As a follow-up to my post yesterday on California, here’s a look at how the traffic looked back in the 60s. The first one is a drive down Sunset Blvd., and it has a rather comical ending.
This one is all or mostly stock footage shot for some film, as the scenes on Sepulveda Blvd. are clearly staged. But the car-watching is good.
From that first film, Chrysler must have had an uncharacteristically high market share in the LA area, judging from all of the Mopars parked along the curb.
Very nice, thanks Paul. Very enjoyable.
Funny thing, when I read Sepulveda Blvd. I must think about the tv show “Chips”. I know its a decade later, but what do we see in the begining of the second vid?! Btw: Does that count as a cc effect 😉
Another thougt was about the dominance of domestic cars. Hard to belive that Detroit lost its dominance.
Nice MGA at 0:25 in the first film 🙂
And the white car parked on the curb at 0:53 looks to be an MG saloon, I think. Those were the few foreign cars I noticed.
Theres a Borgward Isabella coupe at 0:35, too
Ah, is that what that was? I couldn’t id that one so I wasn’t sure if it was foreign or not, although I thought it had a more European look to it.
Yes! I had to do a double take when I saw that.
Stunning car. But then the whole film was full of great stuff.
It’s what was known in the US as an Austin America, an Austin 1300 (BMC ADO16) in the UK. In case you don’t know it’s a grown up Mini with MGB tail lights. Before that there’s a red-orange (somehow the best color) 1955 Chevy Nomad station wagon and a 1957 Thunderbird next to it in traffic, and a white 1961 or 62 Lincoln Continental parked on the right and later a 1962 one approaching. Then a 1961 Thunderbird convertible going by, then a parked 1947 or a little later Jeep wagon…it’s a high end collector car show.
I thought of that, but the date on the video is 1964 and I don’t think the Austin America was sold here until 1968 or 69. However the MG version of the ADO16 was sold in America in the early 1960s, called the MG Sports Sedan here.
The guy jaywalking at 1:15 in the first video surprised me slightly, because I’d heard that LA was a place where jaywalking laws were strictly enforced. The joke is that you can spot a person from California in an east coast city because they’re the one standing there waiting patiently for the “walk” signal even though there are no cars around. Of course I see plenty of people jaywalking in Sacramento in the present day and I’ve heard the same thing about here.
The other thing I noticed was how simple the traffic lights are compared to today. Most intersections have just a single signal facing each direction. Even at intersections that have a left turn lane there are no protected left turns. Today you’d have a signal for each lane and likely a separate left turn signal.
Jaywalking may have been strictly enforced, but SoCal drivers were also super respectful of the pedestrian right-of-way and crosswalks.
Back in the early 1990s, I remember standing on Wilshire Blvd talking to a friend, somewhat near a corner. Drivers would stomp on their brakes and we’d have to wave them through. It was really strange, I’d never seen that kind of thing before. Especially considering LA’s reputation as a car culture. It was like “nobody walks here, but those guys are walking, so they must be doing something *important*”.
Yes, that too. I’ve actually been told that the police enforce the laws about yielding to pedestrians just as strictly, which IMO is only fair if they’re going to enforce jaywalking laws. My dad lived in SoCal in the 1970s; he’s told me the police used to do sting operations where a plainclothes officer would attempt to cross the street at a crosswalk, and would note the license plates of any driver that didn’t stop and radio the information to a patrol car a block away. So that may explain the behavior you noticed.
I remember that about cross walks. My family left Catonsville MD and arrived in Canoga Park in June 1966. First thing that struck me was how wide the streets were. There were no boulevards in Catonsville. Yet here was Roscoe Blvd. and Topanga Canyon Blvd. Streets like Saticoy, Sherman Way and Fallbrook. Crossing them, and four lanes of traffic, was a little scary for me at first. Not accustomed to it until I noticed when you stepped off the cross walk cars would actually stop. Anyway that was then as I am sure that is not now.
My only complaint about the videos… not a surfboard in sight!
“But occifer, I only had a few drinks and they told me I could drive on the left side of the double yellow line – ‘urp’.”
A company I worked for had a division on Sepulveda Bl., right on what is now property of LAX. It took me a while to learn how to pronounce it.
Loved the phone number postings – CR5-5555, or Crescent I imagine. My phone number growing up started with RO for Roger.
The colours of the cars are amazing – not the blandness you mostly see today. Great posting!
As a kid I had a Tonka toy Dodge B-Series phone van in the same white over greenish-gray with blue and yellow stripes just like the one in the picture, in about 1/20 scale.
I’ve never seen anything like this before, so maybe someone can explain this for me. What is going on with the 4 lane roads with the double yellow dividers in the center, and all lanes going the same direction?
That’s why I said it was footage for a movie. They obviously closed it for shooting. A not uncommon occurrence in LA.
If you look closely, you’ll see a number of the same cars going in both directions.
Whoops sorry, I glanced over that info follow up.
That puzzled me too because this is clearly the Sepulveda Bl of today, paralleling the 405 and with traffic moving in both directions. I went directly to the video on YouTube and read some of the comments to determine that this was special traffic footage made during the filming of the movie Sex and the Single Girl. Here is one sample comment:
“It’s footage from a 1964 Warner Brothers movie called “Sex and The Single Girl” starring Natalie Wood. The road was closed to all other traffic so the scene could be filmed and all of those cars in this clip and everyone driving them are part of the movie. If you look up the movie and watch it you will see this scene.”
Top video looks like the camera car’s headed west from the curve at Horn Avenue to the other curve on Sunset where the straight-through course continues as Doheny Road (not to be confused with Doheny Drive which runs north-south and was the only overhead-labeled cross street and key to my figuring this out…)
A few things stand out looking over it on Google Street View (link below)
1. A surprising number of the old low-rise buildings are still there, considering.
2. Most of the skyscrapers built since are banks, or at least have branches at street level.
3.Lots of billboards now! Something like 90% for TV shows and movies, probably to be expected when literally in Hollywood (well, West Hollywood but still).
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0908769,-118.3831351,3a,75y,235.24h,91.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smpnOO5MNngUl19wKqtSIow!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Nice 1955 Cadillac Eldorado in the second clip. Neat color too.
Very cool. I spotted some others vintage movies of the same kind.
Montreal, 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKFdmyAMcOg
Toronto, corner of Bathurst and College streets circa 1984-85
Besides being a fanataic lover of classic cars also fanatic fan of vintage Tv and film I do have huge collection of 50s 60s 70s 80s Tv and film also vintage stuff like Tv’s cassette recorders vcrs old Typewriters and film projecters. I am 46 so I v nostalgic to late 70s early 80s!
The new at the time CLRV streetcars quite prominent in this. We made pedal controllers, brake resistors, and some other electronic bits where I worked at the time for these streetcars, which was all non traditional work for an aerospace company. We should have stuck to our knitting, we sucked at the ground transportation business. Some would say that another company in Canada these days (Bombard.) sucks at it too.
These CLRVs (Canadian Light Rail Vehicle) are to be phased out for new streetcars that are hopelessly late from said manufacturer.
First clip, a ’55 Nomad, a woodie wagon at the curb, one of the old dark green telephone company trucks with that little slant back box mounted on the rear half of the truck frame, a Loewy Coupe Studebaker at the curb, and a 2-seat T-Bird. Quite a haul of neat stuff.
And nobody caught the Borgward at 00:37?
I’m impressed by how many caught the Borgward parked on the side.
Just discovered the footage below. Also related to 1940s NYC post. “Average” scenes that now seem so exotic…
New York, 1929 (with sound)
1:15 of the first clip there are not one but two orange cars in a row! blow my mind.
Look at all those different colors….designs….brands….
Comparing that to today makes me feel depressed now.
Love looking at cars and traffic footage from the 1960’s, but am happy that we no longer have to look and smell the air.
My first trip to So Cal was in December 1993 driving in on I-10 from Phoenix. When I was near Ontario, CA I started to get a headache, which increasingly got worse the closer I got to LA, the land of brown air.
A 2018 car is 98% cleaner than a automobile built in 1970. Although leaded soil is still an issue in urban areas lead is not in gasoline or in the air.
So true. One of my neighbors has a 1964 Studebaker Daytona. It’s old enough that it’s completely exempt from California emissions rules. I’ll attest that it’s a very cool car, but whenever I smell the exhaust when he drives by it makes me really appreciate modern emissions requirements.
I was in LA/Orange Co in summer ’86 and it was like constant ‘garage smell’.
Those who wish all cars “had no pollution junk” are missing the point.
Oh for the days when you could see a pristine E-type cruising along in regular everyday traffic! I grew up in SoCal (1953-1965) and all this looks so familiar to me.
Every time I go there these days, I’m struck by how many fancy rides (Porsche, Ferrari, and all the rest) you see stuck in freeway traffic right alongside the Corollas and Civics. They’re not getting where they’re going any faster than the rest of us are.
Using the Google time machine it is obvious that video was shot pre-Whiskey-a-Go-Go, which arrived on the scene that same year.
Thanks for the great clip. So interesting to learn, after viewing, that it was shot for a film.
Only one vehicle I couldn’t identify: what is the red car at the curb in this shot ?
1957 Hudson?
Or a Vauxhall Cresta? I am completely stumped. The body shape and the indentation coming off the rear wheel arch screams Ford at me, but the taillights are all wrong.
Theory 2: 1958 Buick taillight stuck on a ’53 Ford.
Mystery solved? 1961 Morris Oxford: