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Barbara Braunstein flew with Pan Am in the late 1960s. (Courtesy of Barbara Braunstein)
In the commercials for ABC’s new Sunday night drama Pan Am, slim young women in neatly matching blue uniforms glide confidently through an airport, as enthralled travelers – and more than one handsome pilot – stand back and give way.
These stewardesses are fictional, but that scene is absolutely true, according to some of the real-life women who brought glamour and serious service to the international skies until the airline closed in 1991.
Listings for the ABC show ‘Pan Am’, starting Sunday at 10 p.m.
The former Pan Am stewardesses, some of whom will meet for an international reunion in Miami in October commemorating the 20th anniversary of the airline’s closing, found a career that combined rigorous training, a love of travel and a chance for young women to have an international career at a time when a lot married early.
Meet the ladies (and one pilot, too!) who remember their time flying on the Big Blue Ball.
‘People dressed up – it was more sophisticated.’
Marianne Victor, Palm Beach Gardens; Margret Ives, 72, Hobe Sound; Carry Zuercher, 63, Jupiter; Tracy Maxwell, 66, Hobe Sound
Former Pan Am stewardesses Tracy Maxwell, Carry Zuercher, Margret Ives and Marianne Victor now raise money as part of the World Wings alumni group. (Richard Graulich / Palm Beach Post)
There’s something that these ladies, all members of the Pan Am stewardess alumni group World Wings, want you to know.
“We were well-trained professionals,” says Victor, as the ladies gathered at her Palm Beach Gardens kitchen table. “It was a serious business.”
As part of World Wings, the ladies raise money for charity, including the Hope Rural School in Indiantown. They’ve also continued a very special sisterhood. “We’ve stayed together all these years and kept it going,” explains Maxwell, who gets together with her friends once a month.
Like Pan Am, these friends are truly international. Victor and Zuercher are from Holland, Ives from Germany, and Maxwell from New York. And they share so much in common.
Among them, they’ve survived attempted hijackings (Victor used her stewardess skills to talk down a would-be defector to Cuba on a National flight she was actually a passenger on) and loss (some of them knew the attendants that died on the Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland).
One thing the commercials for the new series has right is the breathtaking figure that stewardesses cut: “We felt like we were movie stars,” Ives remembers. “We were so proud walking through the airport, with our heads up. Everyone just looked. It was like ‘I’m a stewardess!’ “
A big difference between the show and the reality of ’60s air travel? ABC announced that the cast would not be smoking, so as not to promote cigarette use.
But in real life “everybody smoked!” Maxwell says. “We would stand in the galley with the passengers and smoke. We served cigarettes on a silver tray!”
“And our clothes would smell like smoke getting off the plane,” Victor adds.
After Pan Am closed, Delta Air Lines took 1,200 of its 5,000 employees, including all of the ladies except Victor. Of the four, Maxwell, whose husband is a retired pilot, is still working internationally for Delta, logging almost 45 years in the air.
Of course, times are different, with increased security since 9/11, a change in amenities (“Now you have to pay for a sandwich!” says Ives) and a marked decrease in glamour.
“Everybody flies now but back then you had to have money. People dressed up – it was more sophisticated,” Maxwell says. “Now, passengers get on in first class wearing outfits I wouldn’t wear to wash my car!”
The ladies are thrilled to have been a part of Pan Am. As they talk at Victor’s kitchen table, the image of a familiar blue ball hangs in the corner.
“It was the second-most well known logo after Coca-Cola!” Victor marvels. “Everybody knew Pan Am.”
‘It wasn’t all glamour. It was hard work.’
Barbara Braunstein, 68, Boca Raton
Barbara Braunstein
A lot of former stewardesses joined the airlines to leave their everyday existence and see the world. Barbara Braunstein had already gotten a taste of that world, leaving her small New Jersey town for college in Maryland and then a year of study in Madrid, where she dated the brother of future international superstar Julio Iglesias.
Now, she just wanted to see more. And Pan Am was her ticket.
“When I graduated from college, I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I wasn’t getting married. Women of my generation, that’s what we did,” she says. “But I wanted to travel.”
Because she speaks fluent Spanish, Braunstein fit the airline’s requirement of speaking at least one additional language. She also found herself fitting quite well into Pan Am’s image of international jet-set chic. “Oh, it was the most glamorous. This was the Jackie Kennedy era, with the pill box hat, the white gloves, the spike heels,” she remembers. “Mostly everyone dressed up who came on the plane.”
