WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘PAN AM’

Making the Connection at ‘Pan Am’

The CTV/ABC drama “Pan Am” looks great on-screen because every detail is so sharp in person. From the 707 jet replica in a studio warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the constricting undergarments the stewardesses wear, everything is authentic.

On a recent blustery day, the cast rehearses the episode airing tonight. The action unfolds the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Walter Cronkite’s voice, thick with emotion but composed and ever professional, delivers the first news that the president “is wounded, his condition is yet unknown.”

A pall falls over the set. It’s called for, yet everyone here is acting; no one is remembering. One of the ways to tell if people are baby boomers is whether they recall the grim events of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963; these actresses are Gen Y. But they learn about Kennedy, just as they have learned about the Cold War, girdles and how Pan Am hired the best and the brightest, not merely waitresses of the sky.

During the stewardesses’ weigh-ins, much is made of the girdle, but Christina Ricci’s character, Maggie, refuses to wear one. She is also daring and politically aware, and she adores Kennedy. After rehearsing the scene in which the first news about Kennedy is broadcast, Ricci says she had learned a lot about the ’60s from a high-school class.

“I learned so much and how fascinating it was and how much society changed,” she says.

Though there are many watershed moments from the 1960s yet to be plumbed, there was no announcement at this writing that “Pan Am” would definitely be on the air past February.

“It is on very late for people who have to work on Mondays,” Ricci says of the show’s time slot. “It is doing so well overseas, it doesn’t make sense to stop making it.” w