Don't believe I've seen this posted before. And as best as I can recall it's the first time I've ever seen it. Ed Roth was featured in this episode of the old PBS production "The Great American Dream Machine" which originally aired in '71 and '72. The show is still an interesting to watch time-capsule type show, even without Ed. But Big Daddy makes a perfect subject for this type of format and steals the show here. Mr. Roth pops up early at about the 2:30 mark.
To me, the best part of this video was getting to see footage of some of Roth's creations "in the wild" and not just in car shows or static display settings. As an added bonus in The Great American Dream Machine series there's appearances by some well known comedians and actors from more recent times. People like Chevy Chase, Penny Marshall, Albert Brooks, Martin Mull, David Landers and others contributed to the series back in '71 and '72.
Roth was in his 'chopper' phase at this point, he'd more-or-less left car building behind. It is interesting to see the Outlaw in a 'normal' metallic blue paint job however. The real irony is the guy from Dodge saying 'We'll never build a chopper', yet the Dodge Tomahawk bike showed up later... The parking lot sequence however is priceless. That's exactly why I avoid malls like the plague!
Really cool video and really cool to see all the different paintings that he did that I never knew about
Not surprising at all. In my research for my book I found that Ed constantly got fact totally wrong on a lot of topics. I look at him as a genius in Al Einstein's category. Al once asked for the value of pi during a lecture. A student ridiculed him for not knowing that universal number. Al responded. "young many, why in the world would I clutter my mind with a number easily available in any science text?" Ed famously never used a tape measure in any of his creations, he likely honestly didn't know how long it is!
The Jalopy Journal
