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| Watching the movie, “The Graduate,” there are several clear shots of the bus from both inside and outside that show the unit number as Unit 4522. An important change to the bus was the livery and operator. First, the side of the bus shows the name Santa Barbara Municipal Bus Line and not the owner Santa Monica. Santa Barbara had bus service that was provided by a private company at this time so a Municipal bus service didn’t exist as the city didn’t own it. Looking at the lettering on the Santa Monica buses you can see the lettering font, size and location of the movie bus matches exactly with the word Barbara being the only change. |
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| The color of the bus in the movie is yellow where as Santa Monica had a white over blue livery. Mr. Bob Ayer of the Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica, California says it was common to paint a bus with a temporary paint that could be easily removed after the days shooting was complete. He says the key to knowing this is truly a Santa Monica bus is the interior which in addition to still showing the correct unit number has seats and an interior that are of the color used by their bus company. Plus, it’s his recollection that Santa Barbara might not of even owned/operated GM buses. |
| From the Final Vehicle Record for that particular fleet order for the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines shows Unit 4522 being serial number TDH4512-1674. |
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From the CBS fleet roster we gathered that TDH4512-1674 was assigned Unit 2345 once it was painted in the CBS livery in 1967. It’s important to note that the movie was filmed in 1966 and Santa Monica sold their fleet to CBS soon there after which is why CBS owned the bus when the movie was released in 1967.
So now we know both the unit number and serial number of the Santa Monica bus used in the movie as well as the CBS unit number that it was assigned when it arrived at Kent State. Now I just needed to find out what bus was parked in the back of the FTC garage. |