Why were the 70s such a tacky decade?

[LizzieMaine]

I would have had a very hard time living thru the fifties. I would have liked Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason, the '52-'56 Dodgers, and "What's My Line?," but I can't think of too much else. And I really wouldn't have enjoyed being blacklisted.

 

[AmateisGal]

I would have had a very hard time living thru the fifties. I would have liked Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason, the '52-'56 Dodgers, and "What's My Line?," but I can't think of too much else. And I really wouldn't have enjoyed being blacklisted.

True, there is that.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yeah, I really think it depends on where you lived as to how you viewed the 80s. For us, the farm crisis colored the 80s. Lean, lean times for us. I still remember walking around our family farm, picking up trash, cleaning up piles of junk or whatever was lying around, because we were expecting to be inundated with a bunch of people for the farm sale. Tough. But we still held on to the farm. My brother farms it now - he's the fourth generation to farm it.

I'm really glad to hear the farm stayed in the family. I tried to emphasize in my post, how much my '80s experience - my family, friend and neighbors - was a local experience - I know some areas of the country did as well, some did better and as you and Lizzie noted, some did worse.

In the '70s, we really worried about food and fuel bills (versus my father's usual just grumbling about it) and friends and family members lost jobs. Also, and I hardly knew what this meant then, but the adults were all complaining about high interest rates.

Every measure got better for us in the '80s - food stabilized, fuel came down, the job situation turned around (when my uncle got a job in his field - we all breathed out) and a few of my older friends were finally able to afford a mortgage now that interest rates weren't double digits.

My personal situation was that I was working a just-above minimum wage job in retail (to pay for college - State University) that I was glad to get in '81, but that got better - small raises, less layoffs, etc. - throughout the 80s (and I was able to get extra hours when I needed them - which was all the time).

That said, I get that, that wasn't the same everywhere in the country or even the state.

 

[2jakes]

Actually, I totally agree with you. I do like the fashion and music of the 50s, though.

50s music ???

Early 50s = Doris Day or Hank Williams

Mid 50s = Little Richard,Buddy Holly,& Mr. Presley

Late 50s = Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone...:eusa_doh:

Speaking in general terms !

 

[AmateisGal]

50s music ???

Early 50s = Doris Day or Hank Williams

Mid 50s = Little Richard,Buddy Holly,& Mr. Presley

Late 50s = Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone...:eusa_doh:

Speaking in general terms !

I loved early and mid-50s! But late 50s, not so much.

 

[2jakes]

I loved early and mid-50s! But late 50s, not so much.

You think like me....that's scary...:eeek:

 

[AmateisGal]

You think like me....that's scary...:eeek:

LOL!

I'm an old soul. I have more in common with my grandmother (she is 89) than people my own age!

 

[GHT]

50s music ???

Early 50s = Doris Day or Hank Williams

Mid 50s = Little Richard,Buddy Holly,& Mr. Presley

Late 50s = Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone...:eusa_doh:

Speaking in general terms !

Just a few more: Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some like it Hot. Elizabeth Taylor, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Lucille Ball, I love Lucy- !951-57. James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden. And don't forget Rosa Parks: "On December 1, 1955 she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat down in the coloured section. Several white passengers then boarded and the driver asked her to give up her seat for one of them . She refused and the driver called the police and she was arrested." Arthur Miller, dramatist and one time husband of Marilyn Monroe: The Crucible, A View From The Bridge. And so many others who, whilst having had longevity of careers, both before, and after the 1950's, really took the headlines in that decade: Frank Morrison (Micky) Spillane, Herman Wouk, Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, Doctor pointy ears, Benjamin Spock, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams, see Elizabeth Taylor, previously, Earnest Hemingway, Sophia Loren, Maria Callas, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, Satchmo, our monarch, Elizabeth the Second, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Mario Lanza, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford, and on, and on and on.

Despite all that, I'm not that much inspired by the 50's.

 

[2jakes]

LOL!

I'm an old soul. I have more in common with my grandmother (she is 89) than people my own age!

My grandma practically raised me & can relate with her values
than folks my age as well...

Now... I am really worried...:eeek:


LOL....Take Care

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just a few more: Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some like it Hot. Elizabeth Taylor, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Lucille Ball, I love Lucy- !951-57. James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden. And don't forget Rosa Parks: "On December 1, 1955 she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat down in the coloured section. Several white passengers then boarded and the driver asked her to give up her seat for one of them . She refused and the driver called the police and she was arrested." Arthur Miller, dramatist and one time husband of Marilyn Monroe: The Crucible, A View From The Bridge. And so many others who, whilst having had longevity of careers, both before, and after the 1950's, really took the headlines in that decade: Frank Morrison (Micky) Spillane, Herman Wouk, Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, Doctor pointy ears, Benjamin Spock, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams, see Elizabeth Taylor, previously, Earnest Hemingway, Sophia Loren, Maria Callas, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, Satchmo, our monarch, Elizabeth the Second, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Mario Lanza, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford, and on, and on and on.

