The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[2jakes]

I grew up to some extent where the father & mother were very abusive towards each other.

I found nothing funny about the abuse in real life or in make believe television.

Soon after I went to live with my grandma.
Thanks to her, I wasn’t exposed to the abuse and I owe her much
for that & her love as well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother's solution to the problem was to throw both of the SOBs out of the house -- and just to make sure her second husband got the message once and for all, she demolished his motorcycle with a sledgehammer. She was a product of the real 1950s, definitely not "The Fifties."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Were the 50's in the USA the time-change of decreasing rail-traffic and upcoming individual-traffic?

 

[LizzieMaine]

City bus and trolley systems faded badly in the 1950s, symbolized by the end of the Brooklyn trolley system in 1956. Trolleys had been emblematic of the borough since the 19th century, but the combination of suburbanization and economic decline, along with Robert Moses' pathological fetishization of private cars, put an end to them. Interurban passenger rail service also declined sharply in the 1950s -- by the end of the decade many small cities had already lost it, and few would retain it past the early 1960s.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Another peculiarity of the 50s was that it was the first era when people had to have fears and anxieties manufactured for them. Previously, there was plenty to be worried about. During the Depression, it was where the next meal would come from or whether your job would disappear or, worst of all, whether the depression would ever end. Then came WWII which ended the depression but brought a whole host of new fears. People worried that their kids would get polio. In my little Texas town we went to the movies almost every day in summer because it was thought that playing outside in hot weather made kids more susceptible to polio and the theater was the only air-conditioned business in town. The Salk vaccine took care of that.

The new "miracle drugs" seemed to cure everything. The postwar boom made jobs easy to come by and well-paying. For decades, the news had been literally life and death. Now, life was comfortable and people got bored. But there were plenty of people working on that problem. Suddenly, there were communists under your bed. We were minutes away from nuclear holocaust. Juvenile delinquency and drugs were ruining the nation. Most people's lives were never touched by any of these dangers, but they were convinced that the peril was imminent.Purveyors of 50s nostalgia conveniently overlook this aspect of an otherwise stylish decade.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Second Husband, sad to say, was an abusive monster who loved no one, ever. They were married for only seven months, and the best thing my mother did was throw him out of the house. The motorcycle demolition was an act of liberation, like blowing up a statue of Hitler.

Getting back to "The Fifties", I was listening the other day to a recording of a Red Sox-Yankees game from 1958, when the local station announcer broke in to the game with an on-the-spot news report about a gruesome murder-suicide in a quiet little suburban neighborhood. Seems an estranged, enraged husband killed his wife, son, and self with a high-powered rifle after confronting them at the home where the wife was cohabitating with another man. Nobody did those sorts of things in the hazy daydream of "The Fifties," but they were all too real in the actual 1950's.

Another thing worth thinking about is the state of the economy. We constantly hear that "The Fifties" were a time of continuous prosperity, but the actual 1950's weren't quite that. There were two notable recessions in the decade, and the one in 1957-58 saw unemployment jump by two million people in just six months, peaking at 7.5 percent, and the Federal Reserve Index of industrial production dropped by ten percent over that same span. Industrial sectors were hit hardest -- the auto industry spun into a deep decline as Americans let it be known that they'd had enough of overmarketed bechromed dinosaurs. Consequently, in Detroit in early 1958, unemployment hit nearly 20 percent. Nationwide employment would not fully recover from this drop until 1965 -- due largely to another recession which hit in 1960-61, giving Eisenhower the dubious distinction of being the only postwar president to have three bona-fide recessions during his administration. The real period of extended postwar prosperity was the Kennedy-Johnson 1960s. Not the image they've sold us of "The Fifties."

 

[Randburr]

I live in eastern Oklahoma...we are expecting the 50's to arrive any year now.

 

[2jakes]

I live in eastern Oklahoma...we are expecting the 50's to arrive any year now.

Don’t hold yer breath pilgrim!
We’re still not quite done with them down here in the panhandle.

 

[sheeplady]

Ralph was a parody of misogyny, not an actual misogynist -- the entire essence of his character was that of a frustrated, impotent man (and I choose that term advisedly, the Kramdens seemed incapable of having children) who lashed out blindly in his helplessness. He was incapable of accomplishing anything he ever set out to do, which was the tragic bleakness at the heart of the character -- and deep down he himself *knew* this.

