Flying in the ’70s

(Written at 30,000 feet, LAX-ORD)

People don’t believe me when I tell them how it was to fly in the 1970s, how nice it was.

Flying was an occasion. People often dressed up. Like, tuxedos, or ball gowns, with big long trains. One flight—just a short hop from St. Louis to Nashville—I remember Mom leaning over and saying, “That’s called a hoop skirt. People wore them back in Civil War days.”

God, they put on the dog. And if you didn’t have a dog, the airline would give you one. To keep.

For fun, people held foot-races around the cabin. That was the only time sneakers were allowed. Otherwise—proper leather dress shoes, and shined. You did not fly without shined shoes. And if you got scuffed mid-flight, there was a big wooden stand in the back, with a guy who’d been doing it since the 1930s!

Airports were new, and so nice that people would go there just to have dinner. You know that big round thing in the middle of LAX? That was a restaurant.

Not only would the pilot come on the P.A., he’d come back and say hi. To every passenger, one by one. Most times he (and it was always a “he”—the Seventies weren’t Utopia) would actually sit next to you for a bit, shooting the breeze. My dad once won $50 off a pilot, playing pinochle. (And $50 was a lot more in ’76 than it is today!)

If you were a kid they wouldn’t just give you cheap plastic wings. They’d give you a small, nonessential part of the plane.

There were lounges on the second deck, of course there were lounges. There were whole damn nightclubs! The joke was that Pan Am flew dinner theaters with wings attached. The times I flew—and these weren’t transatlantic flights, just St. Louis to Baltimore or whatever—I saw Tony Bennett, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and Cher without Sonny (they’d just split). I also heard Joe Frazier sing; he was in First Class and everyone was too scared to tell him to pipe down.

I remember once Bobby Short was singing cabaret so loudly in the upstairs lounge, my mom took a broomstick and poked the ceiling real hard, hard enough so the masks dropped down. Everyone clapped and said “Thank you!” “Finally!” and Rod McKuen continued his reading. (He was exclusive to United.)

“Look Mike,” Mom said, holding up a mask. They were like Venetian carnival masks, ornately carved and bejeweled and gilded, and you could take them with and maybe even sell them (though I can’t see why you’d want to).

The jetway was—God, I still remember it—straight out of Busby Berkeley. You didn’t walk down some drab mildewy beige corridor; there were showgirls, and bubbles that caught in your hair, and little pin-spots reflecting off mirrored balls, so it looked like you were floating in the stars. At the gate, they handed everyone a top hat and cane (even kids!) and you were expected to do a little soft shoe down to the aircraft. If you couldn’t do that for medical reasons, you’d just sort of saunter.

Everybody talks about the leg room, and that was great, but what I remember was the foot massages. Each passenger had three seats around him—they weren’t empty, don’t be silly, this was a business!—occupied by 1) your masseuse 2) your valet (some airlines called it “your batsman”) and finally 3) an oracle/tarot reader who would give you advice on how things were going to go during your trip.

They really knew how to treat passengers back then. Like gods. The flight attendants would literally prostrate themselves, which took a little getting used to. “Oh most high one! Most holy one! Most powerful one! Would you like another Coke?”

For FREE.

One time after we’d flown to Nashville, the CEO of TWA sent me the best pieces of a slain calf.

“Can I eat it?” I asked Mom.

“No it’s just symbolic,” she replied. “He’s wanting good quarterly numbers.”

•. •. •

“Oh sure, Mike,” you say, “that all sounds pretty sweet, but not everyone could fly First Class.” I swear to you, this was Coach. I never flew First Class in the ’70s, but I think it must’ve been pretty great. One redeye to Jefferson City, when I was in the first Coach row after the curtain, I heard—now I’m not certain, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m shining them on, but the band playing sure sounded like The Beatles.

The pilot would get on the intercom and ask, “Who lives near our destination?” And more often as not, he’d drop you off.

The snacks? Oh they had snacks—if you call lobster thermador a snack. (Back then, we did.) “The champagne wasn’t great”—my Dad said, as we both got rubdowns —“but that boeuf bourguignon was outta sight.”

Does anybody else recall those commercials: “Make it a weekend to remember. Make it…LaGuardia!” I always laughed when Liza Minnelli popped her head out of the jet engine, and Alice Cooper pretended to chop it off.

Now obviously not everything was great—there are some parts of ’70s air travel I definitely do not miss. Everyone smoked, and for a while Braniff had this “Fly With the Big Cats” promotion—that was their thing, like Rod McKuen was for United. They were trying to differentiate from the competition, I get it. But my dad was flying a lot for Proudfoot and got mauled by an ocelot.

The airline paid for the plastic surgery; that wasn’t even a question. There was a working O.R. on every flight. During flights between NY-LA, people used to get their septums repaired. J.P. Morgan even joked about it on The Gong Show.

Anyway, those airline surgeons were top-notch. Dad actually looked better.

Were there lousy flights and trips from hell? Sure—one flight, I remember my mom not liking the Halston dress she got (there was one under every seat). That was the same trip Truman Capote kept “borrowing” my copy of SICK Magazine, screeching, “Not as good as MAD!” and tossing it over his shoulder, right into the reflecting pool. Then he started close-talking to me about someone named Diane van Furstenberg, and his breath reeked of Binaca and weed. I just concentrated on the Pink Floyd laser light show and went “uh-huh” until Mr. Capote’s quaaludes kicked in. In the ’70s they gave those out like pretzels. Instead of pretzels, in fact.

Was it a golden age? Well everything looks better through the scrim of memory but…I think it was. Even that time I had to sit between Orson Welles and John Huston (they sure kept the prime rib cart busy!). Did they get into a fight? Of course. Like, a physical altercation? Yeah—Huston said something shitty about Mr. Arkadin, and it was on. But those L-1011s were so huge, we all just moved up a few rows and Welles and Huston had it out in the ring in back. (Frazier refereed.)

No, not every plane had a boxing ring. For a short while, some offered half-court basketball instead. I still remember the ads; “Fly Delta,” Dr. J would say, then dunk savagely on Lola Falana.

Yes, when I start talking about flying in the ’70s, people just don’t believe me.

Also, the doors didn’t fall off.

---

MICHAEL GERBER is Editor and Publisher of The American Bystander.