Salt Lake Diversions

This travelogue features all touristic possibilities in option for the future vacation lovers after covid-19. Shall you swim? Shall you ski? Shall you fly or shall you die? The commentator let's us know everything we can do and the director shows it all in the most easy going editing. Good commercialism here.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends Charles P. Boyle and Virgil Miller out to the area around Salt Lake City and lecture the audience about salt and safe driving.

Fitzpatrick's monologues seemed to be about nothing in particular. Like modern celebrities, he seems to be concerned with whatever he is looking at, and can say something, anything, that bears a vague relationship to whatever is being discussed. I have long suspected that the modern tendency towards drivel is the concern that if the expert shut up for a moment, some other expert will appear to drivel on any subject, depriving the first expert of a meal ticket. I have long suspected that of Fitzpatrick.

Anyway, the copy I looked at on TCM this morning was in good shape, and the pictures were pretty.

TravelTalks is going skiing in Utah. Alta is a former mining town in the Wasatch Mountains. There is the modern marvel of a ski-lift. A few miles below is Great Salt Lake where a boat full of babes are floating on the super-buoyant waters. On black rock beach, Ab Jenkins is driving his experimental car. Finally, they're dipping things in the Great Salt Lake to make crystallized forms.

This is the war years and they are staying in country. It may not have the exoticness of a foreign culture. It does have some good interesting fun around the Great Salt Lake. I would have liked the car go full speed, but at least the car looks super cool.

Salt Lake Diversions (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another pleasant entry in MGM's TravelTalks series. This time we travel to Utah where we start off at the Alta Ski Resort, which at the time wasn't as big or popular as it is today. We learn that Alta use to be very popular due to mining but once it dried up everyone went away except for the Mayor who stayed on trying to figure out another way to bring people in. We learn that the place is 10,000 feet above sea level and FitzPatrick brags about the ski lift that takes people 1500 feet in only 20-minutes. When then travel to Salt Lake where we learn we can't sink due to the 27-perfect salt level. That's pretty much all this episode offers but the visuals are so beautiful that they alone will keep you entertained. The ski resort certainly had some great shots due in large part to the mountains and the beautiful snow on them. The lake too was pretty to look at the Technicolor really brings this out. Fans of the series will know what to expect and this is yet another winner.