[1970s BOAC AIRLINES NEW YORK CITY TRAVELOGUE]

[Music] One every 5 minutes, a thousand each day. Such is the rhythm of aircraft serving the city of New York. This international relay through the sky carries the people of the world in and out of the most visited city on Earth. BOAC is proud to be the first of all airlines outside America to build its very own New York terminal. Tailorade for the 747 era, it's also planned to handle any aircraft likely to enter service this century. Whether you're coming, going, or in transit to or from any other state in the union, the building has been expertly planned to make your passage fast, easy, and uncrowded. From here, you're on your own, cab or bus. Or if it's the first time, try a dawn or dusk arrival by helicopter. Along the way, a greeting from the grand old lady, the Statue of Liberty. Her lighted crown has signaled a shining journey's end to millions all headed for New York. [Applause] Data [Music] do. [Music] Some people may forget that New York is also America's number one yearround tourist attraction for Americans. Hence the sparkling avenues and streets lined with theaters and cinemas and an infinite choice of places to dine and wine all heavily depending for trade on out of town Americans. Americans aren't all rich. So although there are some fancy hotels around, most are essentially functional. Any night in this country, 5 million men and women are on the move. A fifth of them spending a night in New York. Small wonder that this is the world's most intensive hotel industry, catering to a sustained stream of visitors from every state in the union, from every nation on earth. Turnover is fast, the reception efficient, the welcome unfussy and always relaxed, and the view is sometimes utterly unique. [Music] New York shakes itself awake to the purr of a million motors. They carry the armies of people that come in and out of town each day just to make the place work. New York is all islands excepting the Bronx. It is meshed into mainland America by cable bridges suspended high in the sky and tunnels buried deep underground in water. [Music] Columbus never made it here. But generations of other navigators kept New York an outward-looking city, the capital of no one country, and the metropolis of them all. The principality of all the western nations. For the strength of its architecture, the imagination of its enterprises, and the diversity of its people, it has kept roots in almost every community on earth. And so here, everyone on earth can be at home. Heat. Heat. [Music] There are shops here that specialize in gifts for men and women who have everything. Runers for some, they offer a great and changing free show for the others. Most shopping though is distinctly to the advantage of the visitor, for commerce in New York is a ruthlessly competitive game. [Music] The great stores are institutions and New Yorkers use them the way Londoners do pubs as a reference point in finding their way [Music] in a city of such scale. Most New Yorkers cling protectively to limited neighborhoods or villages, and Chinatown is just one of them. Some reflect the dozens of national and ethnic groups in the city. Others take identity from their business function, like that city within a city, Wall Street. Its trading tradition began right here when a merchant from the Netherlands paid the Indians $25 for the entire Manhattan Island. Wall Street is self-contained through to its own lunchtime entertainment. [Music] When it's time for quick curbside cuisine, Texas is in there pitching with a smile and a hot taco. >> Hello. May I have a taco, please? >> Sure. There you are. Thank you. That will be 50. There you are. Thank you. These curbside stalls compete with the tide of automats and coffee shops that are America's simple solution to simple food fast and cheap. But if you're keyed to the leisurely lunch, there are 75 different styles of international cuisine to choose from. Manhattan is a tight little island, so New Yorkers make use of every corner. Outdoor dining in summer, skating in winter. [Music] [Applause] Hey. The city's newest park is the gift of New Yorker William Paley. He bought one of the most expensive buildings in town, had it torn down, and put in this cool waterfall garden. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The visitor quickly discovers mysterious laws of compensation at work in New York. his counterpoint to the solid geometry of the streets. A wealth of superlative shapes and textures to delight the eye. Quite simply, the world's greatest concentration of beautiful things in the Museum of Modern Art. But don't forget the magnificent Metropolitan with its medieval closters or the Huntington Hartford, the Frick, or the Whitney. And don't neglect the Brooklyn Museum just across the bridge. Most stunning of all is the Guggenheim. Swelling like a great seed pod beside Central Park. Its superlative ramp uncoils in a huge lazy curl devised by Frank Lloyd Wright so that you can take a lift to the top and let your feet take you down with the mind free for total visual pleasure. [Music] Above [Music] [Applause] all, this is an ocean island, so even the well-worn tourist trail is something else. again sightseeing in and around the 200 peers and the bays and some of the 750 mi of waterfront that have handled onethird of everything and everyone ever carried to America. [Music] Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the name United Nations. John D. Rockefeller gave the land on Manhattan's Tear Bay for its building. Neither could have imagined that keeping the peace would bring in the pilgrims. This UN area is quite properly another world. It takes in a million visitors a year drawn from most of the 120 or so member states that likewise provide the talented and multi-racial guides, authorities on the UN's art collection given by the nations. To keep the peace, man's first and last resort is speech, open discussion and pure debate. It happens in five official languages with your money. So reasonably enough, you can sit in on any meeting free. [Music] [Applause] From any high building, look for the crowning glories of New York skyscrapers, inspired by Inca tombs, Tuda chapels, Gothic spires, or even the radiator grill of a 1929 motor car like the top of the Chrysler building. From here too, the role of Central Park becomes clear. 2 and 1/2 miles of green countryside in the very heart of Manhattan. And down at ground level, there are all the proper country pursuits with everything the visitor may need to rent by the day or by the hour. [Music] You're not [Music] Is Alice really for children? The American way is to give the kids everything. Let them find out what they want for themselves. And aside from simple children's corners, no city on earth offers more facilities for keeping children occupied in parks, museums, art galleries, and concert halls. If the city of New York wasn't there, it would still be a holiday center from which to visit the vacation land of country and coast, richer than many a sovereign state can boast. For this, the higher car is the thing. The 57 bridges anchoring New York to the rest of America lead away to smooth flowing freeways. Heat. Heat. Such are the escape routes to the seapports of New England and to a whole unspoiled world of mountains and green valleys that even New Yorkers often overlook. But there's so much to see right here from the top of the RCA building or from any Manhattan rooftop like one of the oceangoing ships that sails or docks every 20 minutes year after year. Or why not imagine a single center that would bring together opera, ballet, theater, music, and drama all together in one place. Here it is, working for everybody. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. New York may be built on granite, but some beautiful ideas grow here. [Music] [Applause] [Music] If you want to see another kind of America participating, the place is Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets. If you've never been to a baseball game, buy a pair of cheap seats and find out just how exciting it can be. [Applause] [Music] What a glorious garden of wonder this would be for anyone lucky enough to be unable to read. This was GK Chesterton's backhanded comment on the bright lights of Time Square 50 years ago. Today, those lights glow still brighter around the movie houses and theaters clustered about 42nd Street. An evening stroll through the avenues north to south and the streets east to west follows a grid iron pattern of temptations in food, music, and drama, inspired by every nation and culture ever known. [Laughter] [Music] [Music] From Harlem in the north to Greenwich Village in the south, the mood of Manhattan changes with every block. [Music] The tourist toast to New York is a yearround affair. Every fall, summer, winter, and spring, the city finds itself welcoming more and more visitors from abroad. [Music] This all seasons invasion was a major factor in BOAC's decision to build its passenger terminal on New York's international airport. The terminal has its own customs and immigration facilities and is planned on the most efficient lines to speed passengers on their way. It's so designed that your friends can see you almost to the aircraft door and is BOAC's own expressway for the tens of thousands that still have their New York experience to come. And it's an appropriately cosmopolitan way into the city of restless renewal and daring vision, thriving on roots more truly international than those of any other great city on earth. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music]