Happy Birthday to me. And Happy 50th Birthday to the 1964 New York World's Fair!
This was it. The zenith moment of the American Century. Opening five months to the day after Dallas broke the back of that Century, the Fair embodied all that was lost and would never return again: a belief that, in the words of the fallen martyr: "Our problems are manmade - - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - - and we believe they can do it again."
It was a moment on the cusp of Tonkin Gulf, on the cusp of the first urban riots soon to explode in Harlem, before the murders of Schwerner, Goodman & Chaney, before the take-off of Johnson / Goldwater, before the fall of Khrushchev. . .The martyr was to open the Fair; rather, it was opened by one of his killers, Lyndon Johnson.
Here's a glimpse of the Fair through the NBC lens of the ever-droning Edwin Newman. Watch closely. You'll never see the likes of this again.
