Year: 1958

Pan Am ushered in jet passenger travel into the UK in September 1958, and was the first U.S. Airline to do so.

It should be noted however, that a De Havilland BOAC Comet lV landed in New York about 3 weeks before the first Pan Am 707 departed New York for Paris.

This film really captures the glamor of early jet travel from the "Golden Age".

This is a clip from the 1958 drama "Separate Tables" starring Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, Deborah Kerr and Wendy Hiller, with music by David Raksin and directed by Delbert Mann.

The film follows the interplay of a group of lonely characters who are staying at a slightly shabby seaside hotel in Bournemouth, England. The term "separate tables" refers to the practice of seating single guests at their own tables in the dining room, and serves as a metaphor for the characters' fear of intimacy.

Major Pollack (David Niven) is a retired officer who likes to wax eloquent about fanciful acts of heroism in WWII North Africa, and Sybil Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr) is a repressed spinster boxed in by an oppressive mother (Gladys Cooper).

John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), a cynical, hard-drinking, occasional writer, is surprised by the sudden arrival of his ex-wife Ann (Rita Hayworth). Though Ann's legendary beauty is dimmed by age, Ann and John both reach tentatively for some human contact.

Susan Hayward in a clip showing her astounding portrayal of a prostitute/petty criminal condemned to death row for murder.

This is the theatrical trailer for William Wyler's 1958 Western "The Big Country" starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford and Chuck Connors, with music by Jerome Moross.

Wyler's powerful Western covers a lot of territory with Gregory Peck a fish out of water as a sea captain who travels west to marry and settle, but finds himself in the middle of a bitter dispute over water rights and a jealous clash with the ranch foreman (Charlton Heston). He also discovers his fiancee isn't who he imagined and finds true romance with the local schoolmistress (Jean Simmons).

Folk singer Burl Ives surprised audiences with his performance which garnered him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Slapstick prevails when Jacques Tati's eccentric hero Monsieur Hulot is let loose in the ultramodern house of his brother-in-law, and in an antiseptic factory that manufactures plastic hose.

Tati directs and stars in the second entry of the Hulot series, a delightful satire of mechanized living.

1958 Classic TV Commercial:

Here's a breathless, big budget TV commercial for the 1958 range of shiny, huge, General Motors cars (sorry, Autos), as broadcast on NBC. Could a vocal chorus sing any louder, bigger, higher??

Chrysler vs Ford and GM.