Video: Video Freedom Highway
Yesteryear Travel: Freedom Highway
How can Americans learn to better appreciate our nation's wonderful road system? The Greyhound Corporation thought it had the answer in Freedom Highway, a red-white-and-blue journey across the USA in a Greyhound bus. The average American passengers on board include Hollywood stalwarts Morris Ankrum (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers), Marshall Thompson (Fiend Without a Face), and Angie Dickinson (Big Bad Mama) -- whose birthplace we visited before it was bulldozed -- and, in this clip, a young Tommy Kirk (future star of The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini) and singing cowboy Tex Ritter, who performs a musical history lesson about the Alamo and Davy Crockett. The song's memorable chorus:
Hi-yip! Santy Anna we're killing your soldiers below
That men wherever they go will remember the Alamo!
This was a 1956 Jerry Fairbanks Production and had a big budget for a sponsored film. It was probably popular in lodge halls and as filler on late, late night television.
Old Films: Fascinating!
The RoadsideAmerica.com Team has a special appreciation for archival films -- from family home movies to sponsored travel shorts. Senior editor Ken Smith is author of "Mental Hygiene," the definitive book-form history of America's classroom educational and industrial films. He was an archivist and cataloger for Rick Prelinger in the early days of the Prelinger Archives. This film is made available through the Prelinger Archives.