Thinking About The World's Fairs

Thinking of phenomenons no longer seen in 2024, the world’s fair and/or exposition, beginning in 1791 and extremely popular internationally through the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, is seldom found in 21st century United States of America. The World's Fairs were incredible, massive global events spotlighting new technologies, and the posters promoting them are frequently astonishing.

The list of expos, those chronicles of technological progress, remains quite impressive. While the fledgling United States was embroiled in civil war and reconstruction, epic expos rocked the world from Canada to New Zealand. Grant Wong's article The Rise & Fall Of World’s Fairs from the outstanding Smithsonian Magazine and several favorite animated films piqued my interest in this topic. The pixillated Pete-Roleum and His Cousins was produced by stop-motion master Charley Bowers and acclaimed feature film director Joseph Losey for the Standard Oil exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair.



Then there are two all-time favorite cartoons, one from Fleischer, the other from Charles Mintz Studio. Fleischer Studios made some terrific cartoons as part of its Max Fleischer Color Classics series - and All's Fair At The Fair is one of the very best. This features the Fleischer Studio's keen interest in futurism, robots and gadgetry - and turns put to be a rather charming and sweet cartoon.



Among this animation buff's three or four favorite Scrappy cartoons, all from that 1931-1933 peak period in the series: The World's Affair (1933). Love the very funny futuristic gags and caricatures!



The World's Fair that Mintz Studio animators Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus referred to - and had a great time in the process - was the 1933-1934 in Chicago, that toddlin' town.



The A Century of Progress International Exposition was indeed epic. Big thanks and bigger gratitude to the intrepid stock footage archivists at PeriscopeFilm for the following!



The earliest footage this blogger has found is from 1915.



Fatty and Mabel at the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair is a very enjoyable film. The two Keystone Comedies stars were at that time Hollywood royality and only equalled or exceeded by Charlie Chaplin. Their playfulness, chemistry, charisma and charm is on display here in this reel.



While the World's Fairs are mostly a thing of the deep past, there is luckily amazing historic footage from the expos up on YouTube. The Martens family has generously posted home movies from the 1939 New York World's Fair, shot in glorious Kodachrome. Nice work, Gustave Martens!



We thank those who brought their Brownie movie cameras to these epic events. Here, from beautiful Brussels, again in lovely Kodachrome and glorious 8mm - World's Fair, Expo 58.



From the lifetimes of the "okay, boomer" crew such as this correspondent, the three World's Fairs actually remembered are the 1962 Seattle extravaganza, known for the epic space needle. . .





Followed by the 1964-1965 World's Fair in New York.



The collaboration between urban planner Robert Moses and Walt Disney dominated the NY World's Fair.



An important sub-topic is the infuence of World's Fairs in general on Walt Disney, Disneyland and Disney World. The "it's a big big beautiful tomorrow" exhibit from Disneyland has a strong World's Fair vibe about it.



Loved seeing such Disney TV programs as the following as a youngster. My response: dinosaurs - COOL! Walt was a surprisingly good on-camera host.



And last but not least, there was EXPO 67 in excellent Montreal, Canada.





As usual, we're a bit tongue-tied for an ending here. Long before the advent of the internet, expos were few and far between in America, with the 1950's being the last decade of heydey in the United States. Haven't seen one in the U.S. since 1984, the year the Apple computer emerged from Silicon Valley garages. For more, watch the following superb documentaries!