The Century America's Time - 1953-1960 Happy Daze

(Music)

By the spring of 1943, nearly

50,000 Americans had returned

home from the Korean War in coffins.

People at home continued to wonder

how much longer they would have to

endure this strange war being

fought in this strange land.

"I had two brothers that were serving in Korea

at the same time and I was scared to death

because I wanted my brothers to come home.

And um, when they came home,

it was like Thank you Lord,

greatest day in the world."

In that summer of 1953, the U.S.

finally reached a truce agreement with

the North Koreans and the Chinese.

And Americans tried to put another war

behind them.

President Eisenhower kept his campaign

pledge to resolve the Korean conflict,

now he hoped to make America's domestic life

his priority.

"I believe in the future of the United States

of America."

"He was really going to take care of the

United States, he was going to take

care of us personally and it was a good feeling."

"The time was right for Dwight Eisenhower."

"One of the things that Ike most wanted to
do

when he became President was to lower the

rederick and lower the sense of crisis."

His countrymen were more than ready to relax.

With the war over and America bursting

with energy, it was time to focus on

a more promising future.

By 1953, the American people had been dealing

with one crisis or another since 1929.

The great depression, WWII, the Berlin

Blockade, and then Korea.

Eisenhower felt it was now time to

turn back the clock to the America

of his childhood.

A simpler country, where it turned out

white males had the last word,

and then women kept the home fires burning,

and the business of America was business.

At first, many Americans seemed happy to obliged

but as the decade wore on, Eisenhower

and "they" would discover, that not

everyone was ready to return to the old

way of doing things.

(music)

By late 1953, the economic boom that had arrived

after the second world war had already

transformed the country.

"We were self confident people for the first

time since 1929.

People putting money in the banks,

the real wages were going up 4.5% a year

it's just incredible to think of that now."

America in the 1950's was very rapidly

becoming the consumer society.

People were buying more and selling more than

ever in U.S. History.

For the first time, more Americans were

doing white collared work than manual labor.

Advertising, marketing, and public relations

were now the preferred professions.

"I could certainly do with 8 or 10,000.

But I don't know anything about public relations."

"Who does? You got a clean shirt,

you bathe everyday, that is all there is to
it."

In the shadow of the cold war,

it seemed almost patriotic to

be part of the American economic miracle,

to be a member of the corporate team

and follow the rules.

"When I became a salesman,

like men in a grey flannel suit,

I was told where to buy my clothes.

It might not have been a grey flannel suit,

but it better be a blue one, and

there was a lot of choices of colored shirts

just as long as they were white."

"You called attention to yourself

if you deviated from the norm,

and nobody did, nobody did.

We all looked the same."

" I think people liked to be dressed alike

and follow the same sort of social

customs. You were expected to have at

least 2 drinks at lunch, preferably martinis.

If anyone said I'll have a Perrier,

they would have been laughed at."

And when they advertised for secretaries,

they specified good looking.

It was not a good time for women

in the work place.

"Ms. Lawrence, this is Mr.Ryan.

Ms. Lawrence will be your secretary. "

"How do you do Ms. Lawrence?"

"Very glad to meet you Mr.Ryan."

"We always give the new man the prettiest
secretary."

"There were no female managers. None.

It wasn't even considered."

(Music)

In the 1950's, the woman's place was in the
home.

In the embrace of a loving husband.

By 1957, 97% of all marriageable men and women

were married and if they cared to have a social

life, they stayed that way.

"It was a couples society.

We did things in couples.

BBQ's and it is always couples.

If we knew that the person was divorced,

we might have a second thought about

asking them. The thing was to be married

and to keep the home together."

More and more, that home was on America's

crab grass frontier.

In an era that favored conformity,

it was perhaps no surprise that by the

end of the decade, a quarter of the population

lived in the track homes of the modern suburb.

"Moving in for us was the beginning

of a happy experience. Of a challenging

experience. Everything was similar.

One of my friends, Ruby, my phone rings and

he says to me 'Hal, I have a problem,'

I say 'What's the matter?'

He says ' I can't find my house.'

"It seemed kind of remote and bleak

if you looked at them from the air.

But in those cookie cutter houses on

those straight streets that met at right

angles, a lot of good things were happening."

(music)

"Children were being born at a very

fast rate.

They were 3 Obstetricians and the

Obstetricians were open til 2am in the morning.

This was the place to raise children

because it offered everything they could want."

"I was here at my old home,

I crossed the street at the neighbors

home, down the block at a friends home

without any restriction

without any feeling that I was violating

anyone's territory."

"The emotional core of the early 1950's

was all about stability.

Both my parents had experience the depression

both of my parents had experienced

the war.

I know that they looked upon their little

house in Lake Wood as a refuge from

many of the things that had troubled

their early lives."

"The activities were centered around the home.

We had a lot of parties."

"People were of the same age,

our interests were alike.

We came together that way.

We seemed to all be interested in what we
were doing.

For the good of all of us."

"It was a fabulous life."

(upbeat music)

And life was getting better for a lot

of American families.

Propelled by the powerful economy

they were stepping into the middle class

at a rate of more than a million a year.

With extra money to spend and plenty

of shiny new merchandise to choose from,

people bought things whether they needed

them or not, sometimes just to match the

face of their neighbors.

"We had an eye on consumer goods all the time.

Keeping up with the Jones

when people would give us a call on the phone

that the television set was just delivered

it wouldn't be long before we be

down having soda watching the new television.

And as soon as we left there,

we would say, that's what we have to have
next."

A new television would soon become the thing

that everyone had to have next.

It was in the early 1950's that one of

America's intense love affairs blossomed

most brighty.

"We would plug this thing in and

turn on this box and there were people there.

Well I will tell you, we would not move for
days."

"We sat in front of that set even when

there was nothing on except the test pattern

you thought you can't tell the lab will put

on something right now."

Television sets were rapidly becoming affordable

for the average consumer and as they

did, the demand become for new programming

became overwhelming.

"That's right boys and girls......"

Most of television programming aired live

with all the flaws of a live performance,

but even with mistakes, most viewers loved

the tube.

"The television business was a sandbox

where you could go in with almost any idea

and you have a chance to do it."

"It was an amazing period of time."

Radio, long the staple of family entertainment,

was virtually abandoned.

Nimble talents like Milton Burrow

and the famous newscaster Edward Armuro

made the transition to the new medium.

"It brought us news,

it brought us dramas.

It had become an intrical part of our life.

And it wouldn't be unusual for your

doctor to say I'll see you at 7 o'clock

on Tuesday and you would say I am very sorry,

I Love Lucy is on I have to see I Love Lucy."

By the mid 1950's only a few years after their

commercial introduction, television sets

were in 3/4 of American homes.

People now spent a 1/3 of their waking hours

in the glow of the box.

Lured by entertainment, they became a captive

audience for the salesmen.

"These 3 windows, ABC, CBS, and NBC were

window on a world that a family could

sit down and look out of.

And see what they didn't have."

"Ah I know you are going to show us, a

westing house refrigerator."

"No, a westing house refrigerator/freezer."

"Everything you did, was geared

at a family target audience."

"It was a very conservative and repressing

time but it was also a time that was

the beginning of change."

Underneath all the conformity, you could

see the beginning of the change."

Hugh Hefner was 27 when he started Playboy

magazine. At the time, a daring

challenge to the country's obscenity laws.

His first playmate of the month,

was a rising young starlet named

Marilyn Monroe, but after that,

the pin up was just as likely to be

the girl next door.

"The girl next door notion of pin up

photography was rooted in the notion that

nice girls like sex too, that sex was ok.

And that was a very sensational point of view.

And potentially a dangerous point of view.

It was risky enough that I didn't put my name

on the first issue."

Within a year, playboy

was selling 100,000 copies a month

and it was not the only thing threatening

this status quo.

(music)

Nothing worried traditionalist more than

the new kind of music being

performed by singers such as Lloyd Price.

(singing)

"Well it was really race music

we had maybe 2 radio stations in New Orleans

that played that music.

It had no name to it.

It was just music."

By 1955, the music did have a name.

Rock and roll and young people everywhere

were listening to it.

Wisconsin native Marty Rosenbloom

was then 15 years old.

"I got my own portable radio and at

night, I could pick up all the southern

stations and I heard Little Richard for the
first time.

And my whole world change, everything changed.

I would call WAPL in Wisconsin and ask

them to play Little Richard and they

would say the station manager wouldn't

allow Little Richard on the radio because

his was the devil's music.

So I knew he was good.""

(singing)

"It was a much more infectious kind of music

that we ever heard before and it had an edge."

"There were suggested things in it

and you know it was kind of risqué and the

parents were saying this is going to ruin
our kids."

"Their concern was that their daughters and

even their sons were falling in love with

black people."

Sam Phillips was the owner of Sun Records.

A southern music label.

"You know what my answer was from day one?

I truly can look you straight in the eye

and tell you they are not falling in love
with

black or white or green or yellow

they are falling in love with the

vitality of the music."

(Music)

And it wasn't long before white

musicians like Bill Hailey and the comets

were making the charts with rock hits

of their own.

But the music was still waiting for it's first

super star. And in 1956, he arrived.

"I was in this little soda shop

and on came this song, and this guy started
singing

and there was like stillness, and then

everyone started dancing and

this like wave of energy came over the place

and I was like my God this is wonderful.

I turned to the girl next to me

and I said who was that?

And she looked at me as if I was from

another planet and she said just one word

she said, Elvis."

(singing)

"The year I saw Elvis Presley, the electricity
was so

high, had you put that much energy in work

you would have collapsed."

It wasn't just that Elvis was white and sounded
black,

his haircut and his hips spoke to rebellious

feelings in young people all across America.

"And the funny thing is,

you screamed so much, you couldn't really

hear him. But you felt you had to scream

and it was just."

Kids were screaming with joy and

parents were screaming in protest.

Elvis may have been white, but his songs

and his moves still offended many.

In July 1956, Elvis Presley's act

was called vulgar and suggestive

by the tremendously popular columnist

and television show host Ed Sullivan

less than 2 months later, Sullivan

booked the singer on his show.

"Ready, set, go, man go."

I gotta girl that I love so....

"It's the minister of culture in America

surrendering to the youth culture.

And therefore that is a very big political
moment

we cannot hold law, If I hold the line

and keep Elvis off, I'm gonna fail.

And that's a very important moment.

Him going on Ed Sullivan symbolized

that it had happened."

(music)

Rock and roll was here to stay.

It had become the soundtrack for a new

era of change.

"Here is Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire."

"You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain."

In 1957, the television program called

American Bandstand went national.

ON the ABC network. The shows

targeted audience quickly demonstrated

it's new found power.

By turning Bandstand and it's host

Dick Clark into overnight icons.

Every kid watched.

"It was a story about once a police

chief was afraid a rumble was going to happen,

a street fight, because no kids

were on.

And they conducted a door to door

search, they found that all the kids were

watching Bandstand.

I remember feeling this tremendous feeling

of confirmation that I belonged

to a group of people called teenager and

we have our own music."

"all of a sudden, you know, I felt

that I could express myself, I could be free,

I could dance and I could shake around

and I could have fun.

There was no stopping us.

The parents didn't have a chance."

Another way the young were breaking away

was through their use of language.

The beat movement thrived in the coffeehouses

of New York's Greenich Village.

"The Village has a life and a language all
it's own

If you dig it, you're hip.

If you don't, man, you're square."

