The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[LizzieMaine]

The late historian Alan Petigny suggested that the actual 1950's were just the opposite of how they're commonly portrayed -- and that they were in fact a time of deep changes in social, cultural, and religious attitudes. He argues that the events of the 1960s and 1970s weren't a rebellion against the 1950's at all -- but merely the logical continuation of movements and attitudes that were well underway thruout that decade.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I agree with this. Our perception of the fifties as a time of Father-Knows-Best conformity misses how much serious social change and artistic/intellectual ferment (much of it being aftereffects of the war) was going on.

Since my parents were sort-of pseudo-intellectuals, and their little commercial photo studio was a gathering place for beatnik artists, Don Drapper-ish ad execs, assorted oddballs (e.g. zeppelin expert Dr. Kronstein), and scholars/teachers, I was exposed to a lot of sixties thinking in the earliest sixties, before the sixties started in earnest. I was only 5 in 1960, but within a couple of years after that I was vaguely aware of the disconnect between TVland and what I saw going on with the adults in my parents' circle.

 

[Fading Fast]

The late historian Alan Petigny suggested that the actual 1950's were just the opposite of how they're commonly portrayed -- and that they were in fact a time of deep changes in social, cultural, and religious attitudes. He argues that the events of the 1960s and 1970s weren't a rebellion against the 1950's at all -- but merely the logical continuation of movements and attitudes that were well underway thruout that decade.

Great point and could not agree more. As (like many on this forum) a reader of both history and fiction books from and on the 50s (really 1900 to 70s), at minimum, the roots of the 60s change were absolutely being laid in the 50s.

As seems to be the case in almost all periods, the fiction books of the time were much more reflective of an underlying changing in attitudes and norms than the surface / polite society / movies & TV seemed to reflect (and might make for an interesting thread in and of itself) and argues to me the the 50s into the 60s were more a continuum than a complete radical change. That said, the rate of change and the impact on society writ large clearly was a second-half of the 1960s event, but it took a lot of ground work in the 50s and early 60s to lead to that burst of activity and change.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I agree with this. Our perception of the fifties as a time of Father-Knows-Best conformity misses how much serious social change and artistic/intellectual ferment (much of it being aftereffects of the war) was going on.

Since my parents were sort-of pseudo-intellectuals, and their little commercial photo studio was a gathering place for beatnik artists, Don Drapper-ish ad execs, assorted oddballs (e.g. zeppelin expert Dr. Kronstein), and scholars/teachers, I was exposed to a lot of sixties thinking in the earliest sixties, before the sixties started in earnest. I was only 5 in 1960, but within a couple of years after that I was vaguely aware of the disconnect between TVland and what I saw going on with the adults in my parents' circle.

And yet, just a few years after the Nostalgia Industry discovered "The Fifties" you started to get the whole paradigm of "The Fifties In Contrast To The Sixties -- What Happened?," as if all of a sudden the Boomer kids grew up and repudiated everything they'd been taught. And that led, by the late seventies/early eighties into the image of "The Fifties" as the opposite of everything "The Sixties" stood for -- an image which has become the standard narrative ever since then. Opponents of "The Sixties" use "The Fifties" as a cudgel to beat those with whom they disagree -- and supporters of "The Sixties" do exactly the same thing in a way that completely obliterates any sort of reasoned consideration of the period.

I think it's safe to say that "The Fifties" have gone beyond nostalgic romping and have been turned into the ultimate cultural inkblot, where your perception of them becomes simply a reflection of your own beliefs. One believes "The Fifties" were like this or like that because in one's worldview, it's *necessary* for "The Fifties" to have been like this or like that. With the possible exception of the Civil War period, I can't think of another period in American social history that's been manipulated in quite that way.

 

[sheeplady]

I agree with this. Our perception of the fifties as a time of Father-Knows-Best conformity misses how much serious social change and artistic/intellectual ferment (much of it being aftereffects of the war) was going on.

Since my parents were sort-of pseudo-intellectuals, and their little commercial photo studio was a gathering place for beatnik artists, Don Drapper-ish ad execs, assorted oddballs (e.g. zeppelin expert Dr. Kronstein), and scholars/teachers, I was exposed to a lot of sixties thinking in the earliest sixties, before the sixties started in earnest. I was only 5 in 1960, but within a couple of years after that I was vaguely aware of the disconnect between TVland and what I saw going on with the adults in my parents' circle.

I think everybody was aware of that disconnect though. Not even middle class families had that idealized version of reality.

And as far as the shows that are selected as representative of the 1950s are cherry picked. You see "leave it to beaver" mentioned as THE SHOW that represents the 1950s by proponents and opponents (as Lizzie points out below, there are proponents and opponents of the 1950s). Particularly the character of June Cleaver is seen by popular culture as "the housewife of the fifties."

There was a ton of television besides June Cleaver. Leave it to Beaver wasn't even on until the late 1950s, and ran concurrently with shows like The Donna Reed Show. But yet you never see Donna (Donna Reed) or Lucy (Lucille Ball) mentioned as a typical housewife. Despite the fact that I Love Lucy is more of a 1950s show than Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show ran concurrently to Leave it to Beaver. And on top of that- both I Love Lucy and The Donna Reed show revolve around the title characters- both women- both housewives.

It's strange, because even though I Love Lucy was such a hit in the 1950s, Lucy is not described as the "typical mother" of the 1950s- June Cleaver is. I don't know why this is- is it because Lucille Ball was a comedian? Is it because the image of one of the most successful women in Hollywood doesn't fit the model of the good housewife? Because Lucy (for all her crazy antics) is kind of a "defiant" wife compared to June Cleaver- and defiance is not the ideal?

Anybody who is going to mention the 1950's will mention "I Love Lucy" but I have never heard anyone say, "Oh, the typical 1950's housewife like Lucy." But I have heard plenty of women say, "Oh, the typical 1950's housewife like June Cleaver." A secondary character like June is the "idealized" fifties wife- not a primary character like Lucy or Donna.

There's something going on there.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think everybody was aware of that disconnect though. Not even middle class families had that idealized version of reality.

And as far as the shows that are selected as representative of the 1950s are cherry picked. You see "leave it to beaver" mentioned as THE SHOW that represents the 1950s by proponents and opponents (as Lizzie points out below, there are proponents and opponents of the 1950s). Particularly the character of June Cleaver is seen by popular culture as "the housewife of the fifties."

There was a ton of television besides June Cleaver. Leave it to Beaver wasn't even on until the late 1950s, and ran concurrently with shows like The Donna Reed Show. But yet you never see Donna (Donna Reed) or Lucy (Lucille Ball) mentioned as a typical housewife. Despite the fact that I Love Lucy is more of a 1950s show than Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show ran concurrently to Leave it to Beaver. And on top of that- both I Love Lucy and The Donna Reed show revolve around the title characters- both women- both housewives.

It's strange, because even though I Love Lucy was such a hit in the 1950s, Lucy is not described as the "typical mother" of the 1950s- June Cleaver is. I don't know why this is- is it because Lucille Ball was a comedian? Is it because the image of one of the most successful women in Hollywood doesn't fit the model of the good housewife? Because Lucy (for all her crazy antics) is kind of a "defiant" wife compared to June Cleaver- and defiance is not the ideal?

Anybody who is going to mention the 1950's will mention "I Love Lucy" but I have never heard anyone say, "Oh, the typical 1950's housewife like Lucy." But I have heard plenty of women say, "Oh, the typical 1950's housewife like June Cleaver." A secondary character like June is the "idealized" fifties wife- not a primary character like Lucy or Donna.

There's something going on there.

Note also that "working class" sitcoms never enter into that discussion -- "The Goldbergs," "The Life of Riley," and "The Honeymooners" being the most notable examples. Nobody ever holds up Alice Kramden -- fiesty, mouthy, not taking crap from anyone -- as the prototypical "Fifties Housewife," even though there were as many Alices in the 1950s as there were Junes.

It's as though a vast curtain has been drawn over anything from the actual 1950's that wasn't "middle class suburbia" -- both by proponents and opponents of "The Fifties." You're right, there *is* something going on.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm not sure I'm following: are you two arguing that there is some organized conspiracy today to control the image of the 1950s? I understand the distinction between how a decade is viewed today by society and, in particular, commentators / opinion writers versus what really went on in that decade, but the shows you mentioned "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners," for example, are alway on TV - so they might be elided in the present day discussions, but they aren't in some "1984" memory hole. Let me emphasize, I am not arguing a point (because I don't know the point), I am trying to understand the point you two are making as it seems interesting, I just am not grasping it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's selective history -- the practice of taking only those bits and dibs and dabs of something that support your thesis. Both the proponents and opponents of "The Fifties" are guilty of this without considering the reality of the decade as a whole. Either "The Fifties" were a time of endlessly smiling happy white middle-class suburban families where everybody knew their role until the kids inexplicably grew up and went berzerk, or "The Fifties" were a time of overmedicated, overrepressed conformity until the kids understandably grew up and Did Their Own Things. There's no nuance and no grasp of reality in either argument.

That's simplifying the arguments for brevity, but that's the gist of it.

As far as social class in sitcoms, that's not an argument at all -- it's well documented. After the end of the licensing freeze in 1953, when television became a national proposition, advertising agencies and program producers made a specific effort to homogenize their program content. "Working class" sitcoms were seen as appealing to a narrow audience along the East Coast, and it was deemed more profitable to develop programming that was completely scrubbed of any ethnic or social-class identity. The white middle-class suburban family, as the group with the most disposable income, became the default. "The Honeymooners" was the only significant exception to this rule, and it ran only a single season as a self-contained program -- the rest of the time it was merely a skit on Gleason's variety hour, and it continued only because Gleason had full control over the content of his program and was too big a star for the Boys to push around. Even Gertude Berg had to fall in line with this new perspective -- her last season of "The Goldbergs" moved the family to the suburbs and completely de-ethnicized it. The same effect can even be seen in the last season of "I Love Lucy," when the Ricardos and the Mertzes moved to Connecticut.

It's been a long time since I saw "The Honeymooners" on TV -- I know WPIX in New York has been running it more or less continuously since the early sixties, but that's only a small slice of the big picture. Mention Ralph and Alice Kramden to the average thirtysomething today and I'll bet you a crisp dollar bill that they'll have absolutely no idea who you're talking about. And I often get the feeling nobody knows Molly Goldberg at all except me and Aviva Kempner. And the reason for that is that the reality of a society split sharply along class lines is too inconvenient for either the supporters or the opponents of "The Fifties."

 

[Nobert]

Sha Na Na was also a TV show from 1977-1981.

That's my memory of Sha-na-na. To me they were just a comedy show, like Carol Burnet. It was definitely Happy Days that formed my image of "The Fifties," (later followed up by Back to the Future). Although when I think "greasers" I think of S.E. Hinton novels.

My mother recalls not particularly enjoying growing up in the 50s, but that may have been growing up in small-town Oklahoma. Probably what defines an era is extremely dependent on where you are and who you interact with. Similarly with the 20s, "The Lost Generation," "The Jazz Age," or "The era of wonderful nonsense." Most of America in the 20s was probably closer to Sinclair Lewis's Zenith than the New York of the Algonquin wits. The world of sock hops and rockabilly was no doubt just as small a subset of the culture.

In terms of how the 50s were in many ways, a time of criticizing and questioning the society we live in, I find the humor of that period particularly indicative (a natural segue, as we just got done with the passing of Sid Caesar). The cartoons of Harvey Kurtzman and Jules Feiffer, the stand-up of Mort Sahl and his followers, The arsenic song parodies of Tom Lehrer. That's the 50s that interests me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In terms of how the 50s were in many ways, a time of criticizing and questioning the society we live in, I find the humor of that period particularly indicative (a natural segue, as we just got done with the passing of Sid Caesar). The cartoons of Harvey Kurtzman and Jules Feiffer, the stand-up of Mort Sahl and his followers, The arsenic song parodies of Tom Lehrer. That's the 50s that interests me.

To say nothing of Mad magazine, Bob and Ray, and Jean Shepherd. Those who know Shepherd only as a gentle nostalgic a la "A Christmas Story" would be surprised at how utterly devastating his critiques of 50's society really were. Look up his surviving radio programs from 1959-60 and realize that these represented the views of a very vocal subset of that era's culture. With the exception of the advocacy of drugs -- which Shepherd derided as vigorously as he derided the "meatball culture" of his day -- there's nothing the hippies said c. 1967 that Shepherd hadn't said ten years earlier.

 

[sheeplady]

I'm not sure I'm following: are you two arguing that there is some organized conspiracy today to control the image of the 1950s? I understand the distinction between how a decade is viewed today by society and, in particular, commentators / opinion writers versus what really went on in that decade, but the shows you mentioned "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners," for example, are alway on TV - so they might be elided in the present day discussions, but they aren't in some "1984" memory hole. Let me emphasize, I am not arguing a point (because I don't know the point), I am trying to understand the point you two are making as it seems interesting, I just am not grasping it.

I don't think it is a conspiracy. It isn't like a bunch of people are lining up and saying "Let's rewrite the 1950s!"

I do think when it comes to how people (and particularly women) in film are remembered, we as a society have selective memory. I also think this selective memory has been heightened by marketers and various parties who have advantage in promoting such a vision- sometimes parties which are opposed to WHY they are promoting this image.

For instance, some individuals who are misogynistic benefit from the image of June Cleaver as the typical housewife- docile, meek, deferring to her man. They can say, "Look at what we have lost." Some individuals who are feminists benefit from the image of June Cleaver as the typical housewife- docile, meek, deferring to her man. They can say, "Look at what the feminist movement has saved you from."

Both versions of this deny that feminism is an on-going movement rather than just something that happened in the 1960s and 1970s. Suggesting that feminism happened in the 1960s/70s is also re-writing history, and I think has a lot to do with the tendency to credit/ blame boomers for the good/ill things in society. Much of that I think happens because as the largest generation in history to that point they are seen as a larger social force than what they actually were.

That and the fact is that we all like to think the world was once safe, secure, and loving. And the version of the 1950s that is portrayed *is* overwhelming safe, secure, and loving. So as a public, we eat it up. Turmoil and sweeping change don't sell when you feel turmoil and sweeping change in your everyday life. But safety and security do. And I think a myth that was originally marketed to sell stuff has been swept up by various groups who are get advantage from seeing this myth perpetuated.

 

[emigran]

I'd have to concur that markete(e)rs are truly the wizards and black-magicians and it is the media that shapes what is commonly viewed as actually going on in society. (please let's not get into the politics and the marketing of politics since the fifties here)
All one has to do is look at the current crop of TV sitcoms running: Modern Family is one perfect example amongst so much other well written dreck...

 

[sheeplady]

As far as social class in sitcoms, that's not an argument at all -- it's well documented. After the end of the licensing freeze in 1953, when television became a national proposition, advertising agencies and program producers made a specific effort to homogenize their program content. "Working class" sitcoms were seen as appealing to a narrow audience along the East Coast, and it was deemed more profitable to develop programming that was completely scrubbed of any ethnic or social-class identity. The white middle-class suburban family, as the group with the most disposable income, became the default. "The Honeymooners" was the only significant exception to this rule, and it ran only a single season as a self-contained program -- the rest of the time it was merely a skit on Gleason's variety hour, and it continued only because Gleason had full control over the content of his program and was too big a star for the Boys to push around. Even Gertude Berg had to fall in line with this new perspective -- her last season of "The Goldbergs" moved the family to the suburbs and completely de-ethnicized it. The same effect can even be seen in the last season of "I Love Lucy," when the Ricardos and the Mertzes moved to Connecticut.

