LaSalle was an American brand of luxury automobiles manufactured and marketed, as a separate brand, by General Motors' Cadillac division from 1927 through 1940. Alfred P. Sloan, GM's Chairman of the Board, developed the concept for four new GM marques - LaSalle, Marquette, Viking and Pontiac - paired with already established brands to fill price gaps he perceived in the General Motors product portfolio. Sloan created LaSalle as a companion marque for Cadillac. LaSalle automobiles were manufactured by Cadillac, but were priced lower than Cadillac-branded automobiles, were shorter, and were marketed as the second-most prestigious marque in the General Motors portfolio. LaSalles were titled as LaSalles, and not as Cadillacs. Like Cadillac — named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac — the LaSalle brand name was based on that of another French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
James Mitchell was an American actor and dancer. Although he is best known to television audiences as Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children (1979–2010), theatre and dance historians remember him as one of Agnes de Mille's leading dancers. Mitchell's skill at combining dance and acting was considered something of a novelty; in 1959, the critic Olga Maynard singled him out as "an important example of the new dancer-actor-singer in American ballet", pointing to his interpretive abilities and "masculine" technique.
Robert Lansing was an American stage, film, and television actor.
The General Motors Motorama was an auto show staged by GM from 1949 to 1961. These automobile extravaganzas were designed to whet public appetite and boost automobile sales with displays of fancy concept cars and other special or halo models. Motorama grew out of Alfred P. Sloan's yearly industrial luncheons at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, beginning in 1931. They were almost invariably held in conjunction with the New York Auto Show, that for many years was held traditionally in the first week of January.
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology drama series that aired on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. The show was produced at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California. Since live anthology drama series of the mid-1950s usually were hour-long shows, the title highlighted the network's intention to present something unusual: a weekly series of hour-and-a-half-long dramas rather than 60-minute plays.
Joseph Moncure March was an American poet, screenwriter, and essayist, best known for his long narrative poems The Wild Party and The Set-Up.
World of Motion, presented by General Motors, was the former occupant of the transportation pavilion in Epcot at Walt Disney World Resort. It was an opening day attraction at EPCOT Center in 1982 and it closed in 1996 to make way for Test Track, a new thrill ride through a GM testing facility.
A show car, sometimes called a dream car, is a custom-made automobile created specifically for public display, rather than sale. They are shown at auto shows and other exhibitions. Show cars can either come from car companies or from private individuals.
Andrew Duggan was an American character actor. His work includes 185 screen credits between 1949 and 1987 for roles in both film and television, as well a number more on stage.
Oskar Sima was an Austrian actor who is best remembered for appearing in supporting roles in countless comedy films from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Mara Corday is an American retired showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and 1950s cult figure.
The General Motors Firebird comprises a quartet of prototype cars that General Motors (GM) engineered for the 1953, 1956, and 1959 Motorama auto shows. The cars' designers, headed by Harley Earl, took Earl's inspiration from the innovations in fighter aircraft design at the time. General Motors never intended the cars for production, but rather to showcase the extremes in technology and design that the company was able to achieve.
The home of the future, similar to the office of the future, is a concept that has been popular to explore since the early 20th century, or perhaps earlier. There have been many exhibits, such as at World's Fairs and theme parks, purporting to show how future homes will look and work, as well as standalone model "homes of the future" sponsored by builders, developers or technology companies. After a few years, each successive version of such an exhibit will start to look dated and old-fashioned, with some of its "futuristic" things becoming commonplace and others never catching on at all.
Design for Dreaming is a 1956 industrial short or sponsored film produced to accompany the General Motors Motorama show that year. A ballet with voiceover dialogue, it features a woman who dreams about a masked man taking her to the Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and to Frigidaire's "Kitchen of the Future".
The GM "old-look" transit bus was a transit bus that was introduced in 1940 by Yellow Coach beginning with the production of the model TG-3201 bus. Yellow Coach was an early bus builder that was partially owned by General Motors (GM) before being purchased outright in 1943 and folded into the GM Truck Division to form the GM Truck & Coach Division. The Yellow Coach badge gave way to the GM nameplate in 1944. Production of most "old-look" models was stopped upon the release of the GM New-Look bus in 1959, however some smaller "old-look" models continued to be built until 1969. Approximately 38,000 "old-look" buses were built during the 29-year production run. The "old-look" name is an unofficial retronym applied to this series of GM buses after the release of the GM New-Look series.
Innoventions was a two-story exhibit in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Opening on July 3, 1998 as part of the New Tomorrowland, it featured rotating exhibits focusing on near-futuristic technologies. The attraction operated for nearly 17 years, closing on March 31, 2015. It occupied the Carousel Theater, a round two-story building in which the outer half of the first floor rotates. A similar attraction of the same name existed in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort until 2019.
Theodore Carroll Marcuse was an American character actor who appeared frequently on television in the 1950s and 1960s, often portraying villains.
Thelma "Tad" Tadlock was an American dancer and choreographer known for her work in television, Broadway theater, and movies, including starring in the General Motors sponsored-film shorts "Design for Dreaming" (1956) a film which contributed scenes for Peter Gabriel's 1986 music video "In Your Eyes" and "A Touch of Magic" (1961).
The Buick XP-300 is a concept car created by General Motors in 1951. It is a counterpart to GM's Le Sabre concept, with which it shares many mechanical components, including its supercharged V8 engine, which could run on either gasoline or methanol. The XP-300 is representative of GM's "long and low" design philosophy in the 1950s, and includes numerous innovative features ranging from push-button power windows and seats to hydraulic jacks and de Dion axles.