Beat necks were the fore fathers of the 1960's
counter

culture. Challenging the conformity of the
50's

by ridiculing mainstream values.

"My mom wanted a new kitchen.

She wanted new appliances.

That was her self identity. And the beats

were saying Why are you identifying with

material things, there's more."

And even more significant challenge to the

complacent 50's came from America's black

community. Living in the consumer society,

but having few of it's advantages,

they chose this moment to make white America

live up to it's ideals.

Amazingly, 50's America had moved little

beyond the days of Jim Crowe.

Particularly in the South, life

among blacks and whites remained separate

and unequal.

"There was no way you could be black in this

country and not be effected by it.

Here I was selling millions of records around

the world, hero everywhere and I couldn't

get a hot dog in Baltimore unless I went to

the back door."

"It wasn't right, but that's just

how it was. That was just life."

On December the first, 1955, on a public bus

in Montgomery Alabama, life began to change.

By refusing to give up her seat to a white
man,

tired seamstress named Rosa Parks, quietly

ignited a revolution.

"The day that Rosa Parks was arrested

a low murmur went through the whole city.

And overnight, this thing bloomed."

Led by a charismatic young preacher

named Martin Luther King, the city's black

community organized a peaceful boycott

of the buses. They walked instead.

"We will do it in a orderly fashion,

this is a nonviolent protest.

We are depending on moral and spiritual forces."

White policeman responded by arresting

black carpool drivers.

White extremists bombed King's home.

"Martin always said you know if you don't

have anything that you die for,

what do you have to live for?"

"Nobody thought we could stay off the buses.

None of those people wanted to lose their
jobs

but Martin Luther had instilled in them

so rightly that we must all make a sacrifice.

That the buses continue to run empty."

They did. For 381 days.

On November 13th 1956, the supreme court

ordered the buses desegregated.

Martin Luther King was now the

undisputed leader of the civil rights movement.

"The colored population idolized Martin Luther."

"We are not going back to the buses

bragging about.....

"People experienced his self esteem

that they had never experienced before.

And they had been given a light.

A beckon at the end of the tunnel."

That light reached Melva Beele, a 15

year old high school student in

Little Rock Akansas.

"I was very conscious of what was going on
and

wanting it to wash over me and

wash over Little Rock."

It was about to.

In 1954, the supreme court had ordered the

integration of all public schools,

in it's famous decision Brown vs. the Board
of Education.

3 years later that decision would be severely

tested at Little Rock's all white central

high school.

Despite the federal court order

Arkansas Governor, Orville Fabis,

had no intention of allowing black

students to attend central high.

And he ordered the Arkansas National Guard
to

surround the school.

On September 3rd,

Melba Beeles and 8 other black students

walked towards Central High.

One Elizabeth Eckford became

separated from her friends

and was surrounded by a white mob

that included Ann Thompson.

"There was just a lot of electricity in the
air.

It was almost a circus like atmosphere.

All these parents on the sideline.

Urging us on, telling us, don't let them get
in."

"There are mobs on her heels, like dogs

nipping at her. Policeman are watching this.

Every time she tries to step between them,

they close ranks on her."

If central high was to be integrated, it would

have to be ordered by the President.

Eisenhower was at first reluctant

to interfere.

"His record on civil rights was not a

good one, until 1957 and the crisis at Little
Rock.

And there a fundamental question was dealt
with.

Do the states have the right to impose

their own social order, in defiance of

federal court orders.

Eisenhower answered no we have made a national

commitment. We are going to desegregate this
society

and if it takes 101st airborne to do it, so
be it."

(music)

"This is awful. I mean that is vivid still.

I could just see Little Rock being in a state

of siege by the troops. You know.

That was real fear. "

3 weeks after the Little Rock 9 were

turned away from central high,

they returned accompanied by troops of the
101st

airborne

"We were al in an Army station wagon

machine gun mounts.

It was pretty heavy day and it's not what

everyone gets to go to school."

