Why doesn't the Golden Era extend to the 50s or early 60s?

[FedoraFan112390]

A question:
Why, at least for this forum, does the Golden Era only extend into the '40s? I would say a good argument could be made for the "Golden Era" extending through the 1950s, if not into the early 1960s.

For myself, I would say the "Golden Era" extends from around 1927 (birth of sound film) to 1964 (The start of the British Invasion, at which class and old fashioned virtues, values, and fashions began to die). Before that, IMO, we have the Silent Era, and from 1964-1981 or so we have the 'Silver Era'.

1981-present is pretty much the Modern Era, culturally speaking.

 

[vitanola]

Having recently passed the age of fifty, I think of your 1964-1981 "Silver Era" as being pretty modern, indeed!

But then my feelings about all of this are perhaps idiosyncratic. I was fond of Yerkes' S. S. Flotilla Dance Orchestra, Fletcher Henderson, and the Kapela Pana Hermana do Praha when my contemporaries were "Hoppin' and Boppin' to the Crcodile Rock" and "Rollin' on the River". I built a ten tube Remler "Super" in high school, and drove a little flivver off to college.


I'd place the Golden Era firmly between the Pan-American Expositon tragedy and the collapse of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but most others here would consider that to be a mite early . I think that a great many posters here would firmly consider the "era" to extend through the 'Fifites, which of course really didn't begin until 1955 and didn't end until the British Invasion.

 

[The Good]

I'm a '50s and '60s fan, myself. The clothes, music, movies, television, and the cars interest me. I think in earlier threads, others agreed to your point here, that the 1950s and early '60s still had quite a bit in common with the '30s and '40s, especially culturally for many people in the United States (I'm not too sure about other countries). The British Invasion brought about in 1964 is a reasonable cut-off point. After that point, there were many dramatic changes in music, fashion, films, and general culture.

 

[Pompidou]

Post-WWII brought in the age of the consumer and the start of the Cold War. The end of the golden era would vary depending on what you thought was golden about it, or perhaps, when the list of things you hate about the modern world began happening.

 

[Shangas]

The "extent" of the Golden Era varies dramatically depending on who you talk to. It's all based on personal opinion.

For example, I personally would run it from about 1890 to about 1965-ish. During that time, a lot of the things that we now take for granted, were considered new. By the 1890s, the modern city as we know it, was slowly beginning to develop. Major population-centers were developing things like electric lighting, telephones, telegraphs and rudimentary radio-networks, leading to the first telecommunications.

In the first decade of the 1900s, we have the rise of things like the motor car and air-transport. The years after the Great War saw the rise of modern popular culture, with films, radio, and a rise in consumer-goods such as sewing-machines, washing-machines, fridges, radios, typewriters, fountain pens, clothing and other "things for the home".

It was now becoming less a matter of "it's here because we need it", and more a case of: "It's here because we can afford it and it looks nice". To a certain extent this goes back to the Victorian era, but in the early 20th century, we finally see consumerism on a wider scale than what we used to.

Also, during this time, we see more and more travel. Cars are no-longer the rich playboy toys that they used to be. Bicycles are cheap, effective train-travel is now possible, and ocean-travel is regular and relatively safe, thanks to wireless radio. People are exposed to new cultures and travel to places like South America, Cuba, and the Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China. This wasn't really possible in the 1800s. If you travelled that far at all, it was almost exclusively for business. But now, we have the modern holiday tour.

The 30s was the height of things Art Deco and Streamline Moderne. I don't know about others here, but I still think that Art Deco/Moderne styling wouldn't look out of place in any of the modern buildings or structures that we have today - It's an enduring style that just never dies, unlike the heavy, ornateness of the Victorians.

This 'golden period' of progress, style, class and modernity that we call the "Golden Era", in my opinion, lasted until the 8th of December, 1941.

With the Japanese Pacific offensive, war, even to the Americans, could no-longer be ignored, and what had previously been two isolated conflicts in Europe and Asia, were now linked together because of this one, wide-sweeping offensive. This spelt the death of many of the old ways of life. The last vestiges of Empire and Colonialism died with the War.