It's been a long time since I saw "The Honeymooners" on TV -- I know WPIX in New York has been running it more or less continuously since the early sixties, but that's only a small slice of the big picture. Mention Ralph and Alice Kramden to the average thirtysomething today and I'll bet you a crisp dollar bill that they'll have absolutely no idea who you're talking about. And I often get the feeling nobody knows Molly Goldberg at all except me and Aviva Kempner. And the reason for that is that the reality of a society split sharply along class lines is too inconvenient for either the supporters or the opponents of "The Fifties."

To be honest, I always forget about Alice Kramden because I have never seen The Honeymooners on television. I've seen clips and a few episodes during specials, but never seen it in syndication. I think the changes to shows like "I Love Lucy" are examples of the narrowing of the fifties- being a white middle class family wasn't enough- you had to be "just so" to be appealing.

And interesting enough, it isn't even the middle class white families we remember from the 1950s- it is a special and very specific set of examples of such families.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's interesting too that nobody brings up the non-traditional TV families of that era: consider My Three Sons and Bachelor Father, both of which featured a pleasant upper-middle-class dad raising children with the help of a male surrogate mother figure -- Bub/Uncle Charley in the case of Sons, and Peter the servant in the case of Father. "The Andy Griffith Show" does get brought up, but usually only in the context of the town of Mayberry as a quiet, bucolic ideal -- but it's rarely brought out that Andy is a single father raising his son with only a maiden aunt for help. Interestingly, the deceased wives of these characters, the mothers of the children, are completely erased -- if they're mentioned at all it's only once or twice in the earliest episodes of the program, and only to establish that the dad is a widower and not divorced.

There were sitcom families of this type going all the way back to radio -- "The Great Gildersleeve" being the most notable example. But interestingly there was never even one sitcom, on radio or television, between the 1940s and the mid-1960s, showing a single woman raising a family, even though there were far more single-mom households than single-dad households. Off the top of my head there wasn't a show like that until "Julia" in 1968, and there haven't been many since. "One Day At A Time" in the '70s was probably the most prominent example.

You could argue that "Petticoat Junction" showed such a scenario in 1963, but the Bradley girls were all full-grown. It's interesting that in that case, the setting is far removed from the prototypical suburbia -- Hooterville seemed to exist in its own strange little pocket of the mid-1930s, even though the show was ostensibly set in the present day. The implication for the viewer was that single-mother families only existed as freakish anomalies, and you'd never find any in contemporary middle-class suburbia. And certainly not in any modern-era image of "The Fifties."

 

[Fading Fast]

It's selective history -- the practice of taking only those bits and dibs and dabs of something that support your thesis. Both the proponents and opponents of "The Fifties" are guilty of this without considering the reality of the decade as a whole. Either "The Fifties" were a time of endlessly smiling happy white middle-class suburban families where everybody knew their role until the kids inexplicably grew up and went berzerk, or "The Fifties" were a time of overmedicated, overrepressed conformity until the kids understandably grew up and Did Their Own Things. There's no nuance and no grasp of reality in either argument.

That's simplifying the arguments for brevity, but that's the gist of it.

As far as social class in sitcoms, that's not an argument at all -- it's well documented. After the end of the licensing freeze in 1953, when television became a national proposition, advertising agencies and program producers made a specific effort to homogenize their program content. "Working class" sitcoms were seen as appealing to a narrow audience along the East Coast, and it was deemed more profitable to develop programming that was completely scrubbed of any ethnic or social-class identity. The white middle-class suburban family, as the group with the most disposable income, became the default. "The Honeymooners" was the only significant exception to this rule, and it ran only a single season as a self-contained program -- the rest of the time it was merely a skit on Gleason's variety hour, and it continued only because Gleason had full control over the content of his program and was too big a star for the Boys to push around. Even Gertude Berg had to fall in line with this new perspective -- her last season of "The Goldbergs" moved the family to the suburbs and completely de-ethnicized it. The same effect can even be seen in the last season of "I Love Lucy," when the Ricardos and the Mertzes moved to Connecticut.

