Elvis, Rosa Parks and (yes) Lucy rocked our world

03:38 PM MST on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

By CHARLES EALY / The Dallas Morning News

The Fifties are popularly remembered as a period of shiny complacency, but in reality, American culture was being shaken to its core by mid-decade.

In 1955 alone, the nation sat up and took notice of Elvis and rock 'n' roll. It witnessed the introduction of the McDonald's fast-food chain and the first home microwaves. It saw the rise of teen culture, with James Dean representing youth alienation in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. And it ushered in an era of children's entertainment with the opening of Disneyland, the TV debut of The Mickey Mouse Club and the first Saturday morning TV cartoon, The Mighty Mouse Playhouse.

It was also a year of political upheaval, with the birth of the civil rights movement, the disaffection of the suburban middle class, the push toward oral contraceptives and the introduction of U.S. military advisers in Vietnam.

And when we look at America in 2005, it's fairly clear that many of our achievements – and difficulties – date back 50 years.

"It's a crucial year in a crucial decade in so many ways," says Christopher Sharrett, a professor of communications and film studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. "I think the year represents the increasing discontent of Americans during a period of great prosperity and expansion" after World War II.

It's easy to overemphasize one year such as 1955 and not see history as a continuum, historians say. But "we begin to see major cracks in the plaster of American culture," Dr. Sharrett says.

"Freedom is the key word," adds Michael Roth, president of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. "You can see the emergence of various groups who value freedom above all and who are trying to create the conditions for psychological and political liberation."

Take, for instance, America's youth.

Before 1955, children and teenagers weren't really considered a separate, powerful market force by corporate America. But all that began to change with cultural and technological shifts after World War II.

Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, expressed youthful disappointment in suburban life at the same time that it introduced sexual tension, not only between a young man and woman, but also between two young men.

And then there was Blackboard Jungle, which explored teen rebellion in schools. Partly because of the movie's popularity, "Rock Around the Clock," which was on the soundtrack, was the first rock tune to top the charts.

The emergence of the teen market coincided with the rise of rock 'n' roll. Before 1955, mainstream America really hadn't embraced rock – or Elvis, who was primarily a Southern phenomenon. But all of that changed when Elvis sealed a record-breaking deal with RCA. And in March of '55, Elvis made his TV debut.

"You have the appearance of black rhythm and blues before the white middle class via TV," says Dr. Sharrett. "And with Elvis, you have the convergence of poor black and poor white music. It was an affront to the white middle class at first, but it was embraced by the youth culture of the time."

Still, few people would argue that white teens threw off the shackles of historical racism in 1955. "With Elvis, you saw white kids becoming fascinated with black music," Dr. Sharrett says. "But in a racist society, there had to be a white man to act as a bridge between those two cultures."

Teen identification with music originating from the African-American tradition dovetailed with yet another world-shaking event in '55: the rise of the civil rights movement.

It would be a disservice to black Americans to say that the struggle for freedom didn't date back to pre-Civil War days, "when thousands of African-Americans fled from slavery every year," says John Hope Franklin, a historian and professor emeritus at Duke University.

But Dr. Franklin sees mountains and valleys in history's landscape. And many historians, including Dr. Franklin, agree that the modern civil rights movement and the struggle for equality reached a high point in '55 partly because of two events: the murder of Emmett Till and the acquittal of his killers, and the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her bus seat, leading to the first large-scale, organized, civil rights boycott of the century.

Both events occurred one year after the historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, striking down the notion of separate but equal schools. And both events helped set the stage for what was to come: the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. and the protest movements of the 1960s.

The transformations in 1955, of course, weren't limited to teens and black Americans. For women, it was a year of great contradictions and struggles. And nowhere was that seen more clearly than on television.

The typical image of white picket fences and tidy homes began to disintegrate on the very medium that helped idealize consumerism and American family life with such shows as Father Knows Best and O zzie and Harriet.

"Cultural clashes started playing out on TV in the '50s," says Marsha Cassidy, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s . And some of these clashes can be seen with the rise of the controversial sob-story shows during daytime telecasts.

By the mid-1950s, two of the biggest daytime TV hits were Glamour Girl and Queen for a Day. Both featured women who told sad stories, and the person with the biggest tear-jerking tale that prompted the loudest audience applause would get a prize. In the case of Glamour Girl, the prize was a makeover. And on the surface, Glamour Girl appeared to be "advocating the return to domesticity, the idea of charm, the idea that you need to be glamorous and be made into a new postwar ideal," Dr. Cassidy says.

But the sad stories women had to tell to win also undermined the national image of prosperity.

Both Queen for a Day and Glamour Girl, in fact, turned out to be "an affirmation that women were in a difficult spot" economically and culturally, Dr. Cassidy says. "From a feminist point of view, one could see these shows as exploitation. But it was also a way of hearing every day how other women were experiencing some of the constraints put upon them by the 1950s" – a precursor to the consciousness-raising sessions of the women's movement two decades later.

As marketers turned to TV to sell everything from washing machines to frozen dinners and microwaves to the idealized ladies at home, one of the most popular prime-time shows, I Love Lucy, was based on the notion that women wanted to express themselves and find fulfillment outside the home. Such wishes may have been the source of the show's humor, but those same wishes were also subversive.

"Even though Lucy is set in the domestic scene with Ricky, the unresolved premise of the show is that she's always trying to escape, to get out of domesticity, to get into showbiz or do a commercial," Dr. Cassidy says.

While teens, blacks and women were in the early stages of rebellion, the American white male adult was having second thoughts as well. And why wouldn't he, with Elvis swiveling his hips, Marilyn Monroe starring in The Seven Year Itch and Vladimir Nabokov writing the sexually subversive Lolita?

Adult males could take some comfort in the rise of the adult TV Western, with the debuts of Gunsmoke and Cheyenne. But one of the biggest best-selling books of '55 was Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which documents the travails of Tom Rath, a public relations executive who worries about how to support his family and comes home each night and starts knocking back highballs.

"To me, in 1955 you see these contradictions," says Dr. Sharrett. "There's one image of a nice suburban world, with everybody happy. But on the other hand, there's discontent being expressed at every level of culture, a discontent that would overflow in the 1960s."

But why in 1955, you might ask?

The answers vary. But Char Miller, director of urban studies at Trinity University in San Antonio, says it's probably related to the fact that "the United States formally becomes the most important superpower in the world. But we're troubled by that as a culture. We're tangled up with power, and we're trying to figure out our role in places like Vietnam and Korea."

He and others see the year as a point of convergence: the rise of television, consumerism, rock 'n' roll and prosperity, paired with a larger dialogue about recognition, equality and justice for teens, women and black Americans.

"Groups that haven't had their voices heard are speaking out and being heard in a growing common culture," adds Dr. Roth. "People take for granted now that they deserve to be heard, the idea that everybody has a story to tell. But that didn't start till the 1950s."

And this led to the generational, gender and racial battles that played out in the '60s and are still facing us today.

Dr. Miller acknowledges that by looking back at 1955, "we can find the source of our mistakes but probably not their resolution."

"But on the whole," he says, "I much prefer to live in a society where people who have long been discriminated against no longer face such egregious discrimination. We owe an enormous debt to Rosa Parks and others in the civil-rights movement, as well as to James Dean, who opened up a dialogue about what it means to be a teenager. We wouldn't be where we are if those people didn't struggle."

Angry young men were all the rage on the American screen of the '50s, and none left a bigger mark than James Dean. He died 50 years ago, but you still can't escape his tormented, androgynous mug.

Of course, he wasn't just angry. He was also cool, lost and lonely, searching for a sympathetic father figure in all three of the films he completed before crashing his Spyder into immortality. He was, as he exclaimed in Rebel Without a Cause, confused. He was also quintessentially modern, in both method and persona.

Dean wasn't alone in his portrayals of aimless, seething youths dismayed at the hypocrisy of his elders. Fellow method actor Marlon Brando helped create the type in 1953's The Wild One, the film that gave the band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club its name. "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" asks a woman in the film's small-town setting. "Whaddaya got?" responds the rebel. You name it; he'll rage against its machine.

Those blasted juvenile delinquents. They're at the core of Rebel Without a Cause, with the famous chicken run a symbol of their blind, fatalistic ennui and indifference to the day's societal decorum. And they're the phenomenon that inspired 1955's Blackboard Jungle , in which the faculty at an urban public school cowers in fear of the student body. (Lest you think "urban" is code for something else, the prime instigator, played by Vic Morrow, is white; the eventual voice of reason, played by Sidney Poitier, is black.)

If the '50s were a time of sweeping problems under the carpet and keeping up appearances, the burgeoning youth culture was the id that wouldn't keep quiet. Music had rock 'n' roll, a cultural bogeyman decades before hip-hop took the job; literature had the beats. The movies' pied piper was Dean.

Today, he might look at the commodity he has become and offer a smirk and an inarticulate mumble. The 50th anniversary of his death has yielded a bounty of books, including biographies (James Dean: Rebel Without a Cause), photo albums (James Dean: Feature Photographs From the Dean Family's Private Collection) and behind-the-scenes studies (Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause). The documentary world has chipped in as well, with James Dean – Forever Young and James Dean: Sense Memories . (Both are available on DVD.)

He didn't invent the mixture of vulnerability and anger, but he has defined it ever since his death. Such is the power of icons, even wandering, confused icons that don't know which way to turn.

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com

Rock 'n' roll was born before 1955, but that was the year the world first heard it bawling and screaming.

"Rock Around the Clock" shot up the pop charts in '55, as did "Maybellene" and "Ain't It a Shame." It was the year a skinny young truck driver from the Deep South named Elvis Presley became a star.

The King had already cut his first key recordings on July 5, 1954 – a date many historians call the "birth" of rock 'n' roll. In truth, rock was crawling around the underground years earlier in songs such as "Rocket 88," "Rock the Joint" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

But '55 was the year mainstream America took notice of both rock and Elvis: In March, he made his TV debut; in November, RCA signed him for the unheard-of sum of $40,000.

Mainstream pop radio wasn't quite ready for rock – airwaves were still dominated by ultra-smooth vocal hits such as the McGuire Sisters' "Sincerely" and the Four Aces' "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing."

Slowly, however, rough and raw sounds started creeping in: the barrelhouse blues-rock piano of Fats Domino's "Ain't It a Shame" (better known as "Ain't That a Shame") and the ripsnorting guitar of Chuck Berry's "Maybellene," which owed a thing or three to Dallas bluesman T-Bone Walker.

And then there was "Rock Around the Clock," a swinging rave-up by a former cowboy singer named Bill Haley and his band, the Comets. Spurred by its lightning-quick guitar solo (and a spot on the soundtrack to Blackboard Jungle), "Clock" hit No. 1 and stayed there for two months straight: Rock 'n' roll had arrived.

Still, some radio programmers weren't so sure about this rowdy new sound, especially when it was sung by black performers. Etta James' "Roll With Me Henry" was a huge R&B hit in '55, but white radio refused to play it, opting instead for a watered-down version by Georgia Gibbs titled "Dance With Me Henry." Well-scrubbed teen idol Pat Boone, just out of North Texas State College in Denton – covered "Ain't That a Shame" and took it to No. 1. Fats' version had barely cracked the Top 10.

But the roadblocks were about to come down. As 1955 ended, it was becoming clear that rock wasn't a passing fad – but something much, much bigger.

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com

When did television "come of age?" There's no official answer, but there's also little question that 1955 put the still-new medium in play as never before.

Landmark network children's programs made their first landings in morning and afternoon hours. The quiz-show scandals of coming years were rooted in 1955, which also saw Hollywood movie studios and a film director at the peak of his powers include the small screen in their big plans.

A guy named Johnny Carson got his first national exposure as host of a short-lived, prime-time variety hour. Jackie Gleason launched a sitcom that made him a TV immortal, and James Arness rode in as the star of the longest-running Western in TV history.

A bandleader who said "A one and a two," and a plain-faced impresario with an uncanny eye for talent lent their names to variety hours with seemingly eternal afterlives.

Alas, 1955 also provided a final resting place for the trailblazing Dumont Network. The once proud home of Captain Video knuckled under to the financial muscle of CBS, NBC and ABC. In short, the show business aspects of television kicked into high gear in this year.

Disney, flush with the runaway success of its prime-time Davy Crockett adventures, went after the after-school kiddie market with ABC's The Mickey Mouse Club. The burgeoning physical attributes of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello made her the show's breakout star. CBS simultaneously launched Captain Kangaroo as a preschool attraction and Mighty Mouse Playhouse as Saturday morning's first of innumerable cartoon series to come.

Warner Bros. Studios took the TV plunge with its ultimately successful Warner Bros. Presents on ABC. This first batch of three rotating dramas yielded just one hit, the Western Cheyenne.

Alfred Hitchcock, who just a year earlier had directed the classic Rear Window, began hosting the long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology series.

That fall's prime-time TV lineups also accommodated the Hollywood studio-inspired 20th Century-Fox Hour and Screen Director's Playhouse, both of which bombed.

