Sexual Liberation

The moms and dads of 1950s nuclear suburban families were part of a sexual revolution that was in many ways just as significant as that of their children’s generation.

My parents were creating a new, independent life, away from their parents, hometowns, and depression-era mentalities. They were (lowbrow) readers, and their personal libraries included a cornucopia (which I also found and read) of fifties-sixties paperbacks and magazines exploring the new thinking about sex and imaginative renderings of such. For my dad, it included Playboy magazine. My parents seemed to share some genres, such as psychology/sociology/fiction popular texts like the Kinsey reports, Masters and Johnson and maybe the Ian Fleming series. And then there were my mom’s romance thrillers such as Peyton Place, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Valley of the Dolls, The Carpetbaggers, The Godfather and hundreds of more. For my dad, likely, Fanny Hill and Pornography and the Law. For me, the good parts, all.




From wikipedia:
Reviews
Murray Schumach's review in The New York Times on June 25, 1961 opens: "It was not quite proper to have printed The Carpetbaggers between covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory." He complains that the plot is merely "an excuse for a collection of monotonous episodes about normal and abnormal sex—and violence ranging from simple battery to gruesome varieties of murder." A recent anonymous Amazon reader review observed that the book "seemed to be the same thing over and over again—business deal, gratuitous sex scene, business deal, gratuitous sex scene."
On the day the review was published, The Carpetbaggers was already at number 9 on the Times bestseller list.
The most successful of Robbins's many successful books, it was eventually to sell, as of 2004, over eight million copies. The profile of Robbins in Gale's Contemporary Authors Online makes the startling claim that The Carpetbaggers is estimated to be the fourth most-read book in history."

Memories of others:

http://www.romantictimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1545&start=0&sid=55c66987b0f57761f67fd7f6e621557f

http://www.accessromance.com/blog/2007/02/27/forbidden-fruit/

From Betty Friedan, “The Sex Seekers’” The Feminine Mystique

The image of the aggressive sex-seeker also comes across in novels like Peyton Place and The Chapman Report—which consciously cater to the female hunger for sexual phantasy. Whether or not this fictional picture of the over-lusting female means that American women have come avid sex-seekers in real life, at least they have an insatiable need for books dealing with the sexual act—an appetite that, in fiction and in real life, does not always seem to be shared by the men. This discrepancy between the sexual preoccupation of American men and women—in fiction and in reality—may have a simple explanation. Suburban housewives, in particular, are more often sex-seekers, not only because of problems posed by children, coming home from school, cars parked overtime in driveways, and gossiping servants, but because, quite simply, men are not all that available. Men in general spend most of their hours in pursuits and passions that are not sexual, and have less need to make sex expand to fill the time available [See also Chapter 10, “Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time Available.”] So, from teen age to late middle age, American women are doomed to spend most of their lives in sexual phantasy. Even when the sexual affair—or the “extramarital petting” which Kinsey found on the increase—is real, it is never as real as the mystique has led the women to believe.

Cars, Homes, Sterling Silver and Mink Coats

Suburban families in the late 50s and early 60s had many shopping choices.

My family began as a one-car family, then added a second car for mom’s family travel needs (it also gave her a sense of independence), and then a third and fourth car for teenaged boys.


Detroit built in obsolescence by aggressive changing of styles and features.

The 1956 Chevrolet was a great car.

But the 1957 was even better.

Ten years later, the car culture determined that the 1957 Chevrolet was the classic of the 50s, as consumers reflexively re-rated the cultural messages of American industry and Madison Avenue.

Homes are identity commodities not unlike cars, and many of our suburban families saw the need to upgrade housing. My suburban neighborhoods in Dallas were extremely homogenous in their WASP, middle class make-up, but each succeeding housing development made new distinctions in possibilities of class and taste identities for families. Some stayed in place like my family, but many moved up.

While homes and cars are today as important to consumers as they were fifty years ago, two consumer items sought by many suburban families (including my mom) then stand in sharp relief—sterling silver flatware and mink coats. As baby boomers inherit the belongings of their dying parents, eBay is filled with these quaint status symbols, available at bargain basement prices.

Manufacturers of flatware in the forties and fifties used all the motivational research available from depth psychologists to market their wares.

Betty Friedan, “The Sexual Sell,” The Feminine Mystique

The fact that the young bride now seeks in her marriage com­plete "fulfillment," that she now expects to "prove her own worth" and find all the "fundamental meanings" of life in her home, and to participate through her home in "the interesting ideas of the modern era, the future" has enormous "practical applications," advertisers were told. For all these meanings she seeks in her marriage, even her fear that she will be "left behind," can be channeled into the purchase of products. For example, a manufacturer of sterling silver, a product that is very difficult to sell, was told:
Reassure her that only with sterling can she be fully secure in her new role . . . it symbolizes her success as a modern woman. Above all, dramatize the fun and pride that derive from the job of cleaning silver. Stimulate the pride of achievement. "How much pride you get from the brief task that's so much fun . . ."
Concentrate on the very young teenage girls, this report further advised. The young ones will want what "the others" want, even if their mothers don't. ("As one of our teenagers said: `All the gang has started their own sets of sterling. We're real keen about it--compare patterns and go through the ads together. My own family never had any sