In the movie Aviator, the bad guy,
played by a genuine bad guy, Alex Baldwin, (see the movie Team
America to understand why Baldwin is a bad guy) is supposed to be
Juan Trippe the late president of the late Pan American World
Airways. Trippe is portrayed as arrogant, a man who owned Congress.
He did own Congress.
I flew Pan Am many times and loved it. I flew around the world several times on Pan Am 1 and 2.
The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed last Thursday by Harold Evans on the contribution that Trippe made to modern flight. I can't comment on the Evans' material, except that I don't trust Evans.
I can add my own experience as a Vice
President of Bank of California in the late 1960s. Bank of
California was the snooty bank of the upper-class of America that
existed at that time. The CEO was Charles de Brettville, scion of
all the old San Francisco families and true elitist.(President of the
Pacific Union Club, and a member of the Burlingame Country Club and
Cypress Point Club.)
Juan Trippe and Pan Am were clients of the Bank for a long time. One of my friends was the banker assigned to the Trippe account. My friend was the ultimate elitist, hired only for his upper class contacts; he visited Trippe twice a year. The official report from my unbelievably snooty friend was that Trippe was one of the most arrogant people he ever knew, who used his upper-class contacts to the max. It worked in those day.