And Pan Am’s standards ensured that its flight attendants matched its vision of sophistication.
“We had to weigh in before every flight, and go into the office with the grooming supervisors and twirl around to check that we had no runs in our stockings,” Braunstein says. “Our hair couldn’t touch our collars, and we couldn’t have tinted hair and only certain kinds of makeup.”
Glamour may have been key, but once the flight started, the spiked heels were replaced with more sensible ones and the work began.
“During first-class service, we served a three-course dinner! We served filet mignon, and cooked the steaks right on board! We did Cherries Jubilee, although we couldn’t flame it.”
After dinner, Braunstein says, the first-class service ended with cordials on a tray and “little four-pack cigarettes in a slim box. They had their after-dinner smoke right on the plane,” she says. “Of course, you could never do that now.”
As fancy as it seems, Braunstein says that the most important thing for people to remember is that “it wasn’t all glamour. It was hard work. We were on very long, tiring flights. The flight from New York to Uruguay was 12 hours nonstop. We could take a turn taking little naps, but those were long flights. There were still cranky people and sick people.”
She also wants people to know that although there were flight attendants that dated pilots, there wasn’t “a lot of hanky-panky,” something that, given the promos for Pan Am, she doesn’t think people understand.
“Stewardesses were very well-respected. The public was in awe of us,” she says. “We were sophisticated, mostly college graduates. There were mostly foreign girls – Swedish, French – and never any inappropriate language.”
After flying for a year and a half, Braunstein became a stewardess trainer for Pan Am. She’s now a motivational speaker, and believes that her work in the air provided her with a confidence that’s carried over.
And she’s proud of those days. “There were so many times that the stewardesses would go the extra mile. We flew during the Vietnam War, and people would take their R&R flights, where we would fly the women to see their husbands. They were so anxious, and the stewardesses did so much to help them feel better. It was a wonderful experience.”
The view from the pilot’s seat:
‘I’m not going to kiss and tell. But how many times can a guy say no?’
Ken Slobody, 72, Gainesville (formerly of Boca Raton)
'Pan Am was premier,' says former pilot Ken Slobody. (Photo courtesy Ken Slobody)
Former Pan Am pilot Ken Slobody, who began flying with the company in 1965, refers to the era as “the golden age of the airline business. You’d see Jackie Kennedy, Orson Welles. Pan Am was premier.”
It was also, he says, “a fun airline. I worked on Christmas, and we had three days off in Rome. They took care of everything. When I went to Delta (after Pan Am closed), and the Rome trip came, we were at the same hotel having a big party, and the guy said, ‘Let me know how many people there are. It’s not like Pan-Am! You have to pay!’ “
As for the dashing reputation of pilots of the era, Slobody is politely cagey – “I’m not going to kiss and tell. But how many times can a guy say no?” he says, laughing.
“It was a party outfit. The captain was the captain. As long as you got in on time and safely, you got to do what you wanted. There were not many rules.”
A snake-battling stewardess!
Jennifer Munro, 65, Palm Beach Gardens
Mom Kathleen Laughter and daughter Jennifer Munro.
Four decades before Samuel L. Jackson profanely and comically battled Snakes on a Plane, Pan Am stewardess Jennifer Munro did the same.
While the job didn’t usually require being an action hero, a passenger flying into the States from Panama and the hidden friends he brought aboard tapped that side of her.
“We had a stopover landing in Jamaica, and we always had to spray the plane to make sure we got rid of airborne bugs,” she says. “We all had to get off the plane, and as we did, a passenger saw the spray and said ‘No! No! My snakes!’ I didn’t know what that was about, but we found out that there were four snakes in a bag that he got in the Amazon. They were very rare.”
Unfortunately, there were only three in the bag.
After searching frantically for the fourth, the decision was made to take off anyway, assuming that maybe the errant reptile had gotten off in Jamaica too. But later, mid-air, as Munro had the plane’s crystal out on an unsecured counter space, the missing snake made himself known.
“The snake took off, and all the crystal broke all over the galley,” Munro says. “They did catch him, and the man was arrested. He’d wanted to study them, but he wasn’t supposed to have them.”
