Touring Days

In which a drama critic, Neal R. O’Hara, reviews his trip across the continent. Reprinted by permission: old Life. June, 1921.

“New York to Los Angeles” is listed in the travel booklet as a fast tour in four days and three nights. Too much talk and commonplace scenery make the first two days absolutely dull. Frankly, we sat in our seats bored, and went to sleep when the berth was made up. But on the third day the tour reached dramatic heights in crawling over the Rocky Mountains.

It was here that the deft hand of David Belasco was seen in the realism of the snowcapped mountains and the impressive jaggedness of the canyons. An avalanche was also effective, nearly stopping the show. The final scenes are laid in Los Angeles, an anticlimax after the strong third day and certainly not a happy ending.

The tour has some elements of success, however, and the Moonbeam Limited can run every day for many months with its accommodations constantly crowded. The scene shifting needs speeding up at various points, as, for instance, going through Iowa; and the route should be rewritten for the first two days, omitting such incidental stuff as Ashtabula and Toledo, where the interest is sure to sag. The Los Angeles finish will doubtless remain, since that seems to be what the public demands.

The tour on the whole was handled by a train crew that was fairly adequate. In declaiming the more difficult parts of the Middle West, the brakeman’s enunciation could have been clearer, but that is a minor defect.

After this season’s surfeit of historical trips such as “New York to Boston,” “Seeing Washington in Three Days” and “The Round Trip to Gettysburg,” it should serve as a welcome relief to the tired traveling man.