Despite all that, I'm not that much inspired by the 50's.

I'll grant that a few of those things are OK.

Rosa Parks, of course, was more than just a tired seamstress -- although that was the story told at the time. In fact, she had been a militant civil rights activist since the early 1940s, and her refusal to take a back seat on that bus was part of a concerted effort to bring the segregation issue to a head in Montgomery after years of footdragging by accomodationists. She was heavily influenced in her beliefs by civil rights campaigns dating back to the mid-1930s and the days of the Scottsboro Boys. While it's common to think the Civil Rights Movement was a product of the fifties, it was, in fact, no such thing. It had been fulminating steadily for more than twenty years by the time of the Montgomery boycott.

Wouk, I like up to a point. I absolutely cannot stomach Salinger. Hemingway is the most overrated author in the English language, and he had been ever since the thirties. Lucille Ball did very little that Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly hadn't done already in two-reelers in the thirties. I've never cared much for the Rat Pack -- Frankie Swoonatra never did much for me, and that whole boozy-Vegas schtick leaves me cold. Tennessee Williams -- eh. You've seen one of his plays, you've seen them all. And if Marilyn Monroe hadn't died young, she'd be Shelley Winters.

 

[2jakes]

Just a few more: Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some like it Hot. Elizabeth Taylor, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Lucille Ball, I love Lucy- !951-57. James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden. And don't forget Rosa Parks: "On December 1, 1955 she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat down in the coloured section. Several white passengers then boarded and the driver asked her to give up her seat for one of them . She refused and the driver called the police and she was arrested." Arthur Miller, dramatist and one time husband of Marilyn Monroe: The Crucible, A View From The Bridge. And so many others who, whilst having had longevity of careers, both before, and after the 1950's, really took the headlines in that decade: Frank Morrison (Micky) Spillane, Herman Wouk, Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, Doctor pointy ears, Benjamin Spock, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams, see Elizabeth Taylor, previously, Earnest Hemingway, Sophia Loren, Maria Callas, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, Satchmo, our monarch, Elizabeth the Second, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Mario Lanza, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford, and on, and on and on.

Despite all that, I'm not that much inspired by the 50's.

Well...after all that...I believe Joe said it best !

[video=youtube;EJf-AQL1jHg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJf-AQL1jHg[/video]

 

[GHT]

And if Marilyn Monroe hadn't died young, she'd be Shelley Winters.

That is so wicked.........................I love it!
[video=youtube;hbI6r2uUtQg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbI6r2uUtQg[/video]

 

[AmateisGal]

My grandma practically raised me & can relate with her values
than folks my age as well...

Now... I am really worried...:eeek:


LOL....Take Care

:amen:

 

[sheeplady]

Yeah, I really think it depends on where you lived as to how you viewed the 80s. For us, the farm crisis colored the 80s. Lean, lean times for us. I still remember walking around our family farm, picking up trash, cleaning up piles of junk or whatever was lying around, because we were expecting to be inundated with a bunch of people for the farm sale. Tough. But we still held on to the farm. My brother farms it now - he's the fourth generation to farm it.

I remember as a kid how unfathomable it was for so many people that farms that were in families for generations were getting taken by the bank, lock, stock, and barrel. The only time it was worse was during the Great Depression.

I knew one family who lost their farm that had been in the family since the area was settled, 200 years ago, I think it might have been given to an ancestor that fought in the revolution as pay. They had managed to keep it through the Great Depression, which was a feat. My parents took me to the sale and the family was losing everything- they even sold off some of the kids toys- which even at a young age (elementary) really made me sad. I didn't want to go because I knew the girl at school and asked my parents not to take me, but they insisted that they were going. Something hit me as incredibly wrong with going there, now I would say it felt like being a vulture picking over a carcass.

My parents bought some stuff from that auction. If I am the executor of their estate, those things are going straight in the trash.

I would have had a very hard time living thru the fifties. I would have liked Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason, the '52-'56 Dodgers, and "What's My Line?," but I can't think of too much else. And I really wouldn't have enjoyed being blacklisted.

My mother told me once that I would have "offed yourself out of sheer boredom if you had to live through the 1950s." I don't know, but since she was there, I'll take her word for it that my personality would have not gone well in her childhood memories of 1950s culture.

