KTLA News: "Mayor Tom Bradley and Oscar Lundeen on General Motors antitrust allegations" (1974)

Creator: KTLA

Description:

The KTLA newsfilm collection at UCLA consists of cut and unedited stories, outtakes and fill footage, originally shot on 16mm reversal film stock with magnetic soundtrack. Some footage, particularly material not used for broadcast, may be without sound.

Title: "Mayor Tom Bradley and Oscar Lundeen on General Motors antitrust allegations." Date: February 26, 1974.

Summary: KTLA reporter Dick Garten reports on Tom Bradley's allegations that in 1944 General Motors and Standard Oil Company of California financed American City Lines. American City Lines then purchased over a thousand miles of rail transit systems in Los Angeles County, and neighboring counties, and replaced them with General Motors buses fueled by Standard Oil. In the clip, Bradley talks about how General Motors and other corporations have not always acted in the public's best interest. Oscar Lundeen, the Executive Vice-President of General Motors denies these allegations, and is confident the charges will be proved false. Garten also briefly mentioned that charges have been submitted today to the Senate Subcommittee on Monopoly and Antitrust, but that will not get the train cars back on the rails anytime soon.

Learn more about this UCLA Film & Television Archive project: ucla.in/2Fg1OzE

Complete Record: The KTLA newsfilm collection at UCLA consists of cut and unedited stories, outtakes and fill footage, originally shot on 16mm reversal film stock with magnetic soundtrack. Some footage, particularly material not used for broadcast, may be without sound. Title: "Mayor Tom Bradley and Oscar Lundeen on General Motors antitrust allegations." Date: February 26, 1974. Summary: KTLA reporter Dick Garten reports on Tom Bradley's allegations that in 1944 General Motors and Standard Oil Company of California financed American City Lines. American City Lines then purchased over a thousand miles of rail transit systems in Los Angeles County, and neighboring counties, and replaced them with General Motors buses fueled by Standard Oil. In the clip, Bradley talks about how General Motors and other corporations have not always acted in the public's best interest. Oscar Lundeen, the Executive Vice-President of General Motors denies these allegations, and is confident the charges will be proved false. Garten also briefly mentioned that charges have been submitted today to the Senate Subcommittee on Monopoly and Antitrust, but that will not get the train cars back on the rails anytime soon. Learn more about this UCLA Film & Television Archive project: ucla.in/2Fg1OzE © 2019 The Regents of the University of California

Transcription

[KTLA Reporter Dick Garten] Some old-timers and some not-so-old timers, will remember the rolling stock of the Pacific Electric and the Los Angeles Railway Company, as an ideal method of inter urban transportation. Some families even took the big red car on a ride through the orange groves, as a regular Sunday afternoon outing. [Garten] That was before 1944, when according to, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley at City Hall this morning. [Garten] General Motors and Standard Oil Company of California, [Garten] financed American City Lines, [Garten] which purchased eleven hundred sixty four miles of rail transit systems, that reached all over Los Angeles County and into neighboring counties. [Garten] Then replaced the cars, transmission lines and tracks with General Motors buses fueled by Standard Oil, on the streets and highways. [Mayor Tom Bradley] The fact is that, General Motors and other major corporations, in this country, have not always acted in the public interest. Let me site a couple of examples. Starting back in 1938, General Motors, Standard Oil of California and other major corporations, entered into an arrangement, to buy up the electric streetcar systems in this country. And to substitute, gas and diesel operated buses. Now, this was done with eventually some hundred electric streetcar systems in the country, covering forty four of the cities of this country. [Garten] Mayor Bradley was reluctant to take a get tough attitude toward GM and Standard, [Garten] preferring to call for manufacturing competition and congressional legislation that could forestall such a conspiracy in the future. [Garten] But General Motors Executive Vice President, Oscar Lundeen, in town today for an energy conservation conference, [Garten] was not reluctant in his denial of the charges. [Oscar Lundeen] The allegations are completely untrue. We have to be careful what we say about this general subject in public, because a case was brought some months ago in New York City in this general area. And our lawyers tell us that we have to be careful what we say in public. But we are sure that when the facts are shown as they will be, that the charges of the mayor and others in that area are completely false. [Garten] Mayor Bradley campaigned on the issue of better transportation in the Los Angeles basin. But charges submitted today to the Senate Subcommittee on Monopoly and Antitrust, will not get the big red cars, nor the yellow cars, back on the rails again in the foreseeable future. Dick Garten, reporting.

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