A quick trip to 1930s Jamaica that feels like a postcard

If you have ten minutes to kill and a weird craving for mid-1930s travel footage, this is for you. People who enjoy old-school newsreels or are just obsessed with how the world looked before everything was paved over will probably get a kick out of it. If you want a deep, modern dive into Caribbean culture, stay away. This is pure, surface-level fluff.

The vibe

Lowell Thomas has that classic, booming newsreel voice that makes everything sound like a major historical event. Even when he’s talking about bananas or a quiet beach, it sounds like he's announcing the end of a war. It is honestly kind of funny. 🍌

The island looks gorgeous, even in grainy black and white. There’s a specific shot of the coastline that made me want to look up airfare, even though I know the 1930s version of Jamaica is long gone. The way they frame the 'industry' shots is charmingly clumsy. It’s like they were trying to convince everyone that everything on the island was just perfectly humming along.

Odd details I noticed

• The editing is frantic. You barely get to look at a mountain before you are staring at someone picking fruit.
• There is a moment where a group of locals is filmed just sort of smiling at the camera, and it feels incredibly awkward. You can tell they were told exactly where to stand.
• Lowell Thomas sounds like he is narrating from a different room entirely.

Watching this made me think of other oddities from the era, like Shake Your Powder Puff. They share that same weird, detached energy where the filmmakers treat real life like a set piece.

It is definitely not a documentary in any sense we use today. It’s more like a long, fancy commercial for a place that didn't really exist. Still, it’s a neat little time capsule. I caught myself squinting at the background of the shots, trying to see what the cars looked like or what kind of clothes people were wearing. That’s where the real movie is—in the blurry stuff behind Lowell Thomas.

It’s short, it’s dated, and it doesn’t really have a point. But I liked it better than most modern travel vlogs. At least Thomas doesn't ask you to like and subscribe.