Western Wonderland

Culbert Levy Olson, California's first Democratic Governor in 40 years, thrust a $35,000 jeweled key into the lock of a gilded miniature Golden Gate bridge one morning last week and, with a symbolic push, proudly opened 1939's first world's fair, on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Few minutes later, to the jealous joy of Florida, Franklin Roosevelt radioed his national benediction from Key West (see p. 13). Other orators of State and church completed the inaugural, but the sublimest signal of all had been furnished the night prior at 10:30 p. m. by the sun itself, then riding at meridian over India. Its noonday rays impinged upon a photoelectric cell in Bombay, closing electric circuits by radio to start the carillon in the Tower of the Sun (400 ft., the fair's tallest). The carillon thereupon chimed out the fair's theme song, "The Bells of Treasure Island." Simultaneously on went the floodlights illuminating the Pageant of the Pacific, the Western Wonderland, the $50,000,000 Golden Gate International Exposition.

San Franciscans went indigenous and played Old West in the streets for days before their fair's official opening. They renamed Polk Street "Polk Gulch" and hung out signs like "Red eye, 15-c-. Black eye, free." In San Francisco they know how to give parties and this was one given by the whole city to the vanguard of 4,000,000 visitors from other States who they estimate will spend $400,000,000 in California this year, $240,000,000 of it right in San Francisco. For a tourist's map of that city, see p. 17.

Planners. A real estate man named Joe Dixon (who got a season pass to the fair for his pains) started the whole show exactly six years ago with a letter to the San Francisco News. Oilmen, steelmen and Mayor Angelo J. Rossi got behind Mr. Dixon's original idea, which was to celebrate completion of San Francisco's two great bridges. Chosen president of the fair corporation was Leland W. Cutler, who is no gardenia-fragrant showman like New York's Grover Aloysius Whalen,* yet is just as sound a financier and heady planner. An engineer named William Peyton Day made cruise after patient cruise taking soundings of the shoals north of Yerba Buena (Goat) Island, perfecting the idea of pumping up out of the Bay's black bottom a site for the fair which could later serve the city as an airport. Crafty Democrat George Creel got WPA to pay for the pumping.

Theme of the fair was developed by Publicist Clyde Milner Vandeburg, who helped promote the recent Dallas and San Diego fiestas. He turned a futuristic, local conception into a glamorous fairyland motif with the slogan: "See All the West in '39." That brought in all California's neighbor States. It wowed the transportation companies. And it was based on the sound perception that, whereas whole families stayed in town for weeks to see San Francisco's marvelous 1915 exposition, the average stay of today's streamlined travelers is two and one half days.

Arithmetic of the GGIE is as follows:

Exposition company's stake $26,270,000

California's contribution 5,000,000

Federal 2,300,000

Counties 1,500,000

Other States 1,500,000

Exhibitors & concessionaires 13,430,000

Total costs $50,000,000

With admissions at 50-c- (25-c- for children), and the two-and-one-half days factor applied only to visitors from outside of the Bay area, the expected attendance is figured like this:

Attendance Persons

30% local 6,000,000 1,400,000

20% Californian 4,000,000 1,600,000

50% from outside

California 10,000,000 4,000,000

Totals 20,000,000 7,000,000

Art & Fun. Fairs are usually remembered for 1) their effect on contemporary architecture, 2) their naughtiest exhibits, 3) their deficits. Unlikely to have either a notable influence on architecture (TIME, Jan. 2) or to admit a deficit, San Francisco's fair is still in the competition with its naughty-naughties. Handicappers' current No. 1 choice is Sally Rand's troupe of cowgirls, wearing boots but no saddles on a "Dnude* Ranch" behind plate glass (see cut p. 16). Instead of "Midway," the fair's fun section is called "Gayway," which, although it means red-light district down South, sounds less bawdy to Western ears than "Barbary Coast," first and logical choice.

Other exhibits:

"Stella," famed barroom nude of the

1915 Exposition, who curves and glows and actually "breathes" (by virtue of a string attached to the back of her belly, pulled gently at intervals).

The Rocket Ship, space gun which gives customers the illusion of being shot beyond the stratosphere.

The Midget Village, all in scale for 124 Singer midgets.

The Atom Smasher, a working model of

Ernest O. Lawrence's cyclotron which is so potent it could not be shown at the fair for fear of sterilizing all who came near it.

History, however, is likely to remember San Francisco's 1939 fair for none of these things, recalling charm instead of wonders. For no fair in history has had so beautiful a site as Treasure Island, just inside California's breath-taking Golden Gate, with the world's most awe-inspiring bridges stretching over and away from it. And San Franciscans have wisely chosen to make their fair gemlike rather than gigantic, compact (400 acres*), serene and gay. With one of America's few charming cities for its sponsor, GGIE may make history by being really pleasant to attend instead of just grandiose and exciting.

*Mused Mrs. Whalen, previewing Treasure Island three weeks ago: "I'm afraid that this is really a very beautiful fair."

*Dude + nude.

*New York's fair covers 1,216 1/2 acres.

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