PaleyArchive ColorBars TopBanner2

ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT {HOMESTEADING; HORSESHOES; MAIL BOAT; BARBER POLES; LOUISIANA PURCHASE} (TV)

Summary

One in this series of television magazines, in which host Charles Kuralt presents clips from his twenty-five years of travel journalism through the back roads of America. Kuralt begins this program with a visit to America's new generation of pioneers in Alaska. One pioneer in particular, Ray Rouse, brings Kuralt to see his homestead which is practically unreachable. Because of a government program that gives individuals 160 acres of land if they agree to clear and plant it, Rouse and those like him have settled in a land where everything is bigger, including the mosquitos. Next, Kuralt witnesses the World Horseshoe Championship in Eureka, California. In this competition there are youth as well as adult divisions, and most contestants make ringers eighty-five percent of the time. The following segment follows the mail boat J.W. Wescott II as it hooks up to one of the many boats and freighters it delivers mail to every year on the Detroit River. In the fourth segment, Kuralt interviews William Marvy, whose company is the last one to produce traditional barber poles in America. Originally used by surgeons (who doubled as barbers) to advertise, they are not much in demand now because they rarely break down, and because the number of traditional barbers has dwindled significantly. Finally, Kuralt visits a cypress swamp in Arkansas where surveying began for the Louisiana Purchase in 1815. Sold by Napoleon to finance his upcoming battles, Kuralt notes that the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains cost approximately two cents per acre. Commercials deleted.

("On the Road with Charles Kuralt" consists of excerpts from Charles Kuralt's segments on the CBS Evening News, beginning in 1967. In the 1970s the show was aired in four special broadcasts, and in 1983 it was developed into a regular ten-week summer series. In addition, the series was reworked for and aired on the Travel Channel in 1993.)

Cataloging of this program was made possible by the CBS Foundation, 1998.

Details

  • NETWORK: Travel Channel
  • DATE: November 30, 1992
  • RUNNING TIME: 0:21:25
  • COLOR/B&W: Color
  • CATALOG ID: T:54647
  • GENRE: Magazine
  • SUBJECT HEADING: Frontier and pioneer life, Alaska; Horseshoe pitching; Journalism, travel; Louisiana Purchase; Television journalism; Travel
  • SERIES RUN: Travel Channel - TV series, 1993
  • COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

  • Robert Northshield … Executive Producer
  • Dalton Delan … Executive Producer
  • Meredith Stark … Coordinating Producer
  • Bernard Birnbaum … Senior Producer
  • Phil Frank … Senior Producer
  • Brook Porter … Producer
  • Peter Freundlich … Writer
  • Tom Harris … Writer
  • Charles Kuralt … Writer, Host, Interviewer, Narrator
  • William Marvy
  • Napoleon I, Emperor of France (Napoleon Bonaparte)
  • Ray Rouse