEAD OF US. THE NEXT MORNING WE WOKE UP TO THE NEWS THAT BOBBY KENNEDY HAD BEEN SHOT AND KILLED. WE FLEW BACK HOME TO KANSAS CITY THAT DAY.

What a time to fly!

Hey, this is cool. Venus Airlines, the featured airline in my new musical Plane Crazy which is part of this year's New York Musical Theater Festival, has just introduced a new "retro campaign" that harkens back to the airline's heydey in the 1960s.

According to this article from AdAge, Gus "Guppie" Crenshaw, grandson of Venus Airlines founder Sam Crenshaw, had this to say about the new campaign:

"Venus Airlines was one of the stars of the mid-sixties Jet Age revolution, and our reputation for the sexiest "stews" in the sky was a big part of our success. As my grandfather used to say, "If you have to fake it, just shake it..." and our stews were shaking their bottoms for the bottom line.

And although Venus Airlines has gone through a rough patch over the last thirty years, being basically reduced to a single crop-dusting contract in southern Dakota, we feel that the time is right for the Venus Airlines message to emerge once again into the "sexy skies"...

I think the the buzz on Venus is on the move. Even Broadway shows likePlane Crazy are featuring Venus as an example of blossoming womanhood in the 1960s."

Say Gus: "Our new "Va-Va-Venus" campaign is a clever play on our "VA" (Venus Airlines) acronym, and the secondary meaning of "Va", which in Spanish is "Go". So, from the perspective of one of the sexiest countries in the world, it's "Go-Go-Venus", which is also a nice play on the "Go-Go Girl" sensibility of my grandfather's airline."

When asked about a potential backlash from millions of offended women across the country, Gus laughed and responded, "Dude, c'mon, everyone likes to look at sexy stews..."

In recognition of the support and friendship for Venus Airlines from Plane Crazy, Venus Airlines is supporting Plane Crazyby giving 100 Venus Airlines Mile High Club miles to everyone who attends a performance of Plane Crazy.

As a competitive response, other airlines are expected to soon follow suit.

Plane Crazy will be appearing this fall at The Beckett, 410 West 42nd Street
(south side of West 42nd Street, between 9th & Dyer Avenues).

Performance times are:

Thursday, September 15 at 8:00 pm
Saturday, September 17 at 4:30 pm and 8:00 pm
Thursday, September 22 at 1:00 pm
Friday, September 23 at 4:30 pm
Sunday, September 25 at 1:00 pm

I've always thought that the time was right forPlane Crazy, a Fun Feminism musical.

But I'm seeing more and more evidence that its time has come! First of all we all know thatMenopause the Musical has been running for a while, and the Canadian hit We're Still Hot(similar topic) opened off-Broadway in January.

When I was in Chicago, I noticed a show called Respect: A Musical Journey of Womenopening April 17 at the Chicago Center For The Performing Arts. It is billed as a musical revue celebrating women through American pop music, with more than 60 songs, including "What's Love Got To Do with It?" and "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'". Next stop:Plane Crazy on Broadway!

I just found out that Plane Crazy has been selected out of over 300 applications as one of 36 finalists for the New York Musical Theatre Festival for 2005! Here is an exerpt from the e-mail:

Thank you for submitting Plane Crazy for consideration to the 2005 Next Link Project. As you may be aware, we received over 300 applications for this year's Festival, and the process of winnowing down the options has been exciting, enjoyable, and challenging.

We are pleased to inform you that after careful consideration the Reading Committee has selected your show as one of the 36 finalists for the Next Link Project. All 36 are now being evaluated by the Next Link Jury (comprised of leading theatre professionals Rob Ashford, Thomas Cott, Joanna Gleason, Kevin McCollum, Susan H. Schulman, and Jack Viertel), who will select the final line-up of 18 shows for inclusion in the Festival.

How cool is it that one of my musical theater heroes, Joanna Gleason (another Canadian), will be reviewing Plane Crazy?

Keep your fingers (and stew legs) crossed!

As we are a couple of days from launching the official Plane Crazy Web site, I have taken a few moments to sit back and say "you've come a long way baby".

So much work and energy has gone into this musical thus far (and so much more is ahead, I know, I know) I have to stop and think -- where did it all begin? Can I pinpoint the genesis of Plane Crazy, the actual moment of conception?