“When Snakes on a Plane came out I thought ‘I’ve been there!’ “
Signe Owrenn's graduating flight attendant class for Pan Am in 1967. Owrenn is second from the right in the top row. (Courtesy of Signe Owrenn)
Signe Owrenn (Damon Higgins / Palm Beach Post)
EXPERIENCE COMES IN HANDY:
‘A fabulous time to see the world’
Signe Owrenn, 67, Palm Beach Gardens
Owrenn works behind the concierge desk at Palm Beach’s Colony Hotel, but she got her experience assisting international travelers as a Pan Am stewardess. “I think it is so funny that people are talking about it again,” she says. “It was a fabulous time for me to see the world. It’s so great to see that big blue Pan Am ball everywhere again.”
I remember those stewardesses….total babes.
We flew around the world, long flights with sometimes just legal rest in between. Just another flight “across the pond”. It was joked we knew our way around the world like others knew their way around the block. Sometimes we missed out on daily events, movies, music, life around us.
One of my favorite stories as a “stewardess” for Pan American was a night flight to London. I worked the upper deck lounge with only one passenger. After serving and talking to a young man in a white T-shirt for hours, I finally asked “what do you do?” His answer was ” poet/songwriter”. I went into the cockpit and asked the pilots if they ever heard of a song writer named Bob Dylan? “Nope” never heard of him either. I returned to the cockpit with a platinum record that Bobby Dylan gave me to show the greatly in the dark cockpit crew. Traveling the world during those were exciting in many ways. You never knew what you would learn while traveling.
We flew around the world, long flights with sometimes just legal rest in between. Just another flight “across the pond”. It was joked we knew our way around the world like others knew their way around the block. Sometimes we missed out on daily events, movies, music, life around us.
One of my favorite stories as a “stewardess” for Pan American was a night flight to London. I worked the upper deck lounge with only one passenger. After serving and talking to a young man in a white T-shirt for hours, I finally asked “what do you do?” His answer was ” poet/songwriter”. I went into the cockpit and asked the pilots if they ever heard of a song writer named Bob Dylan? “Nope” never heard of him either. I returned to the cockpit with a platinum record that Bobby Dylan gave me to show the greatly in the dark cockpit crew. Traveling the world during those days were exciting in many ways. You never knew what you would learn while traveling.
Barbie Braunstein!!!! My long lost roommate! I didn’t know how to find you! You can find me here at the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-davey/pan-am-a-dream-job_b_930035.html
It’s also permanently listed in your author archive:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-davey/
How’s Richie?
I loved the story / article. I was a Pan Am flight attendant from 1972- 1974. I lost my job after the first energy crisis. There are few words to describe truthfully and honestly the lifestyle that accompanied the title of Pan Am flight attendant. It was a fairy-tale existence. Every time I would go to work, it would be to travel to another part of the world outside of the USA. Imagine getting paid to travel the world while doing something you love! The job came with serious responsibility and everyone had to go through a training period which was not easy. There were those who failed and were let go. When I look back to that period in my life, I only have the most remarkable memories and flashbacks to what was truly the most phenomenal time and chapter of my life. Good to see the Blue Ball back on TV. A very nostalgic day in my life.
Norman Levine (59)
Being a stewardess for Pan Am was the best job I ever had. There are so many highlights.
My career began as a Pan Am Rep at the U of Oregon. Our class went through an excellerated training during the summer of 1964 in New York. Upon graduation we flew around the world for the summer and then returned to our respective schools to finish our degrees. Pan Am kept our positions on hold with the airline for us to return after we graduated. I believe I was the only Campus Rep to return in the Fall of 1965.
A memorable experience happened to me on my flight to New York from Seattle via “Over the pole” to London and in the same day on to New York! A man from 1st Class back and sat next to me. He proceeded to introduce himself. His name didn’t mean anything to me. He told me he was a movie producer, had just made the movie, “Sandpiper” with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. I had a bad cold, was exhausted with all the travel and just wanted to sleep. He mentioned something about would I be interested in coming to his office and talking to him. I was
thinking it was all a bug story line. Finally, another male passenger asked him to leave me alone. He went back to First Class.
A fee months later while working a flight to Europe during a break I was perusing an on flight magazine. I passed over a page with a huge picture of a man. My eye recognized the person so I turned back . It was the man
who had spoken to me on the flight from London. It was Marty Ransonoff!