"you got paratroopers, you got helicopters,

jeeps in front, jeeps in behind."

"And we stepped out of the Jeep into

this square of soldiers who were serious.

You know as I walked up the steps that day,

at central high school, I can remember

the click of the leather boots on those stairs.

And I remember being so impressed by who they
were

there are America's. I am American.

And so the first time I get the feeling

that there is hope,

that there is a reson I salute the flag

that this is what America is about."

"I felt that Little Rock

would never be the same again.

We would never know life as we had known it

because 9 people walked into a school building."

(music)

"My teenage models had been the kids

who danced on American Bandstand.

And all of a sudden came the Little Rock 9.

And I could remember having the feeling

that they have been tied, and tested and

they survived. Someday in some way

I am going to be tested in this way too.

So I think when the movement comes along in
the

1960's, I am ready for it."

(music)

By the late 1950's,

driven by the powerful economy,

the American people's long running

fascination with automobiles was changing

the very fabric of the county.

"The car came to be the dominant symbol

of American life and had an impact

on American life that is difficult to exaggerate.

Americans were now confronted with a

dazzling array of choices on the showroom
floors,

so many that for the first time,

people began to view cars in the same way

that they had viewed clothes or hairdos

as an emblem of their personality.

"Ford Thunderbird. Even the name had a ring
to it.

"A yellow station wagon. A station wagon

provides room in the back to carry the lawnmower

that's broken."

"my boyfriend drove a Chevrolet

and I thought that's the prettiest car

I have ever seen in my life.

I felt like a queen in that car."

General Motors had a budget the size of Polands.

Nationwide, every 7th job was

related to the automobile industry.

The term 'drive in' became a part of a language.

There was a national hotel chain

created entirely for road travelers.

And a restaurant that spoke exclusively to

a new mobile country.

But the most profound effect the car on

American life, the one and actually

altered the landscape, was the immense

new federal highway system began in 1956

The largest public works project in history

forever connected American motorist from city

to city. From coast to coast.

(music)

"We use to stop and study those maps.

That would show you proposed state highway

interstate highway under construction and
then

the pay off completed and open, and we

would get on those interstates and run those

big cars, with the big fins on it."

(music)

It was just wonderful

it opened the whole world to us."

What most Americans did not realize

was that the freeway had been built with

an alternative motive.

The over passes freedom loving motorists

were driving under were

built 15 feet high in order to allow

the easy movement of missile systems.

President Eisenhower approved the project
in part

because he wanted the military traffic

to be able to move easily in the event of

a national crisis.

In the frivolous 1950's

people lived under the ever darkening

shadow of the cold war.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union eac

now had massive arsenals at their

disposal.

The cold war struggle seemed to be everywhere.

In Hungary, when people rebelled against

the Russian occupation in 1956,

they believed America would intervene

on their behalf.

"This was very difficult for the

United States, after all we had been saying

Liberation of Hungary is important to free

world and so forth, but what were we gonna
do about it.?"

"But the Russians put in there was so much

in the way of tanks and troops,

that this would have been a major war.

"It's just heartbreaking. At the

height of the crisis with the Russian

tanks on the street below, the kids

had control of the radio station

they were broadcasting S.O.S

The tanks are here we need help.

You promised to help us, where is our help

and there was no answer."

Maybe 10,000 Hungarians died at the alter
of the

super power competition,

a competition that was taking on apocalyptic

overtones.

(bombs)

(music)

It had taken the Soviets 4 years to

duplicate American success with the atomic
bomb.

It took only 8 months for them to do the same

with the hydrogen bomb.

"Well, there wasn't any doubt that peple

were building them as fast as they could.

We've got to build them , we've got to

improve them, and keep at it, keep at it,

keep at it."

The need to test the new weapons was seen
as

so urgent that the U.S. government

even put it's own troops in harms way.

Within a few months of the successful

Soviet hydrogen test in 1953,

several thousand American troops were

ordered into trenches in the Arizona desert.

