The World’s Fair (now known as Expo) has been held in a different city every few years since 1851. Perhaps the most iconic of all the fairs was held in New York over the long, hot summer of 1939. The event was a spectacular success, drawing tens of millions of visitors over six months.
It was also around this time that colour film was just beginning to take off in a big way, thanks to Kodak’s ground-breaking new Kodachrome process. For the first time ever, the technology was available not just to major film studios, but ordinary people. And an event such as the World’s Fair was the perfect opportunity to try it out for the first time.
The quality of this footage takes my breath away. It is over 80 years old. And yet it makes the World’s Fair seem so real, so current, that aside from the vintage fashions, it could almost be smartphone footage shot through a filter.
It also surprised me how permissive New York was at the time. This was the era of the Hays Code, of moral panics over public decency. And yet, look at how revealing some of the outfits are! How wonderful would it be to know what became of those carefree and terribly daring young women in the park, who appear about half way through? How wonderful would it be to know what happened to any of them?
Perhaps that’s why there’s also a poignancy to this footage that is almost unbearable. The fact that the wider world teetered on the brink of war at the time merely serves to imbue the beautiful images with bittersweet irony. The idea that the 1930s were somehow a more innocent time is, of course, an illusion. But an easy one to indulge, perhaps, when you start to wonder how many of the people we glimpse must have been touched by unbelievable tragedy, so soon afterwards.
None of them knew what dark times were just around the corner. But in the long-ago summer of ’39, visiting that fair must truly have felt like stepping into the world of tomorrow.
All of the footage used in this video is in the public domain. Special thanks to Sony-ATV, Beggars Music and the band Lemon Jelly for their kind permission to use the lovely track ‘Space Walk’, from the album ‘Lost Horizons’. It is available to buy in all the usual places.
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