The Friendship Train

Friendship Train, The (1948)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent documentary starts off telling us that the people of Italy and France are still in trouble due to the lack of food. Just a few years after WW2, the countries find themselves suffering with the lack of funds to keep everyone fed so in America the "Friendtrip Train" was designed. The mission was to start in L.A. and travel to NY, collecting as much food as possible. We learn that when the train left L.A. it had eight cars worth of food but at the end of the trip it was at two-hundred and seventy. This is a fair short that works in a few different ways. The biggest is getting to see the various cities that the train stops at. We get thousands of people waiting and getting to see these old towns was pretty interesting. Another plus was seeing the train kick off with Eddie Cantor doing some work and Harry Warner on hand since this was apparently his idea. This 14-minute short really isn't anything overly special but it is interesting just to see how a few things were in 1948.

This newsreel-cum-publicity short covers the Friendship Train, which started in Los Angeles, and by the time it was emptied in New York City, so its contents could be shipped to the hungry peoples of western Europe, had some immense amount of basic foodstuffs..... they seem to have stopped counting in Iowa, with more than a hundred boxcars.

Harry M. Warner, CEO of Warner Brothers, was in charge of the effort. Unsurprisingly, this is a Warner Brothers short subject.