Review of The 1964 World's Fair (1996) by Edith N — 10 Jul 2012

A Tepid Reminisce.

The great era of the World's Fair lasted about a hundred years. In general, it can be said to have begun with the 1851 London "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations," which gave us the famous Crystal Palace. It continued through dozens of other until the 1889 [i]Exposition Universelle[/i], which gave us the Eiffel Tower. The 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition--the White City. In 1901 in Buffalo, the Pan-American Exposition, where--in the Temple of Music--William McKinley was assassinated. The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which gave us the ice cream cone (probably) and [i]Meet Me In St. Louis[/i]. Heck, in every decades from the 1870s to the 1930s, better than a dozen, and often two dozen or more, world's fairs and expositions were held in countries around North America and Europe, with even a few held in the larger countries of Asia and South America.

However, by 1964, the fad was fading. Four had been held in the 1950s. A group of businessmen in New York, however, had fond memories of the 1939 New York World's Fair, one of the last great hurrahs before World War II. They decided that they wanted to share that experience with their own children and grandchildren. However, World's Fairs were by then controlled by the Bureau of International Exhibitors. The US wasn't a signatory, but practically everyone else was, and when the BIE declared that the planned New York fair did not meet their requirements--not least because they had already sanctioned one for Seattle in 1962, which gave us the Space Needle--the New York fair was declared unofficial. This was feared to be pretty much it for the 1964 fair, but they pulled it off anyway. This hour-long special is a short history of the fair and the memories of a bunch of people whom they got to relate their memories of the fair, which primarily seem to be about sneaking in and eating Belgian waffles.

Honestly, the subject matter is such that this should have been more interesting. Oh, there's no serial killer, as at the White City. No President was assassinated there; Judy Garland made no musical about it. Unlike the 1962 fair, it didn't even produce an important part of a city's skyline. (I suspect only Paris and Seattle had that result.) However, there is that conflict between New York businessmen and the BIE. Millions of people attended, and Walt Disney created quite a lot of the exhibits. Possibly the most notable long-term result of this world's fair is that it is where Walt Disney really got going with Audio-Animatronics; there are two exhibits at Disneyland today (and more, I believe, at Walt Disney World) that got their start at the 1964 New York World's Fair. I mean, heck, they could have tracked down a Sherman brother; "It's a Small World" gets discussed, but not by them. And "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" doesn't even get that, though the Carousel of Progress does. Mr. Lincoln? Right out.

Instead, we get Ordinary People telling us of their memories of the fair. Which is all well and good, but you have to figure that it influenced some actually famous people, too. I'm sad for the guy who's been trying to get exactly the right flavour from Belgian waffles since the early '60s, but so what? So teenagers were jumping the fence so they could spend money on exhibits. Oh, the guy who works for the Vatican who got his start sculpting from being allowed to actually touch the [i]Pietà[/i] had a heck of a story, but that's the only person other than the Fair historian whose current career I could name even as they were talking. The other option to make that more interesting would have been to have interviewed more people. Millions attended the fair, all told; narrator Judd Hirsch assures us that many of the locals visited fifty or sixty times. But heck, did Judd Hirsch himself go? He never tells us.

I believe that you can make a good documentary on literally any subject. You name it, and someone can pull it off. However, the more obscure the subject, the more effort it takes to make a documentary about it turn out well. There's so much information here that it only barely counts to me as an obscure subject; after all, how many obscure subjects are major plot points in Will Smith movies? I also think that there are plenty of people of my generation vaguely fascinated by the idea of world's fairs. When I was a child, my best friend and her family went to Expo '86 in Vancouver, the first person I knew to travel in the Pacific Northwest. I didn't even know what a world's fair was then--I would have been nine--but I was still somewhat intrigued by the subject, just as I am curious about the same sort of thing at Walt Disney World. The whole idea of a bunch of nations getting together to show each other their best strikes me as a good one, even if you don't get a Space Needle or the mass marketing of Dr. Pepper out of it.