J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

1941-46 Chevrolet pickup, and The Last Picture Show

From Chris Baker, painter, and our man in Southern California.  This one looks awfully close to original, though Chris says all insignia were missing, and the truck's owner didn't know what he had, exactly. Well, that's what Autoliterate is for. This is a 1941-46 Chevrolet pickup. Probably a '41, '42, or  a '46; civilian truck production stopped during the war. I like this truck a lot, in what looks like its original and unrestored condition--that's recycling!-- though I would get rid of those whitewalls as soon as possible. On trucks of that era, standard-procedure at the factory was to paint fenders and running boards black, and I think that is what I'm seeing here.

Some people think of this series as the "Wurlitzer" Chevrolet trucks, and the front grill does call to mind  jukeboxes of the era. There's some art deco going on there.


In a previous post I mentioned Peter Bogdanovich's startling 1971 film, The Last Picture Show (based on a Larry McMurty novel, with the screenplay co-written by Bogdanovich and McMurty). A great early role for Jeff Bridges, and for Cybil Shepherd too. Randy Quaid's first appearance on film. (His next was in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz). And a great late-career role for that old John Ford cowboy,  Ben Johnson. It's set in a small Texas town, and the opening shot, as I remember, is Sonny's (Timothy Bottoms) boot pumping the accelerator while trying to start an old pickup truck on a cold Texas morning. I can relate to this. 
I had to check, but the pickup in the movie, co-owned by the Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges characters--is not a '41-'46 Chevrolet, as above, but the immediately preceding series, possibly a '39.




Posted by autoliterate at 8:34 PM

4 comments:

  1. Brett HuffmanJuly 10, 2018 at 11:53 PM

    Yep - I'm with you on the truck. This is one of the last great art-deco designs. The truck in the Last Picture Show was missing the side hood panels, but everything else (except the whitewalls) is spot-on with this truck you found. Thanks for posting

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 22, 2020 at 7:47 AM

    I learned to drive on a truck like this one. I was 10 years old and we had this truck on a ranch in Ca. Ours was in about the same shape and only about 15 years old.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 2, 2020 at 9:48 PM

    I'd say it's probably a '38, as the headlights are separate from the fenders, which was the case with the 2 door sedan.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JenniferJanuary 30, 2021 at 12:16 AM

    -My dad owned a 1941 Chevy pickup. He passed in 1984 and he still had it. He used it to go to work. He was a railroad engineer so it only traveled about 1 mile from home to the depot, then it would sit until he got back in town a day or more later. It was about the color of the green that you can sort of see in this one but maybe a little lighter. He loved that truck!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)