The FTA Tour ("Free The Army"), a play on the troop expression "Fuck The Army", which in turn was a play on the army slogan "Fun, Travel and Adventure") was an anti-Vietnam War road show designed as a response to Bob Hope's USO tour.
It was first organized in April 1970 by activist Fred Gardner, and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
The tour, referred to as "political vaudeville" by Fonda, visited military towns along the West Coast, with the goal of establishing a dialogue with soldiers about their upcoming deployments to Vietnam. Barbara Garson was also a contributor to the show.
The resulting dialogue was turned into a film called F.T.A., directed by Francine Parker, and released into theaters in 1972. Footage and discussion of the FTA Tour is included in the 2005 documentary film Sir! No Sir!.
Since then, the director of Sir! No Sir!, David Zeiger, has been involved in resurrecting the original documentary film F.T.A.. It was shown publicly in Los Angeles in early 2009 at the American Cinematheque with a panel that included two of the original performers in the show. F.T.A. also had its broadcast premiere on the Sundance Channel on February 23, 2009. The DVD of F.T.A. is now sold on the Sir! No Sir! website.
Famous quotes containing the words free, army and/or tour:
“The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn’t help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Olivia Dandridge: You don’t have to say it, Captain. I know all this is because of me. Because I wanted to see the West. Because I wasn’t, I wasn’t army enough to stay the winter.
Capt. Brittles: You’re not quite army yet miss, or you’d know never to apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)