Featuring actor Art Gilmore — who narrated the 1950s TV show “Highway Patrol”, this scare / sales film by General Tire presents the various features of the brand’s advanced Nygen cord nylon tubeless tires — including a pressure lock and water squeegee tread that was revolutionary in its time. The film is notable for showing a variety of sensational car accidents including a car driving off of a cliff (6:40 mark) that might have come from the stock footage library of “Highway Patrol” itself. The film ends with a ridiculous stunt in which a car is dropped off of a ten story building, to demonstrate what a 70 mph impact — the same as a head-on collision of two cars at 35mph — looks like.
The General Tire and Rubber Company is an American manufacturer of tires for motor vehicles. General Tire was founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio, by William F. O’Neil. The company later diversified into a conglomerate, with holdings in tires, rubber compounds, rocketry and aeronautics, entertainment and news, and real estate.
Because the depression was particularly hard on manufacturing, General began to branch out, buying several Ohio radio stations on which it advertised. In 1943, General Tire diversified the core business strategy, purchasing the Yankee Network and the radio stations it owned from Boston’s Shepard Stores, Inc. Thomas F. O’Neil, son of the founder William F. O’Neil, served as Yankee’s chairman with Shepard’s John Shepard III serving as president.
General Tire continued its move into broadcasting by acquiring the Don Lee Broadcasting System, a well-respected regional radio network on the West Coast, in 1950. Among other stations, it added KHJ-AM-FM in Los Angeles and KFRC-AM-FM in San Francisco to its stable from the Yankee acquisition. In 1952, it bought WOR/WOR-FM/WOR-TV in New York City and merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio.
General Tire’s final move into entertainment was the acquisition of RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes in 1955 for $25 million. General Tire was interested mainly in using the RKO film library to program its television stations, so it sold the RKO lot at Sunset and Gower in Hollywood to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions in 1956 for $6 million. The remaining assets of RKO were merged with General Teleradio, and the new company eventually became known as RKO General. The radio stations became some of the leading broadcasters in the world, but the division was dragged down by unethical conduct at its television stations. This culminated in the longest licensing dispute in television history, eventually forcing RKO General out of the broadcasting business.
Arthur Wells Gilmore, known as Art Gilmore (March 18, 1912 – September 25, 2010), was an American voice actor and announcer heard in on radio and television programs, children’s records, movies, trailers, radio commercials, and documentary films. He also appeared in several television series and a few feature films.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
