Odd film – a drama paid for by Greyhound Buses in order to promote coach travel. In under an hour it tells the stories of a couple of people travelling across the country: a woman (Angie Dickinson!) is on her way to New York to visit her fiancée but falls in love rather quickly with a meant-to-be-charming-but-actually-sleazy former football player; a young boy (Tommy Kirk, the perfect Eisenhower adolescent) is on his way to a Scout Jamborree; a grumpy old man is on his way to get the medal of honor for his dead son – he’s bitter about it, so there’s this sort of ghost character who appears to convert him to the importance of sacrifice. He also helps Dickinson to dump her fiancée. Nice guy!
As they travel, there are cutaways to historical events that happened where they’re driving past – fighting off Indians, the fire of Michigan, pirates in Key West (they actually don’t drive through Key West, just talk about it), the signing of the declaration of independence, the Gettysburg address. It’s all very sober, industrious and crew cut – when the grumpy old guy criticises war, the football player asks him if he loves his country. But the old guy comes around at the end. Dickinson and Kirk look so young; Kirk is really good, fresh faced and believably aw-gee-whiz-look-at-the-Golden-Gate-bridge - you can see why he got so much work.
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