1955: America's Return to Normalcy
“Every Year Should be 1955” Arthur Fonzarelli, aka, ‘Fonzie’
“The Fonze” was right. 1955 was the year that the United States finally relaxed for the first time since the bottom of the economy fell out in 1929. First, the Great Depression, then World War II, the Cold War, and a confusing and bloody war in Korea had left the nation facing one crisis after another. 1955 was the year when America breathed a sigh of relief and began to recover its self-confidence.
After World War II, many people feared that America would experience another Great Depression, similar to what happened after World War I.
As a teenager in the early 50s, I can still vividly remember my aunt who raised me telling me that a depression was coming. And then one day in 1955, out of the blue, she remarked that maybe we wouldn’t have a new depression after all. She was right.
Reconversion to a peace-time economy after World War II went well despite a worrisome touch of inflation in 1948, and a short recession in 1949. The American economy flourished as it never had in the nation’s history.
Housing boom changed America
A number of factors came into play -- a construction boom in housing, the emergence of a new industry, television, that swept the nation between 1948-55, and a massive expansion of the automotive industry, dormant since 1929. All combined for America to enter one of its golden ages.
Between the depression in 1929 and the end of the war there had been virtually no home building in America, resulting in the worst housing shortage in American history. Nothing meant more to the average American than owning his own home, but that seemed beyond reach for most Americans during the Depression. During the war, there was no building for domestic purposes. But that changed rapidly. Between the end of the war and 1948, 2.6 million homes were built. In the decade after the war, the Levitt Construction Company built towns on the outskirts of congested cities and fueled the suburban housing boom that was one of the defining features of the 1950s. Using mass construction production techniques developed during the war, these Levittowns were a smashing success.
The Levitt Company built modern and efficient homes, financed by the GI Bill that provided housing for returning veterans at a reasonable price: around $100 down and monthly payments of $50-60 spread over 25 years. A two-bedroom Levitt home cost $7,900 in 1955 and came with a refrigerator, stove, washer, fireplace, and a car port. With incomes averaging $3,300-$3,500 in the mid-1950s, a Levitt home was within the reach of 50% of the American public. As a result of the housing boom, home ownership in America reached an unheard of 60-percent level by the end of the 1950s.
Televisions became ubiquitous
At a more superficial, yet important level was the development and spread of television ownership during the decade after World War II. Television had been practical since the 1920s, but its full development did not take place until after the war. With radio programming thriving since the 1930s, the major networks and their advertisers initially saw no place for television. That quickly ended. Television first became successful through sports broadcasting. Boxing and wrestling were perfectly suited to the small 12-½ inch screens available.
The televising of the 1947 World Series, then the nation’s biggest sporting event, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees also whet the appetite of sports viewers. The Gillette Shaving Company paid $100,000 to televise the second Joe Louis-Jersey Joe Walcott heavyweight fight in 1948, a portent of things to come.
There were approximately 40,000 televisions in the nation in 1947, almost exclusively along the East Coast, on the New York-Philadelphia-Washington corridor. Over the next three years television sales took off. The $400-$500 price of a television in 1947-48 was too much for the average family but by 1950, table models were available for under $200 and easily in the reach of the American worker. (I still have the cancelled check for our first TV, a Philco table model with 12-½ screen that cost $169 in February 1950).
By 1950, there were six million televisions in American homes. Five years later the figure was over 35 million. Sixty-five percent of American homes had a television by 1955 — 80% by the of the decade. No new technology: not radio, not motion pictures, not the computer caught on as quickly with the American public as television.
Nineteen-fifty-five turned out to be a critical year in television’s role in the creation of a common culture. That year saw the introduction of three of television’s great staples. For the new season that year, television networks introduced the adult Western. The first premiered in September: The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp starring Hugh O’Brien. While it was a success, it was followed by Gunsmoke starring James Arness, which set the format for all future Westerns on TV and ran for 20 years. There were 14 Westerns on the three major networks during the 1957 season.
Disney embraces the small screen
Equally significant was the decision by Disney Studios to enter television broadcasting in late 1954. Walt Disney was in the process of opening his first theme park, Disneyland in California in 1955, and decided to use television as a way to promote his new concept. Disney’s program opened on the poor cousin of the three networks, the American Broadcasting Company. One of its shows in 1955 about the career of Davy Crockett was a huge success in 1955. “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” its theme reached No. 1 on the hit parade in early 1955. The show also produced one of the iconic items of the generation, coonskin hats.
One of television’s classic shows of 1955 was Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners series. Tired of the demands of live television, Gleason produced 39 filmed episodes of his popular sketch, which featured Gleason as Ralph Kramden, the perpetually scheming Brooklyn bus driver. The show was a mild success in 1955 but has been on in re-runs ever since. Gleason’s co-stars, particularly Audrey Meadows as his wife, Alice, and Art Carney as his lovable bumbling friend, Ed Norton, became television legends. Interesting to imagine the reaction of today’s feminists to Gleason’s threats to send Alice “to the moon.”
Television executives had been trying to lure Alfred Hitchcock for some time. They succeeded in 1955 with one of the most lucrative contracts in television history. Hitchcock received $129,000 for each show with all rights to future sales reverting to him. The show was an immediate success, the result of high-quality scripts and solid acting performances over the years by future Hollywood stars such as Robert Redford, Charles Bronson, Walter Matthau, and Joanne Woodward, among others. Hitchcock’s personal contribution, other than directing a couple of episodes the first season, was the opening where in his own whimsical way he introduced the show and needled the sponsor at the same time.
Another interesting by -product of televisions success was its impact on the motion picture industry. The movie business had prospered as never before during World War II, peaking in 1946 when weekly attendance reached 91 million. A Supreme Court decision ordering the studios to surrender ownership of their chain of movie houses in 1948 added to the competition from television drove attendance down to half the post-war peak by the mid-1950s. Hollywood scrambled to regain its audience with gimmicks such as 3D movies, more color films, and the Spectacular concept. Nothing seemed to work and in 1954 and 1955, the major studios surrendered and sold their backlog of films to their hated enemy, giving television a new concept to exploit, classic movies on the small screen.
Growth of auto industry
The other branch of the economy that transformed America in the 1950s was the automotive industry. Just as after World War I, when Ford, General Motors and other branches of the car industry fueled the economic expansion of the “Roaring Twenties,” the same thing happened on a grander scale after the Second World War. On the eve of the Great Depression, there were approximately 25 million cars in the United States. When World War II ended the number was approximately the same with some nine million cars worth around $100 each.
Along with the housing boom, there was a massive expansion of the car industry beginning in 1946, fueled by the huge savings built up during the war. It took awhile for the industry to retool but by the mid-1950s, it was producing eight million cars a year. Automatic transmissions were becoming commonplace, replacing the older stick-shift gear system.
Malls offered plenty of parking and changed how people shop
The car boom also played a key role in transforming the American city. Downtown business districts with their crowded streets and shortage of parking spaces began to be challenged by a new concept, the suburban mall. Beginning in the early 1950s more than 1,500 malls were constructed throughout the nation changing the way people shopped for 50 years until the rise of online shopping suddenly made them obsolete. A sign of the importance of the automotive industry came in 1955 when Time magazine, the most influential arbiter of how Americans thought in the 1950s, named Harlow Curtis, head of General Motors as its Man of the Year.
Post-war prosperity and more leisure time also saw the expansion of sports as never before in America. Tennis and golf, which had been largely upper- and middle-class activities in the past, began to be played more widely. They were helped by the appearance of charismatic players like Ben Hogan and Sammy Snead in golf and Pancho Gonzales and Jack Kramer in tennis. Gonzales, son of a working-class Mexican American, dominated tennis through the mid-50s, with a great power game. More tennis courts and golf courses were being built during the 1950s than anytime in American history and both sports began to appear on television regularly, further fueling an interest in them.
Baseball found TV a challenge
Professional baseball, boxing and college football were the only sports that had a national following in the 1950s. Professional football, hockey and basketball had yet to become major sports, although college basketball was on the verge of becoming a big-time sport as the first generation of great African American players: Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor were beginning to make their presence felt.
Baseball had been struggling for several years. Attendance had peaked at 20.8 million in 1948, and then declined for five consecutive years by some six million. Attendance rose briefly in the mid-1950s largely because of franchises movements: Boston Braves to Milwaukee, St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City. Only two teams in the National League drew over a million fans in 1955. The pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers with one the best teams in baseball barely topped the million mark in attendance. The New York Yankees, despite winning their seventh pennant in nine years, attracted less than 1.5 million fans.
Part of baseball’s problem was the simple; New York teams had dominated the major leagues for too long. The public was bored with the lack of competition and one-city domination. Since the 1947 only three non-New York Teams had won pennants: Cleveland twice, the Boston Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies once. The only non-New York team to win a World Series in that period was Cleveland in 1948.
Most of baseball’s ballparks were old, located in declining and in racially changing neighborhoods. No new ballpark had been built since Cleveland moved in 1931 to Municipal Stadium, affectionately known as the “mistake by the lake.” The last true new park was Yankee Stadium, which had been built more than 30 years earlier in 1933. Despite the automobile revolution there was virtually no room for parking.
Baseball also did not know how to deal with television. It had learned that radio broadcasting could be used to create fan interest. But the older generation of baseball owners feared television. Their attitude was summed up by one of baseball’s true geniuses, Branch Rickey, the man who had shown courage by integrating the sport. Radio created fans, he said, while television satiates their interest.
The 1955 World Series was exciting as the Dodgers didn’t “have to wait ‘til next year.” They won the Series in seven thrilling games, including a 2-0 shutout in Game 7 behind 22-year-old lefty, Johnny Podres.
Football, boxing experienced a renaissance
College football experienced its greatest prosperity since the 1920s glory days of Red Grange, Knute Rockne and Jim Thorpe. With the expansion of college education fueled by the GI Bill, sports on campus became popular again. Football was the main beneficiary. Schools like Notre Dame, Oklahoma, UCLA, Michigan, and Alabama put together major football programs and college stadiums were filled once again. College football also benefited from the emergence of television. The game and its layout perfectly suited television.
Unlike baseball, where the speed of the pitching, and hitting a small white ball made the game hard to follow on television, football was a perfect fit. It was easier for the viewer to follow the unfolding of the various aspects of football play whether passing, running, or kicking. Also, since college games were played on Saturday afternoon, television had a product to show on what was otherwise dead airtime.
Boxing experienced one of its golden ages in the 1950s. As a rule, if there is a charismatic heavyweight champ, boxing thrives. In the 1950s, boxing had one of the most popular heavyweight champs in the sports history, Rocky Marciano. The only undefeated champion in heavyweight history, he restored interest in boxing that had waned after Joe Louis retired.
At the same time boxing’s other divisions produced some of the most colorful and talented fighters in boxing history. Willie Pep dominated the featherweight division and won more than 220 fights during his career. The welterweight and middleweight divisions produced some of the greatest fighters in boxing history: Sugar Ray Robinson, Carmen Basilio, Jake LaMotta, and Joey Giardello to mention just a few. Archie Moore dominated the light heavyweight division throughout the 1950s and lost a celebrated bout to Marciano in 1956. A big part of boxing’s success in the 1950s was the way the sport perfectly suited television’s small screen.
By the mid-50s America had made peace with itself. The political scene was relatively quiet, especially after the end of anti-communist purges with the censure of Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954. President Dwight Eisenhower, known to all as “Ike,” presided over a flourishing and prosperous nation like a kindly grandfather. America was beginning finally to confront its treatment of the African American population. In 1954, the Supreme Court ended the “separate but equal” concept and while compliance was slow, the decision marked a major turning point in the ending of official segregation in America.
Interestingly, it was in 1955 that Rosa Parks took her stand against segregation by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. It was the beginning of a slow revolution in racial relations in America that is still going on today.
Things weren’t all that pretty in the mid-1950s. America was facing a new set of problems. Not the problems of scarcity as in the depression -- high unemployment and sheer physical deprivation -- but the problems of prosperity, which are much easier to bear.
It is an exaggeration to call any period in a nation’s history a Golden Era. But the mid-1950s came as close to that ideal.
