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Are you curious about The Pop Culture In 1950? Find out about the music, movies and art from the 1950s pop culture. We look at popular 50s culture from rock and roll to the Beat Generation.

1950s Pop Culture

The 1950s marked a landmark shift in popular culture from everything that had come before and stands as a landmark in American history. From the austere struggles of the 1940s and Post-War era, the 1950s offered a little more glamour amongst the tension of the early Cold War.

Despite the fear of nuclear attack, one of the biggest ways this happened was through the prevalence of television, which was something many Americans and their families could suddenly afford. Even if some people couldn't afford a television, the movie industry produced innumerable films for fans to view in countless movie theatres.

Television shows such as The Twilight Zone, The Honeymooners and The Ed Sullivan Show provided family-friendly entertainment in the comfort of the home. This marked a move away from the seriousness of earlier T.V. schedules. 

Alongside this, films starring some of the biggest and most glamorous names of the day, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Dean Martin, John Wayne, Grace Kelly, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and others, provided truly escapist performances to the world grew to adore.

Aside from the entertainment industry, fine art, literature, and popular music saw seismic shifts in taste and subject matter during the 1950s. Abstract Expressionism broke through the barriers of the visual arts, with artists like Jackson Pollock or Francis Bacon offering something new, exciting and intriguing and paving the way for the Pop Art of the 1960s.

The biggest literature of the day came out of the USA, with the Beat Generation changing the novel and poem from stuffy sentimental traditions into something fresh and young. And for music, you can't get more rebellious than Rock n Roll. 

The post-war boom and popular culture

After World War II ended, the United States, whose major industries had remained relatively untouched compared to European or Asian countries, rose to prominence as the world's leading superpower. With a booming American economy and rising levels of education and available consumer goods, many citizens of the U.S. saw their standard of living dramatically increase, with far more disposable income than ever before.

Alongside this, the "Baby Boomer" generation (the children of those who returned from WWII) were growing into teenagers and young Americans by the 1950s and enjoying this improvement in living standards. But that wasn't enough for many, and these teenagers, by sheer numbers, managed to alter the pop culture of their time. They were the biggest generation there had ever been in history, so it is easy to see why they had such an influence.

That's not to say they didn't have a little help. Quick-thinking marketing executives saw the potential of cornering such a vast market as the Baby Boomers as early as the late-1940s. Seeing this opportunity, these executives quickly cottoned on to what these young people wanted and the entertainment they were interested in and arranged to give it to them in heaps.

As with any generation, the Boomers wanted to rebel against whatever came before, but with so many of them, the popular culture they celebrated rocketed far beyond anything that came before. Rock n Roll, film, television and new forms of culture, entertainment and leisure activities came to define the 1950s in rebellion against the religious values, nationalism and conformity that their parents stood for.

The war in South Korea and the overall paranoia of the Cold War pushed these teenagers to seek as much enjoyment as possible, which they found in the popular culture they helped to influence.

Rock and Roll

Rock and Roll has its roots in the rural communities of the southern United States. Decades before the 1950s, African American musicians such as Son House, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Bill Broonzy led an underground and, at the time, fairly unrecognised musical revolution with the Blues. Each state had its own version of the blues, each with a distinct sound.

But the first Blues musicians to be recognised in the mainstream were those who ventured to northern cities, such as Chicago. During the 1940s, white Country musicians began to incorporate the ideas of the Blues into their own music, leading to the creation of the Rockabilly genre. 

This is where we find some of the progenitors of early Rock n Roll, with musicians such as Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly and countless others that led the way for the Rock and Roll of the 50s.

The subject matter of Rock and Roll also offered something different to the sentimental crooning that came before. Focussing on love between teenage sweethearts and rebellious escape from an oppressive middle-class authority, it's no wonder it caused a shock when Rock and Roll first appeared on people's radios. And that was mostly due to a single D.J., Mr Alan Freed.

It wasn't until 1954 that this rebellious youth were given a true Rock and Roll anthem to articulate their feelings. Bill Haley and His Comets Rock Around the Clock became the flagship single of the Rock and Roll generation. 

This independence from old-school sensibilities and the combination of black and white music also caused many stuffy conservatives to fear the changes Rock music was bringing.