The idea of the man as "king of his castle" had been treated as a comedy joke for decades by the 1950's, as ideas of "companionate marriage" gained currency, especially from the 1920's forward, and the audience always knew Ralph was just a sputtering blowhard when he made these remarks. They were never taken seriously by Alice, nor were they in any way ever taken seriously by those watching the program.

Although I am no where's near the expert on the Honeymooners as you are, Lizzie, that was always my read as well. Alice was capable, knowledgeable, and likely what kept that household together. Her husband was a dreamer, schemer, and general blow-hard that was quite aware that his "grip" in society (if he ever had one) was slipping.

There's very few shows on today that portray working class families, the only one I can think of on broadcast is The Middle. (Which I haven't seen in a few years, but I understand it is still on?) The family has things like a mis-matched washer and dryer set, an uninstalled dishwasher in their kitchen, etc. They also have a more "truthful" family dynamic for a sitcom, I think, but it is still far from reality.

Everyone I've ever known (personally) who lived through the 1950s (whom I bothered asking) thought they were boring as heck, with the exceptions being drive-ins, the cars, and motorcycles. Although everyone I know seems to love going to a Fifties themed diner, myself included.

 

[Stearmen]

"The Honeymooners" was very much a part of the context of the pre-"Fifties" 1950s -- a relic of a time when television was much more comfortable with an East Coast working class orientation.

Most television sets in the early fifties were concentrated in and around Greater New York, and the type of characterizations featured in "The Honeymooners," when they began as a segment on Gleason's variety show, were very relatable to a working-class New York audience. Gleason had several other characters in the same vein -- Charlie Bratton, The Loudmouth, was another New York working class archetype whose usual domain was a cheap lunch counter of the sort that working-class New Yorkers would immediately recognize; Fenwick Babbitt, a sort of well-meaning boob who constantly bungled various working-class jobs; Rudy the Repairman, another loud, rough-tempered character similar to Charlie The Loudmouth; and of course Joe The Bartender, who was instantly recognizable to anyone who ever stepped into a cheap neighborhood bar. The only major Gleason character who *wasn't* obviously working class was Reggie Van Gleason III, who was very much a caricature of what the working class perceived the ruling class to be like. Gleason, of course, was an authentic working-class man from Brooklyn, and he drew his characterizations from a life he'd actually known.

By the time "The Honeymooners" became a half-hour weekly show of its own in 1955, the demographics of television had completely changed -- and working-class comedy was disappearing fast. The programs that most people remember as characteristic of "The Fifties" came along after this demographic change, when sponsors and networks were specifically targeting the suburban bourgeoisie. They were produced in Hollywood, by Hollywood writers and performers, and were very much ground out studio products rather than the products of a singular creative vision in the way that Gleason's programs were. I don't think it's a coincidence that Gleason's work lost nearly all of its bite when he moved from New York to Miami in the mid-sixties.

I think this one scene sums up pore old Jackie better then any of his other rolls!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Were the US of the 50's same, what's called "stuffy", like history said about 50's in West-Germany (GDR was more 30's, until 1990)?

I always translate "stuffy" myself not only as this typical "narrow-minded", but rather more as "lifeless households/habitations".

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was quite a bit written in the actual 1950's in the US about the stultifying sameness of the new suburbs and what they were doing to the people who lived there. John Keats' definitive 1957 study "The Crack In The Picture Window" painted a disturbing picture of what mainstream postwar America was becoming -- shallow, consumption-driven, and emotionally-isolated. Richard Yates' 1961 novel "Revolutionary Road" is the most searing literary indictment of suburbia and the mindset it promoted. These were also the days when there was a strong critique arising of what the humorist Jean Shepherd called "creeping meatballism" -- the vapid television shows, the cheesy movies, the smarmy, pandering advertising campaigns, the whole "You Auto Buy Now" idea that you were what you consumed.

Despite the suburban sameness, the popularity of these and similar critical viewpoints demonstrates that there were still many Americans who were free-thinking and critical of what was going on in the world. Keats' book was a best seller, as were Vance Packard's various studies of consumerism and modern marketing techniques. So clearly not everyone was thinking like The Organization Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. Even little kids were reading "Mad" magazine, which taught them over and over again that they were being lied to and exploited by an society which only valued them as consumers.

