When world war II ended, assembly lines shut down and America’s Rosie the Riveters were sent home to start their lives as wives and mothers. It was a new era for femininity, and television’s June Cleaver, who dished up casserole in her suburban dream kitchen, set the standard. But not all women wanted to be full-time homemakers and those who were unmarried or needed to work outside the home had Limited options: they could be secretaries, nurses, teachers, or sales clerks, but not much else. Then something monumental happened. Millions of Americans started to travel on airplanes—and the stewardess...

When ellen Church was growing up in Iowa during the 1910s, her parents took her to county fairs to watch pioneer aviators swoop through the air. Mesmerized by the goggled pilots performing aerial acrobatics, Church let her imagination soar. She wanted to fly. But at the time, aviation was just a fledgling technology and flying was considered a soul-stirring, yet risky, venture for intrepid explorers. The vast majority of Americans had never been on an airplane. Church had no idea that she would come to play an important role in this intriguing new world of aviation, but she did know...

During the years after world war II, the airline stewardess became an American icon. Heralded as the apotheosis of postwar womanhood, the stewardess was popularly dubbed the “typical all-American girl.” An expert at doting on men and serving meals, she represented an airborne incarnation of the much-mythologized American homemaker of the 1950s—a paragon of feminine virtue, a virginal girl next door, and a model wife-to-be. Of course, the reality of the stewardess’s life and work was different, but this image was a powerful tool in the promotional arsenal of the fledgling airline industry.

This was an era when most...

In the summer of 1956, when Patricia Banks was a nineteen-year-old psychology major at Queens College, she had her heart set on becoming a stewardess. Like the vast majority of Americans during this era, she had never flown, but Banks had always been captivated by airplanes. As a child, she dreamed of soaring through the clouds in a sleek plane and she fantasized about becoming a pilot. She also had a passion for learning about different cultures and she wanted to travel. Banks was a go-getter, determined to make her dreams come true. At the time, she was working full...

On october 26, 1958, the first commercially successful jet made its debut flight. It was a media sensation. Magazines and newspapers proclaimed the dawn of a “new jet-winged world.” They praised the majestic beauty of this sleek flying machine and touted its potential to change the world. Heralding the jet age as the new era of “speed” and “glamour,” airline press releases generated substantial buzz about jet technology. A stewardess heroine in the novel Girl on a Wing (1960) captured the cultural intrigue of jets: “[The jet] looked so majestic, so patient, standing there waiting for us, its wings swept...

It was a glorious, clear day in New York. A cheering crowd gathered on the tarmac to watch as the behemoth blue and silver jet screeched to a halt at the John F. Kennedy International Airport. Stewardesses from America’s enemy empire stepped off the plane, pausing in the aircraft doorway to wave and smile as reporters snapped photos.¹ Pan Am’s chairman welcomed the Russians with open arms.

The cause for celebration was the inauguration of direct commercial air service between the Soviet Union and the United States. Throughout the bitter Cold war, there had been no direct air service between...

William patterson, the president of United Airlines, had built the airline from its beginnings in 1934 and he believed in loyalty. However, after twenty-seven years with the well-established, Philadelphia-based N. W. Ayer & Son (founded in 1869), Patterson decided to call it quits. United’s image needed a fresh perspective. At the time, United was headquartered in Chicago, so Patterson invited the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, a newer Chicago-based boutique firm, to bid for the prestigious airline account.

Leo Burnett, the acclaimed ad man behind the small Chicago ad agency, corralled his top creative team. They poured themselves into brainstorming sessions...

When airlines were on the brink of hiking up stewardess’ hemlines, twenty-five-year-old Patricia Griffith O’Neill interviewed for a position. Her father had been a World War I ace, and she had always idolized stewardesses as “pioneers abroad” with “cachet” and “respect.” Blonde-haired, blue-eyed O’Neill had also graduated from a one-year modeling program at the John Robert Powers modeling school. The Pan Am supervisor who interviewed O’Neill found her “honest” and “intelligent” with a “good presence,” but O’Neill was a few pounds too heavy according to airline standards. So, the supervisor advised O’Neill to lose weight and reapply. Following a fad...