In the postwar period, we see all the things that we have today. The first computers, of a kind, are built. And we have regular television programming. Telephones become more and more common, and many of the old ways of life start disappearing. In most developed nations, things like the Iceman, the Milkman, the telegraph-boy and other staples that have lingered since the 1800s, finally disappear.

in the 1950s, we have the rise of the Cold War and the paranoia that goes along with it (Duck & Cover etc), which has a big impact on society for the next thirty-forty odd years. I'm under 30, but even when I was born, the Berlin Wall was still up, and people thought it would stay up forever.

By the early 1960s, old Victorian, Edwardian and classic pop/jazz-songs finally give way to rock'n'roll in a big way. Everything was changing. Even the transport. By now, big airlines like Pan-American, and Qantas and other passenger-plane companies were taking a huge slice of the traveling-public pie, finally beating ships out of business. Trains were on the way out, replaced by road-trips and motor-cars. Within a few years, the famous 20th Century Limited would have its last run (1967 I believe that was, correct me if I'm wrong).

Buses replaced the older forms of transport such as the elevated railroad, and the streetcar line, in the mistaken belief that it would ease traffic congestion.

By the 60s, I think all the things that used to exist in the Golden Era were pretty much gone, which is why I end it there.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

1981-present is pretty much the Modern Era, culturally speaking.

I prefer to call it the Age of Excrement, culturally speaking.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

My perception of the Golden Era would be with the beginning of the industrial revolution, which changed the world in ways never seen before, and I would say it slowly died, and while in ways is still surviving in isolated places today, it mostly has been on life support since the final blow of the cancellation of the Lawrence Welk show, in 1982.

 

[Two Types]

For some, the 'Golden era' ended in the 1950s when waistbands on British trousers starting getting lower. Look where we ended up - trousers hanging beneath the buttocks!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

To what, specifically, does "Golden Era" refer, anyways? The years 1927 (to take fedora fan's dates just for fun) to 1950, but for a few years at each end, were pretty darn miserable for most involved. I always understood it to be a term referring to the Movie Industry and its satellites and hangers on.

Is the British Invasion of the middle 60s really seen as a Harbinger? Were we really that decadent? (methinks not)

 

[Shangas]

That's a good question, Baron. What is "golden" about this 'era' that we value so highly?

Let us consider that terminology for a minute.

The style and the design. The Art Deco. The Moderne. The curves, the chrome, the glass, metal and wood. The quality. Few things made of plastic. Not even toys. Everything was wood and metal. The concept of "today's model" didn't exist. You got one model. A model that worked and that lasted. And that was it. No such thing as a throwaway society. Back then, people survived on what they had. So what they had, needed to LAST. Quality. Manufacturers were FORCED to make QUALITY because otherwise nobody would buy it, and they only bought things that were quality, which would stand up to abuse, and keep working, no-matter what.

That doesn't happen today.

What else?

The clothes and the fashion. Today a person is dressed up if he shows up wearing shorts. A serious decline in clothing standards. Back then, people, even people not very well-off, would wear something half-decent when going into town, or even going out to the store - a jacket, a waistcoat, a hat, a nice dress, their good trousers. And there again, clothes LASTED. And if it didn't last, grandmother's Singer would ensure that it did. Or was at least repurposed into something that would continue to be useful.

What else? Entertainment.

We have music and movies and radio and/or TV shows that were wholesome and tasteful, family-friendly, even if and when they weren't. "Let's Misbehave", and "Masculine Women" openly discuss sex, kissing, making out, cross-dressing and transvestism. But in no way is it necessarily glorified or bastardised, as it is in much of today's "muzak".

It's THESE QUALITIES (among countless others, I'm sure, which other members will probably draw to the surface), that we consider golden. GOOD QUALITIES and such, which we wish to keep alive and kicking. That is the gold to be found in this "golden era" of ours.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Polyester. That's why.
Oh and the cut of trousers.

Ok, I think Shangas nailed it with the throwaway society. It clearly started in the 50s.

 

[Gregg Axley]

2 words leap out at me from your responses Shangus, and pretty much say it all.
The quality.
The quality (IMHO) came about from the use of good materials, AND the fact that most people cared to do a good job. You didn't do things half way, not even in government! Once we became a society where items were disposable, as has been mentioned, quality suffered and attitudes changed. Why take care of this or that, when I can just throw it away and get a new one again?
It stopped when society went from "I've got to do my best on this project" to "I'm just trying to make my 8."
For me that was the mid 60's as well.

 

[Two Types]

I might also look at the mid/late 1960s as being the dividing line. I recall my father losing his job as a show repairer. He went to work as a factory labourer. He worked with other skilled men (ex-shoe repairers and ex-tailors) who were forced into unskilled labour because no one wanted quality goods anymore. (Indeed, I still have the suit that was made for my dad by one of the ex-tailors in 1969)
It was the beginning of the end for the mass existence of the old style trades.

Sad.

 

[Shangas]

The mid-end of the 60s was when a lot of those old trades began to die off.

More and more people were buying off-the-peg. So bespoke tailors suffered.

Before long, quartz watches were coming on the market. So watchmakers were suddenly out of a job.

By the 70s, electronic typewriters were on the market, so typewriter repairmen were suddenly panhandlers.

People didn't get their shoes resoled/heeled anymore. So shoe-makers were out of work.

Quartz clocks came on the market. Suddenly clock-makers were out of a job.

Even though I was born in the 80s, I saw a lot of this stuff die off in my own lifetime. Down the street from me, there was this old chap who ran a clock-shop. He'd been there fifty years by the early 1990s. Every day I walked past his shop. Every day I stopped to look at the beautiful antique clocks in his windows. Once or twice, dad and I stopped in for him to fix a clock that we had bought at a flea-market or something.

And then one day, he had to close down his shop. I think I was about 10 years old when it happened. I remember a BIG SIGN on the window: "CLOSING DOWN AFTER 50 YEARS".

I remember asking him why he was shutting up shop. He was such a nice old man. He told me something about how the council was doing construction-work or something and his shop would have to be moved or altered in some way. He didn't have enough funds to stay afloat while his shop was out of commission, so he decided to just stop altogether, lock up his tools and retire.

I haven't seen a PROPER clockmaker since that guy locked his doors. In any part of town. If there are any, they're hiding really well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As everyone else has said, it's all personal. My own "Golden Era" runs from March 4, 1933 to April 13, 1945, a period when ordinary Americans actually dared to dream that a Better World was possible.

 

[Shangas]

I'm pretty sure, doing that today would be considered illegal, or racist, or politically incorrect. Or some bogus, ridiculous idea.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Modern society wants the form, not the substance -- a Better World that makes themselves feel better about themselves, not a world that's actually better for everyone involved. There were traces of the spirit of my Era lingering into the seventies, but the eighties wrapped it up in a bag and threw it off a bridge. And we see the results before us.

 

[MisterCairo]

I prefer to call it the Age of Excrement, culturally speaking.

OFF TOPIC -

I immediately thought of a modified version of "Age of Aquarius" by the Fifth Dimension on reading this: "This is the dawning of the Age of excrement, the age of ah-excrement! AH EX - CRE - MENT!".

My apologies to anyone who now has one of those, what are they called, ear worms of the song going through their minds....

 

[Foxer55]

Oh, I agree that in the long context of it all, the '50s and '60s will eventually be a part of the Golden Era. The early '70s might be considered twilight years of that era, not sure. I see the Golden Era starting before the Depression, peaking during WWII, and then fading into the sunset through the '50s and '60s. The cultural trends of the Golden Era led to the culture of the 50s and '60s. It was sometime around the '60s and 70s that the culture of fun, beauty, grace began to be replaced by the beginning of the vulgarity we have today.

 

[Sprinkles]

As a young college person of this modern age, who has the misfortune of being surrounded by the much more prevalent, less respectable folk in "higher education", I have to say the total downgrade of society as compared to 30s-60s really irritates and distresses me. It seems all anyone of my age cares about anymore is the next time they can black out or get high...and I silently wish for dreadful things to happen to these cretins when they discover the "real world" (which still pales in comparison to the Golden Age!) Of course in the future, society may become so collapsed that the situation I describe indeed becomes the new "real world", although I hope at some point in the future there will be a re-awakening of the early values that gave the average citizen such spirit and pride, especially in the USA. I will step down from my soap box now!