Los Angeles Travel Art in the Golden Age - Trans World Airlines

Trans World Airlines is the third national airline I'll be looking at which called Los Angeles home in the 1960s. It was a golden age of advertising, the Jet Age as airline companies switched to jet engines, and vacation travel became cheaper and easier. 

Unlike United and American, who were also formed by merging regional airlines in the pre-WWII era, TWA no longer exists. Like United and American, TWA formed in an era where cargo was the main air business. The postmaster general wanted bigger airlines to give airmail contracts to, and thus Transcontinental Air Transport combined with Western Air Express to form Transcontinental & Western Air. 

Back when it was Transcontinental and Western Air, TWA was known as The Lingbergh Line as Lucky Lindy had a hand in the running of an "airline run by flyers". The Lindbergh route which started service in 1930 was one of the first all-plane coast to coast services. It took 36 hours with an overnight in Kansas City. 

These early trips to San Francisco through Los Angeles helped paved the way for LA as a travel destination. By 1940 TWA had four daily flights going west: the Sun Pacer, the Sky Chief, the Thunderbird, and the Grand Canyon. Still with an overnight in Kansas City, the Thunderbird also made stops in Pittsburgh and Chicago before arriving in Los Angeles the following day. 

1941 saw TWA add Boeing 307 Stratoliner service, the first commercial aircraft with a pressurized cabin allowing for flight at an altitude of 20,000 feet. TWA had five such planes, with the war effort requiring faster long distance travel. Same day arrival in Burbank for New York was finally possible. 

This bit about Burbank is something else I just learned. These 1940s flights weren't coming into Westchester, they were coming in at Burbank and Glendale. In 1939 Burbank's Union Air Terminal had 16 departures a day: eight on United, five on Western, and three on TWA. American Airlines used Grand Central Airport in Glendale as its base of operations. The switch down to LAX happened around 1946. 

Howard Hughes gained a controlling interest in the company in 1941, and went after Pan Am's designation as the sole international commercial airline. In 1946 TWA changed it's name to the Trans World Airline to advertise this new international serive, with Cairo the first overseas destination. Soon TWA was advertising Polar Route service from Los Angeles to Europe taking a jet stream "over the top". 

This poster is dated circa 1956, definitely after 1950 when TWA officially changed its name to Trans World Airlines (added the s). The illustrator was Bob Smith (not the singer). It has the palm trees and a mission to invoke Southern California, as well as the golden sky. David Klein also had a golden sky design with a mission during the era which is much more progressive. 

This one is pretty great, with the abstract golden sun, the birds flying into this Mexican inspired design, the golden sky and the bells of the mission tower. There are even palm trees in the background, but a more interesting spiky version. This Klein art collection puts the poster at circa 1959, but the Jets line makes me think it could be further into the sixties when TWA became the first all jet airline. There's another popular David Klein Los Angeles travel poster from that era. 

  
Here we get another bit art, depicting the Hollywood Bowl. The searchlights have the Los Angeles night sky in various shades of blue, and the patrons in the bowl are represented by glowing stars. 

There's also a version of that poster with fares and flights superimposed. The daily SuperJet flights left once in the morning, once in the evening, and then a red eye flight. With both posters advertising SuperJets, I imagine they're both from around the same time in the 60s. 

TWA was also a title sponsor at Disneyland, with the TWA Moonliner the tallest structure in the park's Tomorrowland. The Moonliner stood outside the Rocket to the Moon ride, which later became the Mission to Mars in 1975. The Moonliner only lasted until 1967, as the Apollo project had gone in a different direction than the rockets imagined in the 1950s. This would be one of the ongoing problems with Tomorrowland which was redesigned in 1967, and then again in the 90s, consistently finding its future predictions had become outdated.

The Disneyland-TWA poster also depicts the park's other lands: the Jungle Cruise of Adventureland, Sleeping Beauty's Castle of Fantasyland, the Fort of Tom Sawyer Island part of Frontierland, and Main Street Station representing Main Street USA. 

Disney needed to shuttle people from all over the country to his theme park, so an airline partner was necessary from the beginning. Inside these brochures were maps of the park and paragraphs on each land. 

Los Angeles Travel Art of the Golden Age - American Airlines

Switching from United Air Lines to American Airlines (one word, not two) we get to highlight another design legend from the Mad Men era in Massimo Vignelli. This designer who once remade the New York subway map fully bought into the minimalist modern movement of the times when he came up with a new corporate identity for American Airlines in 1967. 

Once again in Helvetica, the new identity streamlined not only the typeface but the eagle as well going into the 70s. Previous versions of the eagle logo had more detail, and help us date the various posters we'll look at today. Between 1962 and 67 the bird has more realistic looking feathers and it's in a red circle. From 1945 to 62 there's a fully detailed bird with layers of feathers. Let's start with a poster featuring Vignelli's typeface: 

I love it when Los Angeles travel posters use gold tones, like the city is constantly bathed in the light of sunset. The poster pays tribute to the Spanish past (a common theme in earlier Los Angeles travel posters was missions), but by using actors and ersatz buildings it ties into the Hollywood movie culture as well. The poster also manages to squeeze in the requisite palm trees. I absolutely love this poster, late 60s just before the more psychedelic 70s.

