May 25-May 31: The Road To Expo '74 (In Your Brand New Ford)

Liz Wood

May 26, 2024 — 9 min read

Let me start with a confession: I'm not the world's biggest Bob Hope fan. I don't mind him, but I prefer my Bing with Astaire or Sinatra - or Bowie in a pinch. But there's no denying that he was the star of this week at Expo '74!

THIS WEEK'S EVENTS

On Sunday, May 26th, Bob Hope performed at the Coliseum. He poked fun at the cavernous venue in his opening monologue: "I'm happy to be here... in this garage. Couldn't get the Opera House, huh? What time do the bats fly out?"(1) His act was a mix of his classic tropes, like poking fun at himself for being old and old-fashioned, and new stuff, like saying that Watergate was giving dirty politics a bad name. It was a packed house and he brought it down.

Sunday, May 26th was also the date of the first wedding held at Expo '74.

Sunday saw the launch of the new children's version of the Kinoautomat Cinema experience, which I promise I will cover at some point.(2) The Northwest District Lions Convention also wrapped up on this weekend, with record-breaking attendance.(3) I have a nifty enamel pin that must be from that get-together. Sometimes these things come to me without much context, what can I say.

Washington State Day was celebrated on Monday, May 27th.(2) The Folklife Festival switched to its newest theme: "Maritime Week." Activities on offer included shipbuilding demonstrations, an artist making sketches for fair-goers of any boat they cared to describe, knot-tying, and net-weaving.(4).

I may have mentioned during Wood Week that they were building a log cabin at Folklife - the podcast "Remembering Expo '74" recently posted that it's been located in the backyard of one Arthur Rudd, and has been a playhouse for several generations of kids. I think that's so sweet. You can see the full reel on the podcast's site and more photos of it here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/439001002067182

Image via the Remembering Expo '74 Facebook page.

At the Magic Lantern Theater, the Philippine Delegation hosted a free travelogue, "Ang Pagbabalik," for the general public on Monday, May 27th and Tuesday, May 28th. There had been a special private screening on Sunday for Spokane's Filipino community. (5).

Expo '74 was so jam-packed with activities and performances that world-class entertainers would sometimes end up playing on a random Tuesday night. Such was the case with famed violinist Isaac Stern, who performed at the Opera House on Tuesday, May 28th.(6) You may have heard him as the violin soloist on the soundtrack of Fiddler On The Roof. Meanwhile, at the Coliseum, audiences rocked out with the Steve Miller Band, Boz Scaggs, and the James Cotton Blues Band.(7)

The blank face of a three-year-old who has just been given a large amount of Iranian caviar.

The "Energy For A Small Planet" conference concluded on Wednesday, May 29th. I have a full scan of the brochure online here if you would like to see how the conference attendees spent their time.

Thursday, May 30th saw the arrival of the Emmett Kelly, Jr. Circus.(8). The circus would perform twice on Thursday, twice on Friday, and four shows each on Saturday and Sunday. For those readers who do not remember the era, the 1970s were a time when mimes and clowns attained a never-before-seen peak of relevance. (A pair of mimes were even granted the highest cultural honor available in that decade, hosting The Muppet Show.) You will recall that Marcel Marceau, possibly the most famous mime of all time, had already appeared at Expo '74 earlier in the month. Expo '74 had an official mime, Don McLeod, and an official clown, Frenchie (variously billed as Frenchie the Clown, Frenchie the Gendarme, and Frenchie the International Clown). Both were joined by other performers - in Don's case, his Mime Theatre troupe, while Frenchie was joined by Jojo as seen below.

Thursday was also South Carolina Day, but the reporter sent to cover it seems to have been more interested in the baby tiger and baby ocelot on display at the Vanishing Species Exhibit. I don't blame her one bit.

ATTENDANCE

The total attendance for the month of May (minus the few days before the fair opened) was calculated at 802,987 people.(9)

PAVILION/EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHT: FORD

If we're talking about Bob Hope, we're going to end up talking about Bing Crosby. And at Expo '74, Spokane crooner Bing Crosby's name was associated with the Ford Motor Company.

I don't know how they pulled it off, but Ford managed to get Bing Crosby to contribute an article about Expo '74 to the May 1974 issue of Ford Magazine. It's mostly a mellow, rambling meditation about the loveliness of the Pacific Northwest. He does briefly mention the fair, mostly in terms of its urban renewal role:

I particularly look forward to going back there this spring, in May, when the Expo '74 is being staged in Spokane. The old hometown may never look the same again. The Expo people have done a really marvelous job in the middle of the city, eliminating some old buildings that had no future and putting up facilities for the fair.

(Unfortunately, Crosby developed a lung infection in early 1974 and had surgery, so he did not get to return to Spokane that May.) There are also a few subtle mentions of how good the roads are in the Northwest and how pleasant they are to drive on, which we can expect from a piece for Ford Magazine. I've scanned the whole magazine and you can read it here, both Bing's piece and the other Expo articles included.

The Ford Pavilion was a white geodesic dome located on the south edge of the fairgrounds, close to where the big red wagon stands today. I always wonder why there weren't more geodesic domes at Expo '74. I'm glad at least one exhibitor remembered that they're a quintessential visual for world's fairs. Even the commercials for the fair showed a geodesic dome! (It goes by pretty fast, but I think it's the Montreal Biosphere from the '67 fair.)

It was a rough time to be an American automobile manufacturer. The 1973 oil crisis and the growing environmental movement had brought negative attention to the large and powerful (but fuel-inefficient) "muscle cars" produced by American automobile manufacturers in the 1960s. The "malaise era" of American automobiles had begun. While General Motors tried to communicate a willingness to address automobile-related pollution, the Ford Motor Company took a more breezy, blasé approach to the environmentalism theme. The message of the Ford Pavilion was that the best thing to do for the environment was to go appreciate it from the driver’s seat of a new Ford.

The subtext of the Ford presentation was that cars aren’t going anywhere and environmentalists should stop picking on them so much. As the official guidebook states, “the aim of the [Ford] exhibit, which will cover 12,500 sq. ft., is to show that everyone - individuals, corporations, communities, nations - is responsible for making proper use of the earth’s resources.”

Interior of the Ford Pavilion, from the Full Color Pictorial Book sold at Expo.

Ford also provided a colorful booklet called The Clean Air Quest as part of its press packet. The Clean Air Quest also takes great pains to emphasize that man-made pollution is not the primary source of pollutants in the atmosphere. In an Olympic-level leap of whataboutism, it calls out the pine trees of the Great Smokey Mountains and historic volcanic eruptions such as Krakatoa as examples of nature polluting the air far more than any man-made source. “The existence of natural pollution in no way means we can excuse emissions from man-made sources,” the booklet assures us, “But it does underscore the need to view the air pollution problem in perspective. A zero-pollution level is not attainable, regardless of the extent to which man-made emissions are controlled.”

Ford also produced a film for the fair called "Mother Earth, Father Sky." I don't have an online version to link, but I do have an article about it from a film magazine that has information about the production and the content. There's more to say about Ford at the fair, but I've said a lot of it on the Ford page on my site, so head over there if you want to see more.

SOUVENIR OF THE WEEK

The honor must go to this weird little record that was included in the Ford press packet. It has one side, two tracks, and I initially thought something was wrong with it because it was transparent and blue. (I'm a millennial, I'm doing my best here.) The second track is very basic drums and cedar flute with a speech from the "Mother Earth, Father Sky" film. The first track is "The Feel Of Freedom," written and performed by Bob Moline. I put it on YouTube just for you:

Moline would later go on to become a well-known and beloved composer of songs for the Disney theme parks. (World's fairs and Disney theme parks are close cousins in many ways, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.) He did sharper work elsewhere, so I blame the Ford corporate overlords for making this one so toothless. The lyrics of the song are hypnotically vacuous:

Getting along together / Hearing each other's laughter / We love the feel of freedom / We'll sing forevermore

But despite the milk-toast assignment, Moline is clearly talented and there's more going on musically than I initially realized. Almost every song recorded specifically for Expo '74 has a flute in it somewhere, but this song has two. There's a duet during the bridge that I think is a harmonica and a synthesizer? I catch myself humming bits of this song all the time without realizing it. It's the audio equivalent of root beer: it's so bubbly and sweet, and yet if you listen to it long enough, you begin to like it.

Joy is the thing we're sharing... love is the thing we give... hearts join in a greener land... this is the way we live...

Until next week!