Iconic buses in cinema

Film director Jean-Luc Godard once said that cinema is “reality at 24 frames per second”. And it’s true: this art form allows us to see everyday actions like making breakfast, showering, or getting on a bus on the big screen and with a different perspective. At Castrosua, we have selected some iconic buses from the world of cinema. Will you know them all?

‘It Happened One Night’ (1934), an Oscar-winning bus

Film lovers will have seen (perhaps more than once) the romantic comedy ‘It Happened One Night’, by Frank Capra. In this film, the bus plays a very important role, as it is the means of transport chosen by Claudette Colbert’s character to escape her father. The young woman takes a night bus in Florida heading to New York and inside she meets a very talkative reporter played by Clark Gable.

The couple travels on a Greyhound company bus, still active today. It is a classic vehicle with rounded shapes and a front end reminiscent of the popular Ford A car.

Greyhound stated at the time that, after the premiere of ‘It Happened One Night’, bus travel increased in North America. In 1934, national intercity lines transported 400 million passengers. In 1935, the figure rose to 652 million.

One last curiosity: this film was also highly admired by critics. In fact, it won all five Oscars for which it was nominated.

The final scene of ‘The Graduate’ (1967)

Another iconic bus in film history appears for only a few minutes on screen, yet it is one of the best known. We are referring to the General Motors Old Look city bus, which we see in the final scene of ‘The Graduate’. Specifically, it is the 1956 GM TDH – 4512 model.

In this Mike Nichols film, Dustin Hoffman’s character prevents Elaine (Anne Bancroft) from marrying another man. Leaving the church, Hoffman and Bancroft dash to catch the first city bus they find and take their seats in the back. The vehicle is full of passengers who don’t hide their surprise at seeing Elaine in her wedding dress.

The Old Look in this scene actually operated in Santa Monica, but it was painted yellow and passed off as a Santa Barbara city bus. Apparently, after the filming of the movie, this bus was sold to Kent State University. Its management discovered several years after acquiring it that they had a famous specimen in their bus fleet.

The Rockford Peaches’ coach: ‘A League of Their Own’ (1992)

The coach that transported the athletes in ‘A League of Their Own’ has also become an iconic vehicle. This film, set in the 1940s, was inspired by the true story of the Rockford Peaches, a women’s baseball team that participated in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

In the film, the Rockford Peaches players, including Mae Mordabito played by Madonna, travel to their games in a typical coach of the era. Specifically, a 1947 GMC PD 3751 model.

Today, a replica of this coach can be seen in the city of Huntingburg (Indiana), where much of the film was shot. The replica of this vehicle belongs to the local university baseball team, The Dubois County Bombers.

The Fugitive’s bus (1993), responsible for an iconic scene

‘The Fugitive’, a 1993 film starring Harrison Ford, contains one of the most iconic scenes in action cinema. In it, Ford is traveling on a bus that is taking him to prison when the passengers cause an accident and the vehicle plunges down a hillside. The protagonist manages to get out of the bus before it is hit by a train.

Midwest Transit Equipment Co. sold Warner Brothers four school buses to film this scene. The same company was responsible for painting and modifying the buses to make them look like prison transport vehicles.

This iconic scene was filmed on a stretch of the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad in North Carolina. Today, the remains of the train and bus involved can still be seen in the town of Sylva.

Speed (1994), an action-packed city bus

And no list of iconic film buses would be complete without the city bus from ‘Speed’, a film starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. This blockbuster movie transports viewers to an unlikely but captivating scenario that unfolds inside a bus. Reeves plays an LAPD officer who finds himself trapped on a bus with a bomb set to explode if the vehicle travels below 50 mph. He and Sandra Bullock’s character take charge to save the passengers.

For the filming of this movie, eleven General Motors New Look buses were used. Two of them were blown up, one was used in high-speed scenes, one had its front cut off for interior shots, another was used for shots under the bus… All of them were painted blue, mimicking the appearance of the Santa Monica city bus fleet, and had the number 2525 painted on the roof. This number was not arbitrary at all. 25 + 25 = 50 (50 miles per hour, the minimum speed at which the vehicle had to travel to avoid the explosion).

In 2018, one of the buses from ‘Speed’ was sold at auction for no less than $102,000.

Daily bus journeys are not as thrilling as in this last film. They are, fortunately, comfortable, safe, and increasingly less polluting. Likewise, at Grupo Castrosua, we enjoy every appearance of the bus on screen, whether in a chase scene or hosting a good conversation, especially if it increases its use among the population. We hope these iconic buses from the world of cinema are as appealing to you as they are to us. Feel free to tell us about other iconic buses in cinema in the comments of this post.