 Here's an example from that 70s era. Abstract art has made its presence felt in the advertising world, and here the Hollywood Bowl, city hall, and foreground palm trees are being invaded by multicolored orbs. It's even got sunset happening concurrent with dark of night. It's far out, man. 

That brief period in the 60s with the circle logo produced this watercolor gem with some abstract elements. The golden sun and palm trees are prominent in the top half of the poster, which features a busy urban scene (the name of that structure in the center escapes me). The bottom half has a lazy marina scene, which looks like Avalon Cove but certainly is meant to invoke all the lazy marinas around LA county. 

Further back in that era between 1945-62 we have a scene overlooking Los Angeles with the hills in the background and foreground. Palm trees line the foreground hill and there appears to be a Hollywood premier happening down on the ground. Hollywood premiers used to be big tourist attractions, with grandstands set up along the street so fans can watch stars arrive. Common of earlier air line travel posters, there's a plane in the upper corner to reinforce the mode of transportation. 

American began bringing passengers cross-country from New York to Los Angeles beginning with the introduction of the Douglas DC-3 in 1936. This advertisement for a new DC-6A cargo plane would date to 1947, with the copy claiming to get from New York to Los Angeles in nine and a half hours (there was a stop in Dallas/Fort-Worth). Imagine, suddenly you could send a package from New York in the morning and have it delivered in Los Angeles the following morning. 

Our poster with the Hollywood premier likely comes from the post-war 50s when American grew to be the largest Airline in America (a title held until United merged with Capital). It's fun to see how the art evolved in advertising Los Angeles, but the tropes remained the same: movies, sunshine, and oceanside relaxation. 

Los Angeles Travel Art of the Golden Age - United Air Lines

Photo collection LAPL

Mad Men has often inspired me to take a look into the past, and it's no different with the upcoming final season. The trailer is all about the Mad Men characters embracing the Jet Set age with a psychedelic flourish, and that has inspired me to try and see that era through the medium Mad Men has as its center - advertising. 

Mad Men is set in the golden age of advertising, an era that directly corresponds to the creation of the Helvetica font. This sans-serif typography was released in 1957 by the Haas Typefoundry and designed by Swiss designer Max Miedinger. The font was supposed to be neutral with great clarity and no intrinsic meaning. Perfect, then, for an era of magazines, television, and vacation travel. 

Helvetica print ad

This is relevant information when trying to date travel posters. The destination art from the 60s is full of Helvetica, and then in the 70s the art starts to take on hippie influences. The poster art of the 60s is a bit more classic color pencil. Go back to the Clipper plane era and you lose the Helvetica. Now, let's take a look at some travel art. 

United Air Lines - Los Angeles by Stan Galli 1960

This is the poster that inspired this entire post. Stan Galli is a well known artist who lived to the ripe old age of 97. He went to art school in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and starting in 1952 did illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post.

I love so much about the poster. The texture of the gold background, the silhouetted palm trees, the bikini-and-sunglass clad perfectly-tanned-blonde woman (off to the pool no doubt), and the way her entire pose suggests motion. It's a statement about relaxation while at the same time suggesting action and life. We get a variation on the same theme here in a more general Southern California poster. 

Southern California via United Airline by Stan Galli

Los Angeles has been a stop for United Airlines since as far back as 1933. The airline also had stops in San Francisco and Seattle. This North-South route would go West-East from San Francisco to Salt Lake City to Chicago to New York. 

I love the moments when one form of technology overlaps with another. In this case we see an air route named the way train routes were. No one taking the cross coast trip today would think to call it "The Hollywood" but there it is in all its glory. The flight lasted eight and a half hours, which we've gotten down to about five hours these days. Passengers were served stuffed squab and filet mignon (on an airplane, imagine!) . 

The Southern California poster looks to be earlier than the Los Angeles poster with a smaller United Air Lines word mark. Between 1954 and 1961 that squashed sans-serif italic font was used, and then in 1961 when United merged with Capital Airlines the switch to Helvetica was made. It's interesting that pre-1960 posters seem to always use Southern California (in this example with Southern in much smaller print). Then the Dodgers moved west in 1959 and suddenly Los Angeles was sellable all on its own. 

Disneyland - United Air Lines

Of course, selling Los Angeles and Southern California vacations goes hand in hand with Disneyland. This looks to be from the same era as the Los Angeles poster, and the ride depicted is the world famous Jungle Cruise with Sleeping Beauty's castle in the background. 

United was the official airline of Disneyland (as the poster indicates), but the airline sponsored the Enchanted Tiki Room not the Jungle Cruise. The Tiki Room opened in 1963, and was sponsored by United for their first 12 years after which Dole became the title sponsor (and still is). Not only did United get to associate with Disneyland and Los Angeles, but the Tiki Room allowed them to associate with another popular 60s destination: 

Other posters from the 1960s era series: 

No wonder Seattle had a World's Fair and built the Space Needle in the 60s, it was still getting regionalized on travel posters.

The easiest way to age the posters is to look at the A in Air Lines. The 60s era posters have the pointy A of Helvetica, while the previous generation's A has a flat top (look at the Southern California poster as an example). Here are some examples of the earlier posters. Not sure how many of either set were the work of Stan Galli, but there is a consistent look to both eras: