HORATIO'S DRIVE (TV)
Summary
This documentary by Ken Burns tells the story of "America's first road trip," Horatio Nelson Jackson's epic cross-country automobile drive. The program begins in 1903 in San Francisco with Doctor Jackson (voiced by Tom Hanks) making a fifty-dollar wager that he could be the first man to drive an automobile from San Francisco to New York. The documentary follows the drive of Jackson via archival photographs that he took during his journey, letters he wrote to his wife at their home in Vermont, and Burns's own recreation of the same trip. The documentary addresses: how Jackson traveled in a 1903 two-cylinder Winton with co-driver Sewall K. Crocker and a goggles-wearing bulldog; the crazy encounters he had during his trip (meeting pioneers in wagon trains, cowboys, and people trying to get their first glimpse of a car); and how his trip gradually became a national sensation as huge crowds lined the route. Halfway through the trek, however, his road trip turned into an impromptu race as both the Packard and Oldsmobile companies dispatched their own vehicles in the hopes of beating Jackson and becoming the first car to complete a transcontinental journey.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: October 6, 2003 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:46:33
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:87169
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Documentary; Automobile racing
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV, 2003
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Pam Tubridy Baucom … Coordinating Producer
- Ken Burns … Producer, Director
- Dayton Duncan … Producer, Writer
- Susanna Steisel … Associate Producer
- Keith David … Narrator
- Tom Hanks … Voice, Horatio Nelson Jackson
- Adam Arkin … Voice
- Tom Bodett … Voice
- Philip Bosco … Voice
- Kevin Conway … Voice
- John Cullum … Voice
- Murphy Guyer … Voice
- Amy Madigan … Voice
- George Plimpton … Voice
- Eli Wallach … Voice
- Sewall K. Crocker