This 1967 TWA Recruitment Film Reveals The Splendor Of Its Finishing School For Flight Attendants: What’s Streaming

The job of “flight attendant” or stewardess back in the day, didn’t take off until the 1930s when Ellen Church approached Boeing Air Transport (later United Air Lines) and suggested a nurse fly onboard planes as a way to help calm nervous flyers. Church, according to the Smithsonian, originally wanted to be a pilot, but it was the 1930s, and women were just not commercial pilots. So, she settled for the next best thing to get herself in the sky. The idea caught on and these hosts to the skies have remained a staple of air travel ever since.

Church helped develop the first-ever program to train up-and-coming stewardesses, starting with “The Original Eight,” a group of eight women who were the first-ever stewardess team. The training programs evolved substantially thereafter, and we catch a glimpse of it through this 1967 TWA recruitment film demonstrating the lifestyle and training of a TWA “stewardess.” 

YouTuber 16mm Time Machine points out the film is missing the intro and outro, so it begins right in throes of a stewardess’ career path through TWA, whether through promotion into an office job after time in the sky, or as a wife. It’s cringey, mostly because it’s an unfortunate product of the 1960s. But TWA was a forward-thinking company. That “third finger, left hand” piece of jewelry the narrator refers to wouldn’t stop a woman from becoming a flight attendant at TWA. No. At TWA, you could be married, which was really not a common rule among airlines at the time.

The idea of a woman being married, let alone having birthed a child was almost unbearable in an age where the women meant to serve men in the air. Remember this was a time where women couldn’t have their own bank accounts or businesses.

A Conde Nast Traveler article from 2019 interviewed several stewardesses who worked around the same time the film was made, some revealing the sometimes abhorrent side of airline interviews. One woman who had worked for Continental Airlines from 1960 to 1963 told the outlet she had to complete three exams: written, verbal and physical. The latter included a full pelvic exam to ensure an applicant hadn’t ever been pregnant.

Other programs kept it at an interview with the occasional one-off personal question. A stewardess who worked for TWA from 1968 to 1973 told CNTraveler she was asked about her habits like if she drank alcohol, and how many cups of coffee she consumed in a day. 

If hired by TWA, the potential stewardess was sent off to the Jack Frye Training Center in Kansas City, Missouri, for a five week training program, basically a finishing school for learning methods of self care and how to present oneself. Women would get a makeover, learn how to put on and wear makeup, as well as learn how to sit, walk, and stand, and properly carry their coats.

Things have luckily progressed a bit since the film’s release. Flight attendants have fought for and earned more work freedoms, note the TWA flight attendant’s 72-day strike that would become a notable union fight in the ’80s. Attendants are remarkably more diverse as well and not judged by appearances or whether or not they’ve had children. The job isn’t just a “second income” for the family anymore, but a notable career.

But it’s still an exhausting career path, and some flight attendants have to deal with the worst of the worst, as we’ve written at length over, and over, and over again.

Can we say the whole of society has evolved a little bit since the ’60s? Sure? Some public-facing jobs today still include aspects that might require a makeover, or lessons on how to keep yourself, like television news reporters and anchors as an example. If discriminatory practices happen, and let’s not be naive, they do still happen, do on the sly. You’re not going to perform a pelvic exam on a female candidate for an office job. But then again, this is the same society and country that just ripped away a women’s right to choose what happens to her body. 

Join me weekly as I introduce a new(er), sometimes nostalgic video worth adding to your Watch Later lists. Leave a note in the comments if you find an older or interesting film you’d like to see featured.