Perhaps the direction of my life would have gone another direction if I had only given him
a little interest and attention. :-)
I don’t know how you can preview your comments so after publishing found mistakes.
Have to correct:
Accelerated -not what I typed. :-)
Big story line- not bug!
And few months later. OK feel better!
Never better was a career for the elite women chosen for such a special job as Pan Am stewardess. One former stewardess said we were chosen 1 out of 100. In my interview, my interviewer told me we were chosen 1 out of 500. I had to lift my hem high enough to show my attractive legs and walk across the room and back, being checked for the gracefulness of my walk. I was chosen with Spanish as a second language which made me laugh. I was surrounded by beautiful, exotic latin women of languages, education and grace. Four of us were interviewed together and all four of us were chosen. It was heaven.
My Mother was a stewardess in the 60′s and my Father started as an engineer and moved his way up to Captain on the 747 towards the end of his career when Pan Am closed in 91. So I have been told, they met at an amzing crew party in Hong Kong and then had their first offical date on a lay over in Sydney Australia.
My mother retired from Pan Am before I was born to raise me and my half brothers.
Pan Am was my childhood and what an amazing life it was. I was fortunate, my parents took me everywhere. I spent Christmas in Cairo, Easter in Rome and summers well all over the globe. I thought everyone lived like that. I was exposed to so much and can thank PAN AM for the opportunity. I am who I am becuase of it.
Although I never worked for the company, when I see the Blue Ball I get a lump in my throat. Guess you could say the Pan Am blood runs through my veins.
Thank you!!!
Leslie Rogers Fried – Weston Florida
Mom – Jean Jasper Rogers
Dad – Jack J. Rogers
I too enjoyed working for Pan Am 1965-70 JFK,MIA,DIA. It truly was the best job I ever had. I married a Pan American first officer, Alfred (Andy) Anderson. How fortunate I was to have met Charles LINDBERGH, Martin Luther King, so many esteemed people. And traveling abroad taught me about different religions. I grew up working with Pan Am. Am grateful. Vicki Nowland Anderson (purser)
It is so fun to see ABC bring Pan American back to the forefront . I flew for Pan Am from 1970 to 1986 when the “crown jewels” , The Pacific Routes, were sold to United Airlines.
I went over to United with the sale, as did 1200 of us who flew the Pacific Routes. As grateful as I was to continue my career, I did not anticipate it being so culturally different from what I had experienced flying for Pan American.
The women from Pan Am , that I worked with for 18 years, truly were interested in adventure and experiencing the world and they were from such a variety of cultures. We did not join the airline to find a husband. It was about expanding your horizons and world view and it was an opportunity like none other, to do exactly that.
I went on to fly another 22 yrs. for United , of course, it was a different era, the world of air travel was rapidly changing , thus an entirely different experience than those first 18 years of flying for the World’s Most Experienced Airline.
I am eternally grateful for the years of traveling with both carriers and yet it truly is the Pan Am days of flying that, not only opened amazing doors, but molded our lives forever, for he better ….
We could all write a book about the people we came into contact with , the exotic foods we experienced, the Five Star Inter-continental Hotels we stayed in, the international cities we became to know like our home bases, and on and on.
So it is fun, somehow, sharing some of that time in our lives with those who are too young to remember Pan Am through this series.
I wonder if any of the “old” PanAm crews remember Tracy Langevin?
She was from Lexington, Mass. and was a “stewardess” during the 1960′s
It’s so great to see our logo take flight again after so many years. I too had the pleasure of flying for Pan American World Airways. I can still remember when recruiter Ray Hill sent me a personal note that read, “BA Welcome to the Club”! Just having come back from a mini reunion held at our former Miami Springs Taj Mahal on 36th Street,underneath the shadow of what was our former training center. Once on a polar flight, I had the distinct pleasure of having Mr. Jack Palance on board in FC. He had taken out a cigar to smoke after the dinner service. At that time, we had to make an unscheduled stop in Greenland for fuel before landing at London’s Heathrow International Airport. I told Mr. Palance, that cigars were not permitted aboard Pan Am. When we landed in Greenland, he came back with an armful of beautiful roses for me, as an apology! I’ll never forget that! We fly, the world, the way the world wants to fly, Pan Am.