When did that seed first drop into the fertile ground of my young, impressionable brain, to grow and grow over the years, nurtured by my experiences, dreams, and fantasies? Let us cast our minds back to the 1960s.

My Grandmother (on my Dad's side) was Hungarian, so we would travel to Europe for vacations and drop in on my Grandmother who lived in Budapest. We always flew into Frankfurt or Zurich and we almost always took Luftansa. As a child of five I was enthralled with the whole airplane experience and especially the compartmentalized food on those long flights, those lovely little trollies that would bring wonderful snacks and exotic soft drinks. I remember it was all so grand.

But most of all I remember the napkins.

With our drinks (hard or soft) we would get napkins that had little cartoons on them. Except these were naughty little drawings of balloon-breasted women in short tight dresses (inevitably bending over to pick up something ), with some lewd joke or pun captioned underneath. I don't think I really understood the jokes, but I was fascinated by these napkins (remember, I was five). I hung on to a few of them for a while but over time I have lost them. But at that moment, at 30,000 feet, as I sat drinking my Orangina and contemplating those funny drawings, an idea was born: Stews...sexy...sexist...funny...airplanes...that was to grow one day into Plane Crazy!

To be continued tomorrow...

From BoingBoing:

Todd Lappin has finished installing his 707 jet panel in his house. It looks incredible! Here's a link to his great Flickr site.

My 707 has come a long way since I first found it at an aircraft scrapyard in Tucson. Here's a daylight view, shortly after I stripped off the paint. The illumination comes from rope lights mounted on the structurally-cool back side. (Next time you rest your head against a window-seat wall to snooze, this is basically what lies underneath.)

I did an earlier post on this fixture in the middle of March. I love it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's a great example of modernist architecture...both the plane and the resultant fixture. But mostly, it feeds into my plane fetish and obsession with the Jet Age, amply demonstrated by my musical Plane Crazy, and my Pucci stewardess uniform collection.

Braniff Airways is the inspiration behind the airline Venus Airlines in my musical, Plane Crazy. Oh, how I wish Braniff was still flying today...

In today's world of cut-rate airlines, it's difficult to remember that air travel was once a much more rarefied experience. Even routine flights would include roses for female passengers and seven-course meals on fine china and linen tablecloths. Stews at the time were required to make omelettes from real eggs in the galley, to cook steaks to order, and to run a complete bar.

"...boarding a plane was such an event that stewardesses took souvenir Polaroids of passengers as if they were sailing on an ocean liner or catching a dinner show. Once, there were planes with piano lounges. Once, a first-class meal might have included turtle soup served from a tureen, Chateaubriand carved seatside, and cherries jubilee. Steaks would be cooked to order -- eggs, too, on breakfast flights."

-- Bruce Handy, Glamour With Altitude, Vanity Fair, October 2002

The time period of the mid-1960s, when Plane Crazy is set, was also about freedom. It was a unique period in history where technological changes (computers, Pill, jets), social changes (mass media, leisure society, Baby Boom teenagers), and political changes (Civil Rights, Vietnam, Cold War) combined in an explosive fusion of color, sound, and energy.

Forty years later, the decade of the 1960s continues to capture our imagination in movies, music, and popular media. Plane Crazy has chosen to focus on two interesting and contrasting themes of the time: The glamour, pizzazz and flash of the mass media "Jet Age" fascination; and the serious issues and compelling questions of the Women's Movement.

"It rained very hard the day we made our first flights as stewardesses. Our brand new, custom-tailored, form-fitting, wrinkle-proof, Paris-inspired uniforms became soaked in the dash to the cab."

-- Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones, Coffee, Tea, or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses, Putnam, 1967

Coffee, Tea, or Me? was a big bestseller, testament to a strange elation that was sweeping the nation. The book was written in worldly first person, and it was illustrated by Bill Wenzell, who turned those two stews into "Wenzell Girls," a cartoon type he made famous in Esquire magazine (butt like a beach ball, breasts like twin missiles, Barbie Doll feet).

"This morning, sightseeing in New York -- and in about five hours, I'll meet my date for dinner in San Francisco."