While Bill Haley first proved that Rock and Roll could be a mainstream success, heartthrob Elvis Presley showed it could make people worldwide stars. The removal of racial divides in the successes of Rock and Roll also helped artists such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry find new audiences, helping to pave the way for the Civil Rights movement in the following decade. 

1950s television

Besides the dramatic changes in the music of the age, other forms of entertainment were also being upended. 

While the Hollywood film industry had dominated people's visual entertainment for decades, with the introduction of affordable televisions, and the ability to eat dinner in front of one with a T.V. dinner, the 1950s saw a shift of admiration away from the big-budget movies and toward the small screen.

While only the wealthiest families could afford T.V. sets throughout the 1940s, the Post-war boom meant that the new entertainment system was available for a larger number of people. 

By 1955, over half of the family homes in the USA had a television. This meant that programming also boomed to meet the demand for in-home entertainment, leaving the big Hollywood studios fighting to keep up.

Different types of popular T.V. shows were trialled, including game shows, soap operas, medical dramas, situation comedies, variety shows, talk shows, adventure series, police and courtroom dramas and cartoons. 

However, while Rock and Roll musicians were breaking down cultural norms, 1950s television reinforced the family values and anti-Communist individualism that defined American mass culture for the decade.

Comedic shows such as Father Knows Best set the scene for the typical American family: the patriarchal father, domesticated mother and cheeky, but not openly rebellious, children. There were also countless Western T.V. shows showing daring bravery in the harsh deserts of the American West. 

Younger children also found themselves catered for, with popular shows like The Mickey Mouse Club and Captain Kangaroo moving television programming closer to what children would watch.

Other famous 1950s television shows include:

I Love Lucy

This American sitcom epitomised many a young girl's ambitions in the 1950s - to break into the showbiz industry.

1950s Hollywood

Hollywood suffered a serious reshuffling in the Post-war Era after World War II. While it had been the world's leading producer of movies up to and throughout the 1940s, the American Government and Supreme Court thought this was not a healthy way to run the industry. 

With many studios directly controlling cinema venues, this monopolising of production, distribution and exhibition was ended with the case of "United States vs Paramount Pictures, Inc." in 1948.

The start of the Cold War and the Korean War also had troubles in store for Hollywood's movie industry. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy was paranoid that Communism had infiltrated American culture, particularly in Hollywood, and conducted numerous witchhunts through the "House Un-American Activities Committee".

Several actors, directors and producers, including Orson Welles and Paul Robeson, were suspected of sympathising with the Soviet Union or being Communists. The initial questioning of Hollywood's elite was met by a single person, playwright Bertolt Brecht, with the remaining "Hollywood Ten" refusing to appear and being charged with contempt. All of them were ousted from the industry, despite pleading that they were not Communists.

By the end, more than 300 Hollywood professionals, from writers to musicians, were blacklisted and never worked in the industry again - at least not under their own names. 

Hollywood took the fight back to Congress by developing innovative technology and movie techniques, such as Cinerama and CinemaScope, to show incredibly large and detailed images in cinemas. They even pioneered 3-D images, but it wasn't just these tropes that drew audiences flocking to the big screen during the 1950s.

It was the stories that Hollywood chose to focus on that chimed with the 50s generation to such a large degree. Serious dramas and romcoms remained popular with older audiences, but Hollywood also took a leaf out of the music industry's book.

To get more teenagers in cinema seats, Hollywood took to making exploitative movies, such as horror films and music films with stars like Elvis, Bill Haley and the Rock and Roll crew. Science Fiction, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, also drew in large crowds, mostly because of the anti-Communist propaganda and fear of nuclear war motif common in the Cold War. 

Popular Films in the 1950s

Given the great changes in pop culture dynamics taking place in the 1950s, it is understandable that many remarkably important films were produced during this time.

Visionary directors, such as John Ford and Billy Wilder, used the power of the big studios to tell stories that people loved and continue to love to this day. Here are a few of the most notable films from the 1950s:

1950s Literature

As you can probably imagine, the literature world was also shaken up during the 1950s, with many famous and important novels written during this decade. Some of the most notable include:

Fashion

With so many areas of society and popular culture trying out new things during the 1950s, it only makes sense that the fashion industry followed suit. Here are a few of the innovations that defined the fashion of American life in this era:

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