History Main / The50s

* Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures: In "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith", Sarah Jane, Luke and Rani travel back to 1951 to meet Sara-Jane’s parents. Sarah Jane herself was only a baby at that time.

Speaking of movies, this was the first decade when Hollywood was old enough to reflect upon itself, gazing fondly (or not) on the [[UsefulNotes/TheSilentAgeOfHollywood Silent Era]]. See movies like ''Film/SingingInTheRain'' for comedic takes on the subject, and ''Film/SunsetBoulevard'' for dramatic ones.

Finally, there are the Historical Fifties of The90s to the PresentDay. The Nostalgic Fifties are now starting to die out, replaced by other decades as there are becoming fewer and fewer writers in Hollywood who remember the Fifties... and many of these writers are the ''children'' of those former "rebellious teens", and take a somewhat more jaundiced view of their parents' upbringing. Therefore, the time period, as portrayed by Hollywood, is becoming more the textbook version. Films about The Fifties today tend more to deal with the political issues of that era (civil rights, [=McCarthyism=], etc.) and less with its teen culture. Which is not to say it is ''necessarily'' any more accurate of course, merely that the decade is now filtered more through a political/ideological lens than a nostalgic one and teenagers aren't the only people that matter. During this period, there were currents that anticipated trends from later decades but because of the repressiveness and censorship of the culture, they were on the margins rather than the mainstream, so modern views are more informed from this perspective.

Finally, there are the Historical Fifties of The90s and the PresentDay. The Nostalgic Fifties are now starting to die out, replaced by other decades as there are becoming fewer and fewer writers in Hollywood who remember the Fifties... and many of these writers are the ''children'' of those former "rebellious teens", and take a somewhat more jaundiced view of their parents' upbringing. Therefore, the time period, as portrayed by Hollywood, is becoming more the textbook version. Films about The Fifties today tend more to deal with the political issues of that era (civil rights, [=McCarthyism=], etc.) and less with its teen culture. Which is not to say it is ''necessarily'' any more accurate of course, merely that the decade is now filtered more through a political/ideological lens than a nostalgic one and teenagers aren't the only people that matter. During this period, there were currents that anticipated trends from later decades but because of the repressiveness and censorship of the culture, they were on the margins rather than the mainstream, so modern views are more informed from this perspective.

** ''ComicBook/TheLegionOfSuperHeroes!''. First story, published in April, 1958.

->''"We're going to the Doo-Wop Hop tonight, so we're dressed like they did in the fifties. You know, when everyone dressed like a sitcom from TheSeventies?"''

The Fabulous Fifties: An era of identical [[StepfordSuburbia pink pressboard]] [[{{Suburbia}} suburban houses]] filled with {{s|tepfordSmiler}}miling, apron-clad {{housewi|fe}}ves. All the men [[StandardFiftiesFather wear slippers and fedoras and smoke pipes]], all the girls [[GirlNextDoor are teenaged and wear poodle skirts]], and all the boys [[TheAllAmericanBoy are cute, freckle faced scamps with slingshots in their pockets]]. Parents [[SleepingSingle sleep in separate beds]] and only kiss each other on the cheek.

That's the [[PopularHistory popular]] view of the Fifties, at least. In media, there are three versions of The Fifties. The first is the Fifties Fifties, i.e. how the time was portrayed in works that were actually made then. In this version, The Fifties were a suburban paradise where everyone was always happy, either forgetting the [[TheGreatDepression bad]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII events]] that happened during [[TheForties the last decade]] or reminiscing the [[TheGayNineties prosperous]] [[TheRoaringTwenties times]] of previous decades, and there were no problems except for all those [[TeensAreMonsters juvenile delinquents]] running around. Unless the local college had some commies spreading un-American values or [[BMovie the flying saucers are landing]]. The fifties uptightness was linked to real world anxieties and [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons atom-bomb]] jitters, after all. Don't expect the civil rights movement to show up. Hell, seeing actual black people is a bit of a crapshoot. The Fifties Fifties are in contemporary times a popular subject of TheParody.

The next version is the Nostalgic Fifties of TheSeventies and TheEighties. By that time, there were a huge number of adults nostalgic for the "simple times" of their youth and Hollywood obliged. The biggest difference between this version and the Fifties Fifties is that the rebellious teenagers are now the heroes. We learn that all the teenagers back then liked to hang out at the local MaltShop, where a jukebox played NothingButHits. The girls were only {{seemingly wholesome|FiftiesGirl}} and both sexes were experiencing their own [[ComingOfAgeStory Coming Of Age Stories]] while necking down at the DriveInTheater and watching ''Film/RobotMonster'' like the {{unabashed B movie fan}}s they were.

Finally, there are the Historical Fifties of TheNineties and the PresentDay. The Nostalgic Fifties are now starting to die out, replaced by other decades as there are becoming fewer and fewer writers in Hollywood who remember the Fifties... and many of these writers are the ''children'' of those former "rebellious teens", and take a somewhat more jaundiced view of their parents' upbringing. Therefore, the time period, as portrayed by Hollywood, is becoming more the textbook version. Films about The Fifties today tend more to deal with the political issues of that era (civil rights, [=McCarthyism=], etc.) and less with its teen culture. Which is not to say it is ''necessarily'' any more accurate of course, merely that the decade is now filtered more through a political/ideological lens than a nostalgic one and teenagers aren't the only people that matter. During this period, there were currents that anticipated trends from later decades but because of the repressiveness and censorship of the culture, they were on the margins rather than the mainstream, so modern views are more informed from this perspective.

For a glimpse of what (some) Americans actually living in the Fifties thought of their world, read the TimeTravel stories of Jack Finney. His heroes are generally lonely, frustrated, unhappy bachelors eager to escape from their conformist gray-flannel-suited world, usually into TheGayNineties. Likewise actual 50s film are also a good depiction, not only Hollywood but also independent films such as ''Film/{{Shadows}}'' by Creator/JohnCassavetes (actually shot in 50s New York and dealt with working-class African-American characters). FilmNoir was a major genre during the Fifties, that doesn't easily fit in with any of the mainstream versions of the decade listed above, even if many 50s FilmNoir actually dealt with the underbelly of crime and represented it in this period and indeed one of the key period films depicting this time is of course ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'' (Henry Hill's childhood and teenage years). This includes modern noir ''set'' during the Fifties like ''L.A. Confidential'' or ''The Black Dahlia''. The other popular genres in this decade are TheMusical, TheWestern, the BMovie, the EpicMovie, widescreen cinema. Formerly the 50s was considered a weak era for Hollywood, these days a growing contingent considers it the greatest period of [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood Hollywood's Golden Age]].

But those who wish to {{Flanderiz|ation}}e an entire decade should know that the 1950s were actually marked by great strides forward in social progress, sexual and otherwise, even if they still existed mostly on the theoretical level. And in any case, [[FairForItsDay they were a lot less repressed than the eras that preceded them]]. The decade was also a period of relative stability and unprecedented optimism, both probably enhanced by comparison since the period was bracketed by the horrors of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and the upcoming turbulence of TheSixties. This was particularly prevalent in the US, which had not only triumphed in the war but, more importantly, was just about the only major nation to come out of the conflict with its infrastructure intact. With no rebuilding to do, the focus was on innovation; there was a strong belief in the prospect of limitless progress through science and industry, which led to a lot of gee-whiz science fiction that's now covered with {{Zeerust}}. It's no coincidence that the ultimate embodiment of optimism, [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland]], opened in 1955, with its cornerstone of Tomorrowland, promising a "great big beautiful tomorrow." Compare AluminumChristmasTrees.

For more information, see our [[UsefulNotes/TheFifties swell Useful Notes page]].

See Also: TheRoaringTwenties, TheThirties, TheForties, TheSixties, TheSeventies, TheEighties, TheNineties, TurnOfTheMillennium, TheNewTens, and TheNewTwenties.

* "Swell" - Say this a lot, especially if you're a teenage girl and you're talking about something you like (usually a boy). Be sure to say it in an extra cutesy and/or sweet way. The more affected it sounds, the better. ("Oh, that's just swell!") The word actually dates to TheRoaringTwenties, but it continued to be used in popular media until about the mid-Sixties, making it an early example of TotallyRadical.

* BabiesEverAfter: The post-World War II Baby Boom continued unabated throughout the decade. People born in the second half of the decade only stopped being called "Baby Boomers" when people noticed that they, largely immunized from polio at birth, with TV in their homes from earliest living memory, too young to go to Vietnam with their adolescence well into TheSeventies and at the start of TheNewTens still a decade or more from retirement with kids just starting HighSchool, are really a generation unto themselves.

* CoolCar: the [[TheForties late 1940s]] to early 1950s marked the beginning of the car culture as modern people understand it, very much unlike [[TheRoaringTwenties the age of the Ford Model T]].
* CutAndPasteSuburb: Technically the proliferation of standardized housing started in TheForties when all those veterans came home and started housekeeping, but The Fifties is when this trope really came into prominence.

* TheGenerationGap: Starts to take root in this era before heading full swing in TheSixties and TheSeventies.

* NostalgiaFilter: Throughout TheSeventies and TheEighties, and even into TheNineties, the 1950s were the go-to decade for nostalgia in the media, as well as the retro movements of the '70s and '80s. That being said, during the 1950s, the eras synonymous with nostalgia were TheEdwardianEra and TheRoaringTwenties.[[note]]This is why Disneyland's starting area is Main Street USA[[/note]] That being said, during the 2000s and ''especially'' the 2010s, TheEighties has replaced The Fifties as the nostalgia filter era, namely because Generation X is replacing the Baby Boomers (kids of The Fifties and TheSixties) and Silent Generation (kids born in TheGreatDepression and TheForties).

** After three decades of focusing on [[TheRoaringTwenties the legs]], [[TheThirties the]] [[SexyBacklessOutfit back]], and [[TheForties the shoulders]] as the erogenous zones, the decade went on focusing the hips, whether padded or not, and whether it's wearing a circle skirt, a pencil skirt, or even pants.

* RedScare: You really don't understand the RedScare hysteria of this period until you get the "bomber gap": the perception that the Soviets had thousands of nuclear-armed bombers ready to unleash fiery death on American cities, largely caused by an atrocious quality of the American intelligence, which the Soviets managed to fool parading the same few bombers around.[[note]]In The Fifties U.S.S.R. had 200 strategic bombers, tops, in all. Their missiles weren't much better. Although the Tu-95 bomber, the iconic ''Bear'', was introduced in '55, and the world's first ICBM, the famous R-7, put a satellite in orbit in '57, both didn't actually reach their full potential until the [[TheSixties early-to-mid-Sixties]]. And the R-7 was a lousy ICBM anyway, and was quickly relegated to UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace, being replaced by the newer, more advanced military missiles.[[/note]]

* SeeminglyWholesomeFiftiesGirl: By day, teenagers and young women of the suburbs are sweethearts. By night, they go wild.

* StandardFiftiesFather: Smokes a pipe, wears slippers, fedoras and greets his wife with the phrase: "Honey, I'm home" in sitcoms.

** ''Film/{{Invasion of the Body Snatchers|1956}}'' (1956), a horror movie (with at least one good remake in TheSeventies) about conformism.

* UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation began as studios used the techniques of limited animation as an excuse to crank out productions faster. Many Dark Age TV shows through the [[TheSixties late '60s]] depicted a NuclearFamily straight out of The Fifties, with the rare subversive cartoon (including fifties animated shorts ''[[UnbuiltTrope themselves]]'', that hadn't been told what the decade was about.)

* ''Film/{{Matinee}}'' (1993), though technically set in 1962 during the [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheColdWar Cuban Missile Crisis]], attempts to pinpoint on film the moment when a town full of adorable scamps and [[MediumAwareness movie lovers]] left The Fifties and entered TheSixties.

* ''Series/LaverneAndShirley'': Spun off from ''Happy Days''. Both shows had technically moved into TheSixties by the time they ended.

* ''Film/{{Blow}}'': Made in 2001 and set mostly in TheSeventies, the story begins in 1952.

* ''Literature/TheDevilAllTheTime'': 2011 novel set from the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII up to TheSixties.

** ''Film/AnAffairToRemember''. Yes, that's right: a Fifties Hollywood blockbuster and critically acclaimed romantic film about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin an affair]] on a cruise ship with a woman on the way to her wedding. [[SpiritualSuccessor Inspiration]] for TheNineties film ''Film/SleeplessInSeattle''.

* ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' was a PoliceProcedural that ran from the late Forties through the [[TheSixties Sixties]]. While there is Fifties conformity scattered throughout the series, the show is not completely clean, showing the ugly side of society as they solve each week's crime. Was somewhat made in response to the negative view of the police force during the time period.

* ''ComicStrip/DanDare''. First appeared in April, 1950. Set in TheNineties.

* ''ComicBook/{{Superboy}}'' #171 (January 1971) saw his time era moved from being stuck in [[TheThirties the 1930s]] to [[ComicBookTime perpetually]] 15 or so years behind the then-present. Thus, 70s Superboy stories often featured nostalgic 1950s elements (ComicBook/LanaLang interested in hula hoops, Clark pondering rock and roll, etc.).

* ''[[Magazine/{{MAD}} MAD Magazine]]'', which defied the image of '50s conformity by satiring and skewering pop culture with a countercultural [[YiddishAsASecondLanguage Manhattanite wit]].

** UsefulNotes/LooneyTunesInTheFifties

* ''Film/LAConfidential'': Made in 1997, set in the early part of the decade.

* ''Series/FellowTravelers'': Released in 2023, the {{Flashback}} scenes in episodes 1-5 are set in 1952-1954, while episode 8's transpire in 1957.

* ''Series/FellowTravelers'': Released in 2023, the {{Flashback}} scenes take place in the 1950s.

* StayInTheKitchen: Women, at least in Western countries, were expected to be housewives; jobs expected for them were secretaries, clerks, telephone operators, seamstresses, and the then-hotly demanded flight attendants. Women in the Eastern Bloc went to work no matter what, and yet still be homemakers after work.

That's the [[PopularHistory popular]] view of the Fifties, at least. In media, there are three versions of The Fifties. The first is the Fifties Fifties, i.e. how the time was portrayed in works that were actually made then. In this version, The Fifties were a suburban paradise where everyone was always happy, either forgetting the [[TheGreatDepression bad]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII events]] that happened during [[TheForties the last decade]] or reminiscing the [[TheGayNineties prosperous]] [[TheRoaringTwenties times]] of previous decades, and there were no problems except for all those [[TeensAreMonsters juvenile delinquents]] running around. Unless the local college had some commies spreading un-American values or [[BMovie the flying saucers are landing]]. The fifties uptightness was linked to real world anxieties and atom-bomb jitters, after all. Don't expect the civil rights movement to show up. Hell, seeing actual black people is a bit of a crapshoot. The Fifties Fifties are in contemporary times a popular subject of TheParody.

Anyone who isn't any of these characters are either [[GreaserDelinquents greasers]], {{Beatnik}}s, gas station attendants, or [[Music/ElvisPresley Elvis]] (who, in this era, wouldn't be caught dead in a rhinestone jumpsuit). With the [[RedScare possible]] exception of the gas station attendants, everyone on that list is a direct threat to the upright morals and values of the era and will not be afforded a spot in the basement bomb shelter when the [[DirtyCommunists Reds]] drop [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons The Big One]]. Meanwhile, UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr and the burgeoning UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement stride across America, slowed down only by the occasional SmalltownTyrant. [[TheNewRockAndRoll The birth of rock 'n' roll]] took place in this era, to the horror of MoralGuardians, which also showed a resurgence in popularity.

->''"We're going to the Doo-Wop Hop tonight, so we're dressed like they did in the fifties. You know, when everyone dressed like a sitcom from the seventies?"''

* ''Film/TheMajestic: A 2001 comedy-drama set in 1951 and featuring the Hollywood blacklist as a subplot.

* LimitedAnimation: While this technique wasn't invented in this era, it did help cement the usage of it in the industry. At first, they were used in a more stylistic choice, thanks to [[Creator/ColumbiaCartoons United Productions of America]] becoming more popular, popularizing the trend. As time goes on, though, thanks to the UsefulNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem, animation Studios either had to cut their budgets or closed them out, and by the end, only three with consistent quality remained; Creator/{{Disney}}, Creator/{{Universal}}, and Creator/WarnerBros with their ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' series. Buy the time Creator/HannaBarbera came, it became a necessity for those studios to cut their animation budgets for any sort of revenue.

* LimitedAnimation: While this technique wasn't invented in this era, it did help cement the usage of it in the industry. At first, they were used in a more stylistic choice, thanks to Creator/ColumbiaCartoons United Productions of America]] becoming more popular, popularized in the trend. As time goes on, though, thanks to the UsefulNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem, animation Studios, either had to cut their budgets or closed them out, and by the end, only three with consistent quality remained; Creator/Disney, Creator/Universal, and Creator/WarnerBros with their ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' series. Buy the time Creator/HannaBarbera came, it became a necessity for the studios to cut their animation budgets for any sort of revenue.

* ''Film/TheNun'': Made in 2018, set in 1952.

** ''ComicBook/CosmicBoy''. First appeared in April, 1958.