-- American Airlines recruiting poster, circa 1961

Faith and Rachel weren't just serving caffeine -- they were mixing an explosive cultural cocktail. Call it "The Sexy Skies". Made of airplanes, advertising, and affluence, this sky-highball was first shaken-not-stirred in 1965, two years before the publication of Coffee,Tea, or Me? The key ingredient was a sassy new uniform for stewardesses.

The instigator for uniform change was Mary Wells, and she worked for Jack Tinker & Partners, the advertising agency hired in 1965 by Braniff Airways. It was imagination and pizzazz that earned Wells her fame, and she brought both to the Braniff account. The aim was to enlarge and update Braniff's image, a campaign that coincided with company expansion into new technology and new international routes.

In 1961, when Continental Airlines launched its "Proud Bird with the Golden Tail," it simultaneously put its stewardesses in gold uniforms -- a classy bit of innuendo. Wells went Continental two better. She hired the designer Alexander Girard to redesign Braniff terminals and repaint its planes, and she hired Emilio Pucci, himself a "bomber" (he flew missions in WWII), to design new stewardess uniforms. These designers took Braniff over the rainbow, leaving stately silvers and golds behind for a jewel-toned palette with an Op Art jiggle.

"The End of the Plain Plane," Braniff ads boasted, and could as easily have said "The End of the Plain Jane." Wells made her campaign a play of perceptions, a party game of double meanings. Sex was the message and in an era famous for its subliminal advertising, there was nothing subliminal about Braniff. Girard fitted its famous Love Field terminal with round mirrors on the ceilings, and the gate areas were hung with huge white globe lights -- a bachelor pad in heaven.

Well, "the wish to fly," wrote Freud way back in 1910, "...is a longing to be capable of sexual performance." In Business Week, in 1967, Mary Wells put it bluntly: "When a tired businessman gets on an airplane, we think he ought to be allowed to look at a pretty girl." In her new Pucci uniform, the Braniff stewardess was like no other girl on the concourse.

She was now stewardess-as-jet-setter. In the sixties, a Pucci dress -- like Gucci shoes and an Hermes handbag -- was one of the status symbols among the rich and mobile. These little printed sheaths and A-lines in luxurious silk jersey were fantastic for travel, could roll up into a ball and come out swinging. And they were light as air. Pucci based his uniform on these high-society frequent flyers. He threw out that dread three-piecer of the last 30 years, and built Braniff women a with-it wardrobe of layers, pieces that could be added on or taken off depending on the weather -- a concept that was advertised, to cries of sexism, as the "Braniff Air Strip."

"Marriage is fine! But shouldn't you see the world first?"

-- United Airlines recruiting ad, circa 1967

Construction of the clothes was sixties simple, but with a curious recurring note of architectural interest: there's a round, rolled, slightly stand-away collar that appears throughout the collection. Though it makes room for a Pucci-print scarf, this wide, round collar really seems to be waiting for an astronaut's helmet. And it comes! Pucci's pièce de résistance was a clear, plastic bubble of a helmet, designed, he said, to preserve the women's hairdos. It was the perfect lack of gravity -- Mod meets moon walk. Wells' perception play was working. Braniff stewardesses were soon accepted as the best-looking women in America, leggy birds of paradise in their bright Pucci plumage, feathery exotics who might have picked up their colors on one of Braniff's South American flights (routes exclusive to Braniff).

Eventually they became brides of paradise, with Braniff a kind of breeding ground for the second wives of wealthy men. "Does your wife know you're flying with us?" asked one of Braniff's pointed print ads, yet another innuendo that hit home. Mary Wells herself became a second wife, marrying none other than Braniff president Harding Lawrence in 1967.

"Every [passenger] gets warmth, friendliness and extra care. And someone may get a wife."

-- United Airlines advertisement, late '60s

Braniff was based in Love Field in more ways than one. And "Love Field" is not a bad way to describe the famous patterning of those Pucci prints. Whether it was biomorphic forms in a frenzy of cell division, or jazzy geometrics riffing inside a short-wave, these imploding, oscillating color fields suggested good trips, Op Art orgasms.

I divide my time between Toronto, New York, and Chicago, where I am enrolled in the Theatre Building Chicago, Musical Theatre Writer's Workshop. I am also in the workshop and fundraising process with my musical Plane Crazy, which is a fun, upbeat musical about feminism set against the backdrop of glamour and innocent sex appeal of the swinging '60s jet age: A time when the stews were sexy and the world was sexist.