Glens Falls featured in 1968 Swedish film

Nearly 25 years after Look magazine dubbed Glens Falls as “Hometown U.S.A.” the city was again selected as a model American community.

In 1968, the Swedish government filmed an educational documentary in Glens Falls, focusing on its lifestyle, family life and contemporary issues.

“The pictures and sound conveyed the quick pace of American life and problems of pollution, urban renewal and race,” The Post-Star reported.

The locally-filmed segment was one of five in a series about American life that the Swedish educational television system showed to students in schools across that nation.

The film featured Robert Abbe, materials manager at the General Electric Co. plant in Hudson Falls, along with his wife and three children, ages seven, 11 and 13.

The film included scenes shot at Glens Falls Junior High School, a football game, Storytown U.S.A. (now Great Escape) theme park, local industrial plants and various other locations in the Glens Falls area.

Earlier in the year Caroline Lickfett, a Swedish foreign exchange student from Tunis, lived with the Abbe family for five months while attending Glens Falls Junior High.

The student’s father, a representative of the Swedish Agency for International Development, was on assignment in Tunis at the time.

“When the television project was being discussed, her father recommended Glens Falls as an area of study.”

The English language film has been shown in Glens Falls at least twice — on Jan. 11, 1971 at a Glens Falls Rotary Club meeting and on Oct. 19, 1970 at a Glens Falls Zonta Club meeting.

Sources: The Post-Star Feb. 9, 1968; Oct. 20, 1970; Jan. 11, 12, 1971