I liked the two episodes they did in Pittsburgh. They really show a lot. They even put the Vette on the South Side car lift... Climbing that hill was too much for those old trucks fully loaded.. Pittsburgh has the steepest roads in the country..
This Photo was taken while Filming in Carlisle Pa It was at the Westminster garage on Rt. 641. Kind if a big deal for little Carlisle at the time. Dave Sent from my iPad using H.A.M.B.
Ooh, Bobby Troup... Dr. Joe Early on Emergency! and in real life married to “Dixie” (Julie London). Dixie was hot. Troup wrote the song “Route 66”. john
I was thinking earlier this week about TV shows from the era we espouse here. I'm not even that old and I grew up on a lot of these shows. I've never seen route 66, but leave it to beaver was something I watched a lot as a kid. Andy Griffith as well. What other shows were popular in the era?
Other TV series? Father Knows Best Patty Duke Combat The Munsters The Addams Family The Real McCoys Lassie Stoney Burke Man from Uncle Time Tunnel It's About Space My Mother the Car The Fugitive Rawhide The Big Valley Bonanza Q. T. Hush Astro Boy Lots more
They came to our small town and filmed, a couple guys with Corvettes went to the film shoot location and watched. 1963 I think
In the first season, my buddy and I watched every episode, but by year three, we were too interested in our projects to watch much TV at all. The way I remember it at the time, George Maharis was more popular than Milner. George had a couple of records that did pretty well at the time. Bob
This was the first show to feature "on location" shooting and a travelling crew to do pick up shots for the production. Later this became very common. Made it much cheaper to create vivid realism. Love Route 66 and Martin Milner.
as a kid it was a cool show, but now i view "those boys" as a couple of odd ducks with too much money and time on their hands. perhaps their families paid them to stay away from home to save further embarrassment?
About Route 66, I remember the episode on Catalina Island, with someone getting their foot stuck between some rocks with the tide coming in, and later, another episode when Martin Milner was thrown/fell off a very tall bridge, and showed up later just slightly water logged. Very intense, high drama stuff for a very young viewer as I was.
Well I'm diggin it. Reminds me a little of The Fugitive, one of my favorites. Different location/job/plot every episode. If I run out of youtube freebies I may have to find a DVD or something.
Watched it as a kid growing up and it was sooo cool compared to what the parents regularly watched....think my mom was the California influence with her brother my Uncle Lawrence with his Vette's she was trying to show us here in Texas. Yep might have been cheezie - but they came long before the other TV car focused shows.
David - one of the neighborhood Henderson boys - went against the family FoMoCo only rule - and bought a used Vette this same color in the early 70's and sold it a little later - you can always hear him kicking his rear when we all get together.
Tonight's episode was quite a surprise, starring none other than Lon Cheney, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff all working together! Wow! And, not to mention, the Executive Secretaries of the Midwest (all piling out of a Corvair van). Cornball? Maybe, but at least upbeat for a change, and worth a look just for those three screen icons. Here is the episode:
Great theme song. The orchestration overlay sounds like the same theme music they used in Silver Streak with Gene Wilder, the piano is obviously a rendition of Nat King Cole's version of Route 66. I could listen to that all day.
You left off the “good” westerns. Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Laramie, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Virginian, Maverick, The High Chaparral, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cheyenne ...and if you go way back Cisco Kid and Hopalong Cassidy. Rawhide was good too. Look up Eric Fleming, interesting story.
Hello, That Route 66 show captivated all of us during that time. It was the freedom to go where you wanted and to be able to drive a cool car while traveling. As teens, that freedom feeling was one reason to learn to drive and drive well. The open road for us was driving to Bixby Knolls, our local high school and plenty of miles down the coastline in search of those elusive waves. Shows like Route 66 just made it possible in our minds. During this time, my mom was trying to learn to drive. I had the job of teaching her to drive the 58 Impala with the 3 speed. My brother would not touch that job with a 10 foot pole, so it fell on me. My mom was determined to get a car for herself and become more independent. Despite what the housewives did back then during these classic times, she wanted to be independent and learning to drive was important. The Route 66 show was an impetus to get the ball rolling. She had no idea of what a Corvette was, as she had never seen one in her life, in real time. But, learning to drive was the first step, and I was the chosen one. Great, so now 4 cars with a two car garage… Jnaki She learned how to get going in the 3 speed Impala, shift when it was time and control the non power steering wheel. She learned to not jam on the brakes, but to use a soft pre-emptive touch so as to not scare the guy behind us. But, stepping in and keeping that heavy duty clutch was a chore for a 5’2” lady. Some starts were bucking bronco starts, but the shifts were nice. After several weeks of driving all over Long Beach, she decided that it was too much. So, she agreed to pay to make the 58 Impala from a stick shift to an automatic as fast as possible. WHAT??? No more stick shift? No more speed shifting on the column? Just when we were getting good at doing those fast shifts, too. But a new C&O Stick Hydro was an automatic, wasn’t it? One week later, the 58 Impala was faster as the “automatic” transmission made it that much quicker off of the starting line, thanks to my mom. For her, it was driving in “D” all of the time. The next thing after getting good at driving the 58 Impala all over was to get her own car. The Route 66 gave her the idea that a smaller car would be easier to handle and park in the garage. So, she remembered the Route 66 Corvette and wanted to go look at them. A 60s mom driving a Corvette was going to be a classic photograph for sure. If she could pry the Corvette away from her youngest son. She liked the TV show and the times on the road. But, in real life, the top was too confining and without the top, women had to wear a bandana to keep their hair styles in place. So, she realized a Corvette was out of the picture, but she continued to watch that TV show until it was cancelled. There went our teenage Corvette escapades and road trips, too… She took over the 58 Impala two times a week for weekly groceries and shopping with her friends. What a sight, 4 older moms cruising around in a sleek black 58 Impala with a powerful engine and a C&O Stick Hydro. Yikes… But, that fleeting memory of a possible Corvette for the teenage brothers was nice while it lasted.
There is one of these CEO's located in Warsaw, VA. Looks like someone is working on it, same cab but with a flatbed.
I don't have a Route 66 story to tell but I do have a Corvette experience. In 1962, my brother and I took a road trip in his '59 Corvette from Chicago to Florida, looping both coasts. So it pre-dates Route 66 TV by a couple of years. We relay drive 20 hours straight on the state roads (no 'interstate') for our first tag-up in Florida proper- We sleep in the Corvette maybe a half dozen times and get a motel room maybe 3 times- We make our bankrolls of $120-ish each last for 9 days- We drive on "The Beach" at Daytona Beach- I can't recall what Florida town, but we meet 2 young gals at a beach and they ask us to drive them somewhere in town. So my brother is driving and the girls are sitting on various parts of me in the top-down Corvette. Plus they invite us to a house party later that night- Along the way, we stop at a tourist trap and drink all the orange juice we can for 10 cents- And more tourist traps to see alligators, monkeys, and where Sea Hunt TV and old-time Tarzan movies were filmed- We stop to top off for 19.9 cents a gallon more than once, not in Florida but in the boonies getting there and back- The Atlantic surf will knock you down but the Gulf will lap at your ankles- The Everglades is a very exotic drive for an hour but a few hours later it's pretty boring- But we did stop in the 'Glades to see a Seminole guy wrassle 'Gators- Corvettes attract police in Florida just like back home, but we were blessed with "slow down" grace and no tickets-
The Jalopy Journal