One of them was Korean veteran,

Reisen Whereheim.

"The purpose of it was to test the reaction

of the troops.

To an atomic bomb.

They shot one off, you see this real bright

light. With your hands over your eyes

it feels like it compressing your head.

you can see the bones in your hands.

There is this god awful noise,

It's so loud, it's a feeling you

are in a vacuum cleaner that your whole

body has been vacuumed.

That house that was in front of us,

was no longer in front of us,

it was gone.

Of the 2,584 men that were there,

there's only 3 of us still alive."

How many Americans were effected all together

could never be fully determined.

The fallout from this explosion

known as Shot Simon, reached as far as

New Jersey, among the dirtiest of the 200

above ground nuclear tests that took place

between 1954 and 1958.

The same frenzied place was applied

to the rocket program.

Both super powers saw them as crucial

for the delivery of powerful nuclear halos.

American scientists were not always having
much luck.

(explosions)

"I saw the rockets that were pointed north

go south and those that were pointed south

go north.

I saw one go straight up in the air

and explode.

I saw one go straight up and come straight

back down again.

But never during those 100 launches did

I see anything go right."

On October 4th, 1957, someone did get it right.

"They say attention all radio stations

of the Soviet Union are broadcasting."

"this beep beep beep what is it?

Sputnik. Sputnik is around the globe.

Who did it? We did.

The Soviet Union. First into space."

"And I can remember going out to my

backyard at night looking up at this

bright streak going across the sky

and I felt a sudden sinking feeling

one of almost terror."

"Now suddenly, you have Soviet missiles

that can reach into the Dakotas,

it can reach Chicago."

With a surprise attack possible for the first
time

American's started to look at the sky

differently. Now as the place from which

terror might reign.

(whistle blowing)

And to learn some new terms like duck and
cover.

"I felt that the threat to America and

been increased. That the Soviet Union

had up the anti.

While we were playing cops and robbers

hide and seek in our backyards and our

frontyards, there was the gnawing anxiety

that it could all end instantaneously."

July 25th,1959

at a U.S. exhibition in Moscow

Soviet prime and American Vice President

Nixon discussed the relevant merits

of communism and capitalism.

"there are some instances where you

may be ahead of us, for instance in the

development of your rockets."

"Most of them was built from the same material

they were tough and they wanted to show each
other

which society is better."

What became known as the kitchen debate,

seemed to demonstrate America's new insecurity

in the world.

Sputnik had been a technological Pearl Harbor.

"It began a tremendous sense of

self appraisal are we falling behind

the Russians? What are we teaching our children?

I remember Life magazine doing a whole spread

on contrasting a Soviet and an American

high school and little Navona and Ivan

were studying rocket science and

Jim and Sue were boppin' in the high school
gym.

And the clear message of this was

that in 10-15 years we would be

a declining state of the Soviet Union

because we were wasting our lives

dancing away and dating while these

people were working 20 hour days."

Suddenly an American embrace

of intellectualism was being seen

on campuses

in libraries

and on new television quiz shows,

including 21.

Charles Vanduran was a contestant

he was the son of a celebrated professor.

He performed so brilliantly that he

became a national celebrity.

Everyday he received 100s of letters telling

him he was America's hope for a more

cerebral future.

It was a false hope.

In November 1959, Vanduran testified that

he had been given answers to the questions

he had been asked. The shows producers

had stage managed the contest in an

effort to win ratings.

"It was another let down."

"Back then, you believed people.

You believed people when they told you something

you accepted it as face value.

And here on television,

they would lie to you."

The media had exposed it's ugly side

for all to witness.

In the decade to come, Americans would

discover that television was not the only

beloved institution that was not quite as
it seemed.

As the 50's gave way to the 60's,

a new generation became a force in

popular culture and in politics.

That

That's all on the next episode of the

Century, America's time.

I'm Peter Jennings. We hope you'll join us.