In the popular modern image of "The Fifties" America was a nation of nice Ike-liking middle-class white people going around in a happy daze with a big Pepsodent smile grafted across their faces. In the actual 1950's the world was a lot more complicated than that -- and there were still a lot of people who were very critical of what was going on in the country.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

My parents were both born in 1954. Neither of them had any regard or nostalgia for anything "50s" - be it of actual (scant) memory or of the pop culture version of the era. My mother grew up listening to Simon & Garfunkel, and my father grew up listening to the Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead. Elvis, Doo Wop and all the traditional "Nifty Fifties" things were something goofy, foreign to them - something old, and thus of no relevance to them. The only thing my father likes of that period were the classic late '50s cars. But poodle skirts? Elvis? That was older people's stuff. My mother by the late 1960s had a short mod haircut and my father had by decade's end chin length hair, and both dressed "Hippie" although neither were into the politics of the time. My mother thought that her father, when he died in 1975 at age 55, was an OLD MAN who had lived a long, full life.

The younger men who still dressed traditionally - such as my mother's then brother-in-law - were seen as square. The pictures I've seen (from the '70s) of her aunt's former husband show a man always in button down shirts and slacks and slicked back hair - and my mother thought he was stiff, square. He was born in 1947. My father I have never seen in slacks outside of when he's wearing a suit.

I don't know how my grandparents felt about the fifties. My one grandfather - the deceased one - (1920-1975) I have only seen one picture of him in the 1950s - in 1950. And he dressed the way men traditionally did, in slacks and a dress shirt or slacks and a polo. His wife, my grandmother (1927-) dressed very traditionally but would jazz it up with a pair of shades once in a while.

My dad's father (1929-) wore jeans, peg pants, often times he wore his hair in a D.A. and would sometimes wear a T-Shirt with the sleeves rolled up; other times he would wear a button down and slacks. My grandmother (1933-2014) in the '50s wore poka dotted dresses and typical '50s ladies clothes, very stylish for the time. But I know nothing of their musical leanings and little of their politics. I don't know their views on Elvis.

My living grandfather was, a decade later, incredibly in favor of Vietnam, resisted and abhorred any anti-war talk, he ripped apart my father's anti-war posters on one occasion, and to this day despises long hair on men and has voted Republican in every election I have been old enough to remember. My living grandmother is a staunch Republican who voted for Kennedy in 1960, despises Democrats and Obama and has a profound dislike for black people, and has a particular hatred of Bill Clinton. I don't know what my grandfather's politics were, but I do know some of his friends included a black man and a hispanic fellow, and as (at times) a union man, he may have been more liberal than my grandmother.

He (my late grandfather) certainly followed every fashion trend that popped up in the 1970s. Suddenly, overnight, a man who had a close clipped fade haircut, had big, thick hair and long sideburns and a mustache. He wore wide collared shirts in wild colors and bellbottoms where just a few years prior, he wore neutral colored slacks and polos with his hair cut conservatively short.

1966 or 1967:

1972:

None of my grandfathers, to my knowledge, wore hats ever, and my mother despises hats and sees them as almost an alien, odd thing of some time she can't at all relate to.

 

[scottyrocks]

I tried searching, but could not confirm if this has been raised before in the thread.

Theory: Sha Na Na created (inadvertently) the "era" known as "the fifties".

Discuss:

http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/sep_oct08/features1

See the link in post #1, and the relevant following posts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It would be interesting to draw up a chart of all the origins of "The Fifties" displaying how they converge together to create the mythos that came together in the '70s and '80s to create "The Fifties" as we know them today. You'd definitely have Sha Na Na and "Grease" as at least the origin of the greaser "Fifties," although you'd have to go as far back as "Blackboard Jungle" and "West Side Story" and the Kefauver Committee on Juvenile Deliquency to find the pre-cambrian ancestors of these images. And you could say that "American Graffiti" and "Happy Days" were the points where the "greaser" image intersected with clean-cut "Leave It To Beaver Fifties," which were themselves largely a creation of The Boys From Marketing by way of Levittown.

But the thing is, the image of "The Fifties" that coalesced in the early seventies was an *ironic* view of the period, not an *iconic* one. Watch the first season of "Happy Days," for example, and you can't help but see just slightly cynical wink and the nudge in the whole setup, and threads of that lingered on for quite a while in the way popular culture interpreted "The Fifties." It wasn't really until the Reagan Eighties that people began looking at "The Fifites" in the way that many people do now -- as a lost halcyon age before "The Sixties" came along and bolloxed it all up. Or as an uptight age of repressive hypocrisy before "The Sixties" came along and liberated everyone, depending on your point of view. Those are still the only two mainstream cultural interpretations the decade has to this day.