It's been a long time since I saw "The Honeymooners" on TV -- I know WPIX in New York has been running it more or less continuously since the early sixties, but that's only a small slice of the big picture. Mention Ralph and Alice Kramden to the average thirtysomething today and I'll bet you a crisp dollar bill that they'll have absolutely no idea who you're talking about. And I often get the feeling nobody knows Molly Goldberg at all except me and Aviva Kempner. And the reason for that is that the reality of a society split sharply along class lines is too inconvenient for either the supporters or the opponents of "The Fifties."

LM,

Thank you and got it - so another example of those advocating a position having selective memory / selecting the facts that support their argument.

As to the sitcoms, I always thought the energy went out of "I Love Lucy" when they moved to CT, but I assumed that they did it because they had run out of NYC-apartment story lines / needed to shake the show up, not as you pointed out, to bend to the will of the advertising dictates (but your explanation makes sense with the way the world works).

Regarding Jackie Gleason, I grew up knowing him as Ralph on the Honeymooners on WPIX re-runs and "coming to you live from Miami Beach" (camera speeding over the ocean) on his variety show; it is only as an adult and reading about him that I learned what a powerhouse he was in the entertainment field (and, apparently, inventor / investor in some early TV technology). There was a great documentary put out five or so years ago called "Toots" that focuses on Toots Shor's bar-restaurant and the entrainment regulars that hung out there in the 40s and 50s. In it, there is a funny anecdote about Jackie Gleason that I won't tell so that you can experience fresh if you ever see the documentary.

 

[herringbonekid]

'Grease' is pure camp, cartoonishness.
i doubt the makers of the film would argue otherwise, or expect it to be held up as a realistic depiction.

Interesting food for thought on just how cleverly a bit of marketing can change the entire mass perception of an era.

blaming the whole thing on 'marketing' is just more grinding of that personal axe of yours.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Squeaky wheel, meet the grease.

Nobody's suggested that was ever a "realistic description," or would ever have been taken as such. What we're discussing is why *that* image of "The Fifties" has become so dominant to the exclusion of all others, that whole leather-jacket/hot rod/poodle skirt/rock-n-roll image. And yes, it's an image that's been very heavily promoted thru marketing over the last forty years -- with "Grease" itself being a prime example of that. What we're discussing is why, and how, marketing of that image has been so successful when it was really only a very minor part of the actual decade. What are they selling people -- and why are people buying it?

As far as grinding an axe goes, one only does that until the axe is good and sharp. Then one starts swinging.

 

[herringbonekid]

there's a bit of the human brain that thinks in a generalised, cartoony way. it simplifies things down to easy-to-remember-broad-strokes which have a tendency to lodge in the brain.
its how caricature works. it works especially well if you don't have a particular interest in the nuances of the subject but need to remember the basics.

whats the 1940s all about ? guys with big shoulder pads and chalk stripe suits and black and white shoes.
what's the 1920s all about ? flappers in beaded dresses and headbands. guys in spats with tommy guns going rat a tat tat.

its how people reduce complex information down to bare essentials. it has less to do with marketing than basic human laziness.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

there's a bit of the human brain that thinks in a generalised, cartoony way. it simplifies things down to easy-to-remember-broad-strokes which have a tendency to lodge in the brain.
its how caricature works. it works especially well if you don't have a particular interest in the nuances of the subject but need to remember the basics.

whats the 1940s all about ? guys with big shoulder pads and chalk stripe suits and black and white shoes.
what's the 1920s all about ? flappers in beaded dresses and headbands. guys in spats with tommy guns going rat a tat tat.

its how people reduce complex information down to bare essentials. it has and less to do with marketing than basic human laziness.

The reason why we have those images is *because* of marketing.

 

[herringbonekid]

The reason why we have those images is *because* of marketing.

not at all; marketing simply exploits this tendency of the human brain.