1. The 1950s was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century. It’s a decade of Fun, Excitementand Individuality!
2. Music Rock and roll Rock and roll dominated popular music in the 1950s. The musical style originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent were released the initial early rock and roll hits. The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.[3] Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct sub-genres, including rockabilly (see below) in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley
3. Elvis Presley, whom began his career in the mid 1950's, soon became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial during that period. "Ain't nothing but a hound dog" was barely heard through a crowd of wild teenagers of the 1950's listening to their teen idol, Elvis! This teen idol was perfect for this crowd of teens. Teenagers in the fifties wanted to be different and alike at the same time. They wanted to be cool, but "different". This is why Elvis was perfect for them. Rock and Roll was brought into the world at this time and most parents thought it was unsuitable for a family audience. The teenagers loved him though, they thought he was the greatest thing on Earth. Video
4. Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and considered one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybelline" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Video
5. TV shows The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet Dragnet Father Knows Best Have Gun - Will Travel The Honeymooners I Love Lucy I Married Joan ………
6. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is an American sitcom, airing on ABC from October 3, 1952 to September 3, 1966, starring the real life Nelson family. After a long run on radio, the show was brought to television where it continued its success, running on both radio and TV for a couple of years. The series starred Ozzie Nelson and his wife, singer Harriet Nelson (née Hilliard), and their young sons, David Nelson and Eric Nelson, better known as Ricky. Don DeFore had a recurring role as the Nelsons' friendly neighbor "Thorny". The series attracted large audiences, and although it was never a top-ten hit, it became synonymous with the 1950s ideal American family life. It is the longest-running live-action sitcom in US TV history.
7. Fifties Fads and Fashions There were many cool styles in fifties clothing. One of the popular styles were the Poodle Shirts! Along with the skirts, they usually wore a letter sweater, which was a sweater that had a letter on it. These are similar to the letter jackets worn today. Wearing scarfs on your head or around your neck was very in too. Boys usually wore jackets, usually a black leather jacket or club jacket, over a white t-shirt. The boys wore blue jeans and bowling shirts. Girls on the other hand preferred not to wear jeans. They wore fabric pants and skirts, or whatever felt comfortable.
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9. People in the fifties enjoyed their friends and this started the "hanging out" fad that still lives on. Back in the fifties people loved records and record players. For the first time, they could purchase records they enjoyed and play them as often as they desired. Compared to the dependence on the radio station playing popular songs, the record player was a new convenience. The drive-in movie was very popular! They actually had big theatres set up outside that you could drive your car right up to! That's where a lot of teenagers spent their time on weekends.
10. You may think that the Hula Hoop was a fad born in the 1950s, but it is said that people were doing much the same thing with circular hoops made from grape vines and stiff grasses all over the world. More than three thousand years ago, children in Egypt played with large hoops of dried grapevines. However, the use and fad of hula hoops grew big in the fifties. It started in 1957, when a visitor from Australia had a conversation with two young boys from California. He mentioned that in Australia, bamboo hoops were used for exercises in gym class. These young boys were Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud" Melin, founders of the Wham-O Manufacturing Company of San Gabriel. They began working on making a perfect hula hoop that would be easy to play with. Once they had the first hula hoop completed, they tested it on local playgrounds and found that it had the longest playing existence of any toy they had seen.
12. 1. VERTIGO (1958) video VERTIGO is Alfred Hitchcock’s finest hour - a tense, absorbing, and thrilling masterpiece about inner obsession. What many people fail to realize with this work is that it is a stunning film noir, but not completely in all of the literal definitions of the genre. It does not necessarily have the visceral look of the more conventional film noirs (the fact that was also shot in color instead of the usual black and white reinforces that), but it faithfully captures the tonality and pathos of the great noirs. VERTIGO is a multi-faceted work and an intense psychological study of a desperate, insecure man's twisted psyche. It also reveals itself as a mesmerizing study of doomed love and how one man’s lonely fixation with the illusion of loving a woman long past dead. In this way, it’s one of the more startling romances of the macabre ever conceived and rounds off Hitch’s trilogy of films with decidedly voyeuristic themes (those being his two other masterpieces – PSYCHO and REAR WINDOW). Jimmy Stewart, the best actor of Hollywood’s Golden Age, plays his greatest role as a man that not only must battle his own fear of heights (vertigo), but also must battle his own personal demons, such as a desperate search for identity, not to mention his sickening preoccupation with treachery and death, female victimization and his degrading manipulation of women. VERTIGO is Hitchcock’s best, most intrinsically fascinating work. The scene where Kim Novak – as fetching as she ever was – reveals herself as a woman transformed into the image of Stewart’s long lost love, with the great Bernard Herman score swelling in the background, still remains one of the cinema’s most indelible moments.
13. 2. SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) I have seen far, far too many lists of the best films of the 50’s that seem to completely ignore Akira Kurosawa’s greatest opus – SEVEN SAMURAI. Maybe because, after only one initial viewing, it’s quite a jarring, confusing, and exasperating endurance test. At nearly four hours, with diverse story threads and a multitude of characters with odd names that are hard to distinguish from one another, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the work as a whole. However, after viewing it for a second and third time over the last few years, Kurosawa’s film elicits stronger and more deeply resonating feelings. It has a rich tapestry and texture that many films of the period completely lack, and with its 208 minute running time we are dealt up a series of interwoven stories and personas – a style that seems a bit ahead of its time. The film is remarkably democratic look at social class structure. Kurosawa paid equal attention to the 16th Century peasant farmers as he did with the samurai. Some of the critics that found the acting stilted and theatrical missed the point – this is a stirring and majestic recounting of a legend that dates back centuries and deals with archetypal figures. Filled with beautifully composed images and shots, as well as a story of complexity and emotional weight, SEVEN SAMURAI remains a landmark work for its director. Watch it once and you’ll have difficulty immersing yourself in it. Watch it again and again and you’ll see why it’s such a layered and faceted film-going experience.
14. Important Historic and Cultural Events 1950 - Pres. Harry Truman ( 'til 1952) approves production of the hydrogen bomb and sends air force and navy to Korea in June. 1951 - Transcontinental television begins with a speech by Pres. Truman. 1953 - 1961 Dwight D. Eisenhower is president. 1952 - The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 removes racial and ethnic barriers to becoming a U.S. citizen. 1953 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are electrocuted for their part in W.W.II espionage. 1953 - Fighting ends in Korea. 1954 - U. S. Senator Joseph McCarthy begins televised hearings into alleged Communists in the army. 1954 - Racial segregation is ruled unconstitutional in public schools by the U.S. Supreme Court. 1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 1955 - The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge making the new AFL-CIO an organization with 15 million members. also in 1955 Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio 1956 - The Federal Highway Act is signed, marking the beginning of work on the interstate highway system. 1958 - Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite, successfully orbits the earth. 1958 - The first domestic jet-airline passenger service is begun by National Airlines between New York City and Miami.
15. - 1959 - Alaska and Hawaii become the forty-ninth and fiftieth states !!!!
16. 50th person Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) Rosa parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement
![Music Rock and roll Rock and roll dominated popular music in the 1950s. The musical style originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent were released the initial early rock and roll hits. The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.[3] Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct sub-genres, including rockabilly (see below) in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)