 

[Fading Fast]

It would be interesting to draw up a chart of all the origins of "The Fifties" displaying how they converge together to create the mythos that came together in the '70s and '80s to create "The Fifties" as we know them today. You'd definitely have Sha Na Na and "Grease" as at least the origin of the greaser "Fifties," although you'd have to go as far back as "Blackboard Jungle" and "West Side Story" and the Kefauver Committee on Juvenile Deliquency to find the pre-cambrian ancestors of these images. And you could say that "American Graffiti" and "Happy Days" were the points where the "greaser" image intersected with clean-cut "Leave It To Beaver Fifties," which were themselves largely a creation of The Boys From Marketing by way of Levittown.

But the thing is, the image of "The Fifties" that coalesced in the early seventies was an *ironic* view of the period, not an *iconic* one. Watch the first season of "Happy Days," for example, and you can't help but see just slightly cynical wink and the nudge in the whole setup, and threads of that lingered on for quite a while in the way popular culture interpreted "The Fifties." It wasn't really until the Reagan Eighties that people began looking at "The Fifites" in the way that many people do now -- as a lost halcyon age before "The Sixties" came along and bolloxed it all up. Or as an uptight age of repressive hypocrisy before "The Sixties" came along and liberated everyone, depending on your point of view. Those are still the only two mainstream cultural interpretations the decade has to this day.

A less important thought about "Happy Days:" You could see, in the first year (or first episodes), some attempt to capture some authenticity - the beatnik episode, Fonzie wasn't simply a fun, good-guy in leather and Howard (the dad) was genuinely grumpy toward his wife and kids and not what he became in later episodes / years - a slightly surface grumpy guy, but really a jovial "friend" to his children and wife once the surface was scratched. Even at the start, it was far from an accurate representation of the 1950s, but if you watch the first episodes versus later, it is amazing how much it changed.

 

[vitanola]

A less important thought about "Happy Days:" You could see, in the first year (or first episodes), some attempt to capture some authenticity - the beatnik episode, Fonzie wasn't simply a fun, good-guy in leather and Howard (the dad) was genuinely grumpy toward his wife and kids and not what he became in later episodes / years - a slightly surface grumpy guy, but really a jovial "friend" to his children and wife once the surface was scratched. Even at the start, it was far from an accurate representation of the 1950s, but if you watch the first episodes versus later, it is amazing how much it changed.

Particularly if one compares any show after the second season to the de facto pilot; "Love and the Happy Days", an extended sketch on the early 1970's comic anthology program "Love, American Style".

 

[HudsonHawk]

A less important thought about "Happy Days:" You could see, in the first year (or first episodes), some attempt to capture some authenticity - the beatnik episode, Fonzie wasn't simply a fun, good-guy in leather and Howard (the dad) was genuinely grumpy toward his wife and kids and not what he became in later episodes / years - a slightly surface grumpy guy, but really a jovial "friend" to his children and wife once the surface was scratched. Even at the start, it was far from an accurate representation of the 1950s, but if you watch the first episodes versus later, it is amazing how much it changed.

Not to mention that the Cunningham's had another child that just disappeared after the first season. No word on whether or not Howard used a shovel from is hardware store to bury ol' Chuck in the back yard.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My own theory is that Chuck read "On The Road," took off on a cross-country tour in a rusty Henry J to escape his family's stifling Midwestern conventionality, and was disowned by the family when they received a photo of him on stage at a Greenwich Village beatnik club, wearing a black turtleneck and playing the bongos to accompany his new live-in girlfriend, a six-foot-tall Hunter College dropout with raccoon-eye makeup and striped leotards, named Ysobel Retzenberg.

 

[Fading Fast]

Not to mention that the Cunningham's had another child that just disappeared after the first season. No word on whether or not Howard used a shovel from is hardware store to bury ol' Chuck in the back yard.

While I applaud the creativeness of Lizzie's scenario, I like your view better as, if memory serves, Chuck was one stupid child and the Howard Cunningham of the first episodes wouldn't abide a stupid son. So in an era of inferior-to-today forensics, a shovel-ending for Chuck (first to the head and then for burying - kind of an all-purpose murder weapon) makes more sense to me.