1950s: A new image for film
Monroe. Brando. John Wayne. This names dominated the top film lists in the 1950s. CinemaScope, VistaVision and Cinerama were new widescreen processes which made movies more realistic than ever before. During this decade, cinema was in a great variety: Musicals (Singin in the Rain), Japanese films (Godzilla, Rashomon, Samurai trilogy), history epics (Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments) and horror (Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Director Alfred Hitchcock was on his peak of creativity during this decade. His most remembered 50s film is 1958’s Vertigo, which introduced the clíché of the Hitchcock female protagonist. Due to the Cold War crisis, cinema was also used for propaganda.
Due to atomic development, interest in science grew, which resulted in the peak of science fiction movies during that decade. Alien visitors and giant prehistoric creatures dominated the big screen.
During the 1950s, transformation in cinema produced some of the greatest movies of all time, such as Ben-Hur, that dominated the 1960 Academy Awards.
1950s:Television, Families Come Together
Cinema cautivated the audiences, but a new form of entertainment became popular during the 1950s: Television. Television is the result of the work of various scientists, so it has no clear creator. What is true is that, by the start of this decade, television sets were common in every household. Television was magic by the time. For the first time, families could tune in and watch moving images of their favorite athletes competing in the Olympics. Television also became important in politics. Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953 was the first televised presidential inauguration in history. Families would join together to watch television. They would laugh at Lucille Ball’s predicaments in I Love Lucy. They would ride along the Lone Ranger in his daring quests. They could watch images of the queen being crowned in England, soccer players in Brazil, and the pyramids in Egypt. Television has evolved in many forms, but in its starting days, it changed the world in many forms.
Television had the power of joining familes together. It was an excuse to be together, to forget about problems, and to enjoy quality time with your close ones. That effect seems to be lost in its majority today due to new technologies, but the impact of television in the postwar world is immense.
1950s: A New Global Culture
Marilyn Monroe. Coca-Cola. Hollywood movies. Mr. Potato Head. Eye shadow. Electric dishwashers. Jukeboxes. Drive-ins. Ice cream parlors. Pizza Hut. By the 1950s, America was a growing nation, rich in culture and lifestyle. Conformity seemed to be at its fullest. Materialism and laidbackness had taken over the minds of young people. Rows of supermarket shelves with goods stuffed in. Teenage boys and girls with leather jackets, hair braid in ponytails, cruising in the California suburbs or driving Thunderbids to diners where they were served milkshakes, burgers and onion rings by a smiling waitress in rollerskates. By the 1950s, a global culture had taken over the world. Teenagers all around the world were listening the same music, watching the same movies, wearing the same clothes, and talking the same slang.
However, some Eastern governments were worried. Had America created a new global culture that would overshadow and consume all already existing individual cultures? Will Europeans, heir to the genius of men such as Shakespeare, Da Vinci and Mozart, be absorbed by this new image of teenagers with leather jackets chewing gum and gulping coke? The obvious answer was yes. A new global culture had been created. That’s the culture we’re currently living in. A culture that has taken the world by storm and that takes part of our present.
1955: Where The Magic Lies
To accompany this new world culture, came new entrepreneurs that approached these opportunities to the maximum. One such entrepreneur was Walt Disney. Disney was a Hollywood mogul that had been producing animated features for years. Through his movies, he had created a new sense of magic with which he appealed to all audiences. However, he now wanted to put all the magic from his movies and his characters, in one place. And the best he could think of...was a theme park. It was Sunday, July 17th, 1955, at 2 p.m., when the world’s most magnificent kingdom, the most magical place on earth, was unveiled to the public: Disneyland. That day was the biggest live television coverage on history. A crowd of over 11,000 stood at the gates of the park the opening day.
Disneyland was one of the first theme parks in history. Through a live coverage, and despite some problems such as a heat wave, a plumbers’ strike, a gas leak, and malfunctioning rides, Disney managed to create a magical place and a source of joy and inspiration for all of us. Disney may have left us a long time ago, but his magic legacy still lives through his movies, and through his park.