Meanwhile, June's launch of The $64,000 Question had exploded onto the scene, surpassing I Love Lucy to become the season's No. 1-rated prime-time show. A wealth of copycat big-money quizzes followed, including NBC's infamously rigged Twenty-One, which drove all of the big-money game shows off the air by 1959.

Gunsmoke wouldn't leave prime time until 1975, capping an unprecedented 20-season run for a prime-time drama series and ushering in a wave of shoot-'em-ups that dominated the prime-time ratings from 1957 to 1962.

An astonishing 635 Gunsmoke episodes aired on CBS. Mr. Gleason made just 39 half-hours of The Honeymooners for the same network, launching it as part of his ongoing variety hour. In the time-honored pantheon of situation comedies, the Kramdens and the Nortons bow only to the Ricardos and Mertzes of I Love Lucy.

If that isn't enough, 1955 also birthed The Lawrence Welk Show and saw Toast of the Town changed to the name that made it forever famous, The Ed Sullivan Show.

Name another year that had such an impact on what TV became and what in many ways it remains. Take the rest of this year to think about it.

E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com

Betty Crocker of the 1950s was the precursor to today's home diva, Martha Stewart.

The year 1955 was a big one for Betty, advertising symbol to the postwar generation of cheerful homemakers who could "bake someone happy." That year, Betty got a significant makeover. Although perpetually age 32, Betty's 1955 face softened, her hair grayed at the temples and she looked like a sweet aunt instead of a dour hausfrau. Above all, she looked content.

This was important because Rosie the Riveter was having some adjustment problems. After working outside the home for real wages during the war, Rosie resented returning to the traditional women's place where the work was just as hard and never-ending. At least she could clock out at the factory.

But homemaking was the patriotic thing to do. Rosie had to make room for returning GIs who needed jobs. National sentiment declared it was her privilege, as well as her destiny, to bear and care for a passel of baby boomers while keeping house in a new bungalow built with a loan from the Veterans Administration.

This created a market for convenience foods and appliances, anything that would relieve some of the drudgery that Rosie had grown up watching her mother endure. Never underestimate the liberation of sliced bread. Available at the grocery store.

In the mid-'50s, women took to convenience foods such as cake mixes and TV dinners as enthusiastically as tranquilizers and alcohol to relieve the stress felt by a generation expected to be perfect mothers and wives. The "sudden loss of wartime independence bred disturbing new trends in depression and substance abuse," writes Susan Marks in her recently released history called Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food.

At least in the old pre-war days, no one portrayed an American woman who ran the vacuum in high heels and pearls, prepared thrilling meals and had the kids' hair slicked down by the time Dad got back to his castle, stretched out and put his feet on the furniture while watching the new TV.

Speaking of the small screen, Betty (played by various actresses) had parlayed her radio broadcasts into daytime television devoted to recipes using General Mills products, such as Gold Medal Flour. But she was as much about personal advice as snickerdoodles and homemaking tips: a kinder, gentler Dr. Phil gets real with a properly congealed salad.

She urged a tired and frustrated homemaker to "see a doctor, take time out for herself, accept your husband for who he was and concentrate on raising her children," according to Ms. Marks' chapter on Betty's postwar marketing phase.

With new products and new appliances came a new kind of cookbook. Published in 1950, Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook was an instant best-seller with sales close to that of the Bible. In 1955, "Big Red" – as it was known in the industry because of the bright red cover – was the soul of Gold Medal's diamond jubilee.

Among other innovations of the era:

•Campbell home economists developed the Green Bean Bake, still a shortcut to the ideal Thanksgiving.

•Tappan produced the first home microwave ovens priced at an inconvenient $1,300. Better Homes and Gardens magazine jump-started the trend by converting conventional recipes for the microwave.

•Ray Kroc's first McDonald's began serving what is today known as "fast food."

•Pillsbury brownie and frosting mix hit the market.

•General Mills revised its cake mix formula to require the addition of fresh eggs. Consumers resisted using cake mix that only required adding water. Too easy and they felt guilty.

Thirty years later, enter Martha Stewart, who has carried the Betty Crocker tradition into the 21st century by making cooking and housekeeping spectator sports through television. Whereas Betty gave how-to tips to match her motto, "You can do it. I can show you how;" Martha's fantasy homemaking is more vicarious gratification and retail instead of kitchen therapy.

Watching someone be perfect is easier than actually trying it at home.

E-mail dgriffith@dallasnews.com