SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Seattle World’s Fair: 50 Years Later!
Nov 15, 2011, 5:54 PM | Updated: Nov 16, 2011, 8:43 am
20 year old Albert Fisher, the Fair’s director of Television and Motion Pictures, with Elvis Presley. |
Listen to Seattle World’s Fair: 50 Years Later!
On April 21st, 2012, it will officially be 50 years since the Seattle World’s Fair opened. And to commemorate the anniversary, there’s a new book called The Future Remembered: The 1962 World’s Fair and its Legacy, co-authored by Seattle historian Paula Becker.
“The rest of the world really had very little idea of where Seattle was,” Becker told me. “The state of Washington was constantly being confused with Washington DC, once you got out of this country. To think how different that was after the fair! This fair really put Seattle on the global map and really let people know where we were and what we were.”
The brand new Space Needle was obviously one of the fair’s biggest draws.
>>See photos from Seattle World’s Fair
“That was a really big deal. Space Needle construction was photographed when the needle was almost done and that ended up on the cover of Life magazine. Almost everybody in the country subscribed to it so this really got the attention of the world. People wanted to go into the Space Needle so badly, they would line up for hours and hours.”
Other hot attractions were the monorail and the Pacific Science Center
“This was America’s space age world’s fair and it was about the future. One of the things that was coming for America, in the future, was space flight. NASA had never had a public demonstration of what they were working on before the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. So people really had the first chance to understand how they were planning on putting a human being on the moon.”
Becker says John Glenn had recently returned from space, so he was one of the most popular figures to visit the fair over it’s six month span. But besides the science and space discovery, countless celebrities performed at the fair, including Elvis Presley who shot his film It Happened At The World’s Fair there.
Albert Fisher was only 20 years old when he was appointed the Director of Television and Motion Pictures for the Seattle World’s Fair. He not only met Elvis, but went on a double date with him and shot behind the scenes footage of The King. He says he wasn’t a big Elvis fan…until they met.
“Within the first few minutes of meeting Elvis Presley, he completely won me over. He was a kind, polite gentleman who turned around my predispositions of what a famous rock and roll star would be expected to be like.”
It was Albert who put President Kennedy on the line to open the fair…only he didn’t know it at the time.
“For about five minutes, I’m talking to this man on the phone who’s asking me all about the fair and finally it’s about a minute to go before the President’s due to speak and I said ‘Is the president standing by?’ and he said ‘Well, this is the president!’ After what seemed like an eternity, what was probably only about 30 seconds, finally Kennedy says to me: ‘Isn’t it about time I should start?’ and I just kind of stuttered through ‘Y-y-yes, M-m-m-mister President!'”
The fair was the hot ticket in 1962 and 10 million people visited during its six month run. This spring, from April to October, the fair will be remembered with various exhibitions at Seattle Center. This weekend at the Seattle library, Paula and her co-author will be presenting the book and they invite anyone who wants to tell their fair stories to come down.
