Prewar steamship fares

[Stanley Doble]

A few months ago there was an inquiry about steamship lines, fares, etc in the Pacific in the thirties. Someone was writing a story or doing some historical research.

Tonight I happen to be watching Across The Pacific, a 1942 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. I have not watched the whole thing but most of the action takes place on board a ship.

Bogart books a passage on a Japanese freighter from Halifax Canada to Yokohama Japan by way of the Panama Canal in November 1941. The fare is $212.80. The same line has a larger, more luxurious ship leaving a week later for the same fare.

I am a fan of old movies and thought I knew all Bogart's films but I never heard of this one before. I found it at the public library.

It contains plenty of details for anyone researching steam ship travel in the prewar period.

 

[Fading Fast]

How was it as a movie - plot, character development and chemistry, etc.?

 

[green papaya]

What cost $213.00 in 1941 would cost $3325.85 in 2013.

most blue collar working people couldnt afford the trip back in 1941

 

[The Reno Kid]

How was it as a movie - plot, character development and chemistry, etc.?

Great movie! It was directed by John Huston and also starred Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Victor Sen Yung (aka Jimmy Chan), and in a small role, Keye Luke (aka Lee Chan). Oddly enough, none of the film is actually set in the Pacific.

 

[Shangas]

I remember the thread you're talking about. I contributed to it. But I don't remember where it is.

'round the world cruises will always be expensive. No matter when or where they happen.

 

[Fading Fast]

Great movie! It was directed by John Huston and also starred Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Victor Sen Yung (aka Jimmy Chan), and in a small role, Keye Luke (aka Lee Chan). Oddly enough, none of the film is actually set in the Pacific.

Thank you, I'm going to try to hunt it out. Great cast.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What cost $213.00 in 1941 would cost $3325.85 in 2013.

most blue collar working people couldnt afford the trip back in 1941

The idea of foreign travel wasn't just unaffordable to working-class people before the war, it was utterly alien -- unless you were a first-generation immigrant or a veteran of the World War, you'd likely never been off the North American continent in your life. The closest most ordinary people came to "a trip abroad" was watching a Fitzpatrick Traveltalk at the neighborhood theatre.

 

[Fading Fast]

The idea of foreign travel wasn't just unaffordable to working-class people before the war, it was utterly alien -- unless you were a first-generation immigrant or a veteran of the World War, you'd likely never been off the North American continent in your life. The closest most ordinary people came to "a trip abroad" was watching a Fitzpatrick Traveltalk at the neighborhood theatre.

My father never left the country, his mother ventured no farther than four of five surrounding states and her mother (my great grandmother), to our knowledge, was in only three states in her life (and maybe only two). That middle class people (for example, my girlfriend's brother is a policeman and his wife a school teacher and they and their kids travel regularly) routinely travel not only around this country, but overseas is, as Lizzie implies, an amazing change. I know we talk (I am one of the we) about how this or that was better or more affordable, etc., in the Golden Era, but travel for the middle / working class has become dramatically more affordable.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm fifty-one years old and I've never been off the North American continent. My mother's seventy-five and she's never been out of New England. We never had any *aspirations* to travel internationally -- which is the real difference between the working-class and middle-class view of the matter. It goes beyond costs, it's a matter of mindset -- "why should I want to go over there? My great-grandparents couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole." When I was growing up, this is how all the people I knew thought. Travel was something "jet-setters" did, not people like us.

 

[sheeplady]

The idea of foreign travel wasn't just unaffordable to working-class people before the war, it was utterly alien -- unless you were a first-generation immigrant or a veteran of the World War, you'd likely never been off the North American continent in your life. The closest most ordinary people came to "a trip abroad" was watching a Fitzpatrick Traveltalk at the neighborhood theatre.

My husband and I were talking about this the other night. We have three grandfathers between us who were WWII veterans (both of his grandfathers, one of mine). Two were stationed in Europe (traveling all the way across to Germany); one was stationed in Hawaii. The grandfather who was stationed in Hawaii traveled to Russia in 1960 with his wife as part of an "exchange program." All of our grandparents drove with their children across the U.S. at one point.

None of our parents have ever traveled to any other country than Canada. They've also never done a cross-country road trip since they were kids.

It is a bit odd to think that our grandparents traveled so much more extensively than our parents.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The film was the next one they made after Casablanca and stars, Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor (from The Maltese Falcon).

I enjoyed it but I see why it is not shown today. It is terribly politically incorrect, the plot revolves around exposing a Japanese spy ring and sabotage plot. It has the kind of cheesy dialog and characterizations you usually associate with propaganda.

In spite of its faults I like watching Bogart, Greenstreet and Astor. If you don't like the actors, it must be unwatchable.

 

[Stanley Doble]

What cost $213.00 in 1941 would cost $3325.85 in 2013.

most blue collar working people couldnt afford the trip back in 1941

Well duh. Minimum wage workers can't afford a trip like that today. They are lucky if they can take the family to Disney World once in their life.

Bogart plays a cashiered officer spending his last buck to get to the orient, hoping to become a mercenary in Chiang Kai Shek's army.

 

[MikeKardec]

It was probably me who asked the question. Thanks for the help!

My Dad traveled to England, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, "Arabia" (meaning Aden), Egypt and Panama all before 1930. He was briefly a merchant seaman. When he moved to Oklahoma a few years later, no one believed him! He may not have had an attitude that fostered belief in some (I've got records of those trips, however) but the fact remains that before the war, those places were "impossible."

In OK he build a career writing adventure stories for the pulps. After the war that genre slowly collapsed on itself, not truly disappearing but becoming the less popular and somewhat disturbing "Sweat Pulps." After some study I sort of think I have the answer: those exotic locations weren't impossible anymore. WWII had made some mundane, others stirred memories of horrible privation and dead comrades. With the end of the war the market tilted to favor Westerns, an adventure that took place at home ... and safely in the past.

As Dad sailed home from France he talked with men who had served all over the world (the ship he was transported on had gotten around quite a bit), he felt he was finally back around people that understood him.

 

[Shangas]

A lot of the places you mention were FAR out of the reach of many people. Unless you were wealthy, a sailor of some description or your job took you to those locations, most people never went there. Travelling to Europe and England might've happened. But to places like Japan, China, Singapore, the Straits Settlements, and the Dutch East Indies - these were places which were MONTHS away by steamship. Most people didn't have the time or money to go there.

I think that's why they were, as you say 'impossible', since the chances for people to visit such locations was 'impossible'. The closest they got to seeing them was on newsreels or documentary films, or reading about them in magazines or stories (which is probably why your father's adventure stories sold so well. They told of countries which most people could never go to).

 

[Fading Fast]

The film was the next one they made after Casablanca and stars, Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor (from The Maltese Falcon).

I enjoyed it but I see why it is not shown today. It is terribly politically incorrect, the plot revolves around exposing a Japanese spy ring and sabotage plot. It has the kind of cheesy dialog and characterizations you usually associate with propaganda.

In spite of its faults I like watching Bogart, Greenstreet and Astor. If you don't like the actors, it must be unwatchable.

I finally saw it and it is quite a comedown from Casablanca. Definitely worth it for the stars, but the plot is confusing in spots and transparent in others - and the pacing uneven. Also, it falls apart at the end as the climax felt slapped together and pulled out of a store-bought box of how to wrap up a movie. Good period clothes, cars, travel and scenery though.