Popular Culture of the 1950s
The New Mass Media
 The Rise of Television Popularity
 During WWII televisions became affordable
 Television news became an important vehicle for info
 Athletic events gradually made collegiate and professional
sports a prominent form of entertainment
 Comedy, Action, and Games
 Many of the early television comedy shows were
adapted from popular old radio shows
 Quiz shows attracted large audiences

The Twenty-One fraud turned audiences away from quiz
shows
The New Mass Media
 Hollywood Adapts to the Times
 3-D movies with ridiculous plots were a short lived
gimmick to re-attract television audiences
 Cinemascope: movies shown on large, panoramic
screens
 However… African Americans were often onedimensional characters who rarely showed human
emotions or characteristics.

African American actor Sidney Poitier
resented having to play such parts.
The New Mass Media
 Radio Draws Them In
 With audiences turning to television for entertainment,
radio turned to:
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recorded music,
news,
talk shows,
weather,
public-service programming,
shows for specific audiences.
The New Youth Culture
 A small minority of youth in the 1950s brought widespread
attention as they searched for excitement and freedom
outside of the conformity preached by adults.
 The Birth of Rock n’ Roll
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Ohio, radio disc jockey Alan Freed noticed white teenagers
buying African American rhythm and blues records and
dancing to the music in the store.
Freed played the music on the air and the station flourished.
Elvis Presley: eventually claimed the title
of “King of Rock n’ Roll”
Parents condemned Rock n’ Roll for being too loud, mindless,
and dangerous.
The New Youth Culture
 The Beat Movement
 Made up of mostly white artists who called themselves
the beats
 The beats sought to live unconventional lives

In 1956, 29-year-old beat poet Allen Ginsburg published a
long poem called “Howl”, which blasted modern American
life.
African American Entertainers
 Talented African American singers and groups
who recorded hit songs in the fifties included:
 Chuck Berry,
 Ray Charles,
 Little Richard,
 The Drifters
 and many others.
The Other Side of American Life
 Poverty Amidst Prosperity
 Michael Harrington: wrote of poverty in America in
his book The Other America (single mothers, elderly,
minority immigrants, and urban dwellers)
 The Decline of the Inner City

The government encouraged the residence of poor housing to
remain poor by evicting them as soon as they began to earn
money
 A large number of African Americans lived in the run
down inner cities as others moved to the new suburbs
The Other Side of American Life
 Poverty Amidst Prosperity
 Hispanics lived in poverty working on farms often
stopping to sleep wherever they could find a place to sleep
 Native Americans
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Termination Policy: the US government launched a program to
bring Native Americans into mainstream society whether they
wanted to assimilate or not. This policy made poverty worst.
 Appalachia
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People who’s families had lived in the Appalachian Mountains
abandoned their homes to find work in the cities
Juvenile Delinquency
 A rise in, or a rise in reporting of juvenile delinquency
took place in the 1950s
 Car Thefts topped the list of juvenile crimes
 Experts do not agree on the increase of juvenile
delinquency
 An increase in juvenile delinquency and the Soviet
Union’s launch of Sputnik made people critical of the
educational system
Describe how the rise of television affected
Hollywood, and how Hollywood responded.
Describe how the rise of television affected
Hollywood, and how Hollywood responded.
 As television gained popularity, movies lost viewers.
Through the 1950s, Hollywood struggled to recapture it’s
audience. It tried contests, door prizes, and advertising,
but most of these tactics failed to lure people out of their
living rooms. Then Hollywood tried to make films more
exciting by introducing 3-D films. These worked
temporarily, but viewers soon tired of them.
Cinemascope, movies shown on large, panoramic
screens, finally gave Hollywood a reliable lure.
Hollywood eventually began to film programs especially
for television and sold old movies, which could be
cheaply rebroadcast by the networks.