 

[AmateisGal]

I remember as a kid how unfathomable it was for so many people that farms that were in families for generations were getting taken by the bank, lock, stock, and barrel. The only time it was worse was during the Great Depression.

I knew one family who lost their farm that had been in the family since the area was settled, 200 years ago, I think it might have been given to an ancestor that fought in the revolution as pay. They had managed to keep it through the Great Depression, which was a feat. My parents took me to the sale and the family was losing everything- they even sold off some of the kids toys- which even at a young age (elementary) really made me sad. I didn't want to go because I knew the girl at school and asked my parents not to take me, but they insisted that they were going. Something hit me as incredibly wrong with going there, now I would say it felt like being a vulture picking over a carcass.

My parents bought some stuff from that auction. If I am the executor of their estate, those things are going straight in the trash.



My mother told me once that I would have "offed yourself out of sheer boredom if you had to live through the 1950s." I don't know, but since she was there, I'll take her word for it that my personality would have not gone well in her childhood memories of 1950s culture.

I'm not sure how my dad managed to hang on to the place, but I'm sure glad he did. He ended up getting a job as a rural mail carrier and farming on the side for years until my brother finally was able to buy the farm in the late 90s.

I remember lots of help from our church and family with food and Christmas presents and clothes, lots of homemade bread, and of course, lots of arguments between mom and dad (their marriage eventually disintegrated years later).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember as a kid how unfathomable it was for so many people that farms that were in families for generations were getting taken by the bank, lock, stock, and barrel. The only time it was worse was during the Great Depression.

The biggest difference was that in the thirties there were pockets of ferocious physical resistance to the foreclosures, ranging from fellow farmers invading foreclosure auctions and driving off all bidders so they could buy the property themselves for pennies and deed it back to the original owner to the extreme case of dragging a foreclosure judge off his bench at the end of a rope.

Somewhere between then and the eighties, the American working class lost its fighting spirit. Or had it brainwashed out of them.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'll grant that a few of those things are OK.

Rosa Parks, of course, was more than just a tired seamstress -- although that was the story told at the time. In fact, she had been a militant civil rights activist since the early 1940s, and her refusal to take a back seat on that bus was part of a concerted effort to bring the segregation issue to a head in Montgomery after years of footdragging by accomodationists. She was heavily influenced in her beliefs by civil rights campaigns dating back to the mid-1930s and the days of the Scottsboro Boys. While it's common to think the Civil Rights Movement was a product of the fifties, it was, in fact, no such thing. It had been fulminating steadily for more than twenty years by the time of the Montgomery boycott.

Wouk, I like up to a point. I absolutely cannot stomach Salinger. Hemingway is the most overrated author in the English language, and he had been ever since the thirties. Lucille Ball did very little that Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly hadn't done already in two-reelers in the thirties. I've never cared much for the Rat Pack -- Frankie Swoonatra never did much for me, and that whole boozy-Vegas schtick leaves me cold. Tennessee Williams -- eh. You've seen one of his plays, you've seen them all. And if Marilyn Monroe hadn't died young, she'd be Shelley Winters.

My bold above. I feel the same way and coincidentally - because I had just seen five minutes of "A Streetcar..." on TCM - just said to my girlfriend that I can't take how depressing Tennessee Williams is. Even though they are well done (and some of his characters are incredibly well drawn) - they are, at a certain level all the same - depressing story of decline and despair.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Hemingway is the most overrated author in the English language, and he had been ever since the thirties. Lucille Ball did very little that Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly hadn't done already in two-reelers in the thirties.

Couldn't agree more. The former was a violence fixated drunk, and the latter..... well, she was never "the Queen of Comedy" as far as I was concerned. Her schtick was too in-yer-face. Tracy Ulmann is a lot funnier.

 

[AmateisGal]

The biggest difference was that in the thirties there were pockets of ferocious physical resistance to the foreclosures, ranging from fellow farmers invading foreclosure auctions and driving off all bidders so they could buy the property themselves for pennies and deed it back to the original owner to the extreme case of dragging a foreclosure judge off his bench at the end of a rope.

Somewhere between then and the eighties, the American working class lost its fighting spirit. Or had it brainwashed out of them.

Really? I had no idea. I remember feeling so scared of our local bankers when I was a kid...they were Evil Incarnate to me. My dad was pretty vocal about his distaste of them, though.

 

[AmateisGal]

We identified with this song by John Cougar Mellencamp quite a bit.

[video=youtube;joNzRzZhR2Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNzRzZhR2Y[/video]