1950s
The period also saw great population growth with increased birth rates and the emergence of the baby boomer generation.
Despite this recovery, the Cold War developed from its modest beginnings in the late 1940s to a heated competition between the Soviet Union and the United States by the early 1960s.
In the United States, a wave of anti-communist sentiment known as the Second Red Scare aka McCarthyism resulted in Congressional hearings by both houses in Congress.
Along with increased testing of nuclear weapons (such as RDS-37 and Upshot–Knothole) called the arms race, the tense geopolitical situation created a politically conservative climate.
Prominent coups d'état of the decade included: Natural: Non-natural: In the 1950s, the median age of newlyweds declined to its lowest point, a level not seen since.
A strong economy and low unemployment rates supported widespread prosperity, expanding the middle class and making affordable housing accessible.
This economic environment enabled young couples to marry early, granting teenage brides notable purchasing power that marketers actively targeted.
[6] During this period, a gap in educational attainment emerged, with college degrees yielding higher earning potential than high school diplomas.
[7] Given prevailing cultural norms, more men pursued higher education while their wives contributed financially by entering the workforce.
[15][16] Television, which first reached the marketplace in the 1940s, attained maturity during the 1950s and by the end of the decade, most American households owned a TV set.
Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Judy Garland, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, Georgia Gibbs, Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen, Joni James, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Toni Arden, June Valli, Doris Day, Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Guy Mitchell, Nat King Cole, and vocal groups like the Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, The Four Lads, The Four Aces, The Chordettes, The Fontane Sisters, The Hilltoppers and the Ames Brothers.
The middle of the decade saw a change in the popular music landscape as classic pop was swept off the charts by rock-and-roll.
Rock-n-roll emerged in the mid-1950s with Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, James Brown, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin, Ritchie Valens, Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran, Brenda Lee, Bobby Vee, Connie Francis, Neil Sedaka, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard being notable exponents.
In the mid-1950s, Elvis Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records.
Popular Doo Wop and Rock-n-Roll bands of the mid to late 1950s include The Platters, The Flamingos, The Dells, The Silhouettes, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, Little Anthony and The Imperials, Danny & the Juniors, The Coasters, The Drifters, The Del-Vikings and Dion and the Belmonts.
Rock-and-roll proved to be a difficult phenomenon for older Americans to accept and there were widespread accusations of its being a communist-orchestrated scheme to corrupt the youth, although rock and roll was extremely market-based and capitalistic.
Jazz stars in the 1950s who came into prominence in their genres called bebop, hard bop, cool jazz and the blues, at this time included Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Jerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey, Max Roach, the Miles Davis Quintet, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday.
The American folk music revival became a phenomenon in the United States in the 1950s to mid-1960s with the initial success of The Weavers who popularized the genre.
On 3 February 1959, a chartered plane transporting the three American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four occupants on board, including pilot Roger Peterson.
The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died", popularized in Don McLean's 1971 song "American Pie".
People spent so much time watching TV, that movie attendance dropped and so did the number of radio listeners.
Similarly with the mid-1950s rush of Rock and Roll and teenage rebellion, the films of Marlon Brando and James Dean had a profound effect on American culture.
In Hollywood, the epic Ben-Hur grabbed a record 11 Academy Awards in 1959 and its success gave a new lease of life to motion picture studio MGM.
Animated films in the 1950s presented by Walt Disney included Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, followed by Sleeping Beauty.
This return of figurative art, in opposition to the abstract expressionism that dominated the aesthetic scene since the end of World War II was dominated by Great Britain until the early 1960s when Andy Warhol, the most known artist of this movement began to show Pop Art in galleries in the United States.
[22] He introduced the idea of the hourglass shape for women; wide shoulders, tight waistline and then voluminous full skirts.
Coco Chanel: Her style was well known over the world and her idea of having functional luxurious clothing influenced other designers from the era.
Chanel believed that luxurious should come from being comfortable that is why her designers were so unique and different from the time period, she also achieved her looks by adding accessories such as pearl necklaces.
Centre, L-R: US tests its first thermonuclear bomb with code name Ivy Mike in 1952. A 1954 thermonuclear test, code named Castle Romeo ; In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrows Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban Revolution , which results in the creation of the first and only communist government in the Western Hemisphere; Elvis Presley becomes the leading figure of the newly popular music genre of rock and roll in the mid-1950s.
Bottom, L-R: Smoke rises from oil tanks on Port Said following the invasion of Egypt by Israel, United Kingdom and France as part of the Suez Crisis in late 1956; The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 ; The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth , in October 1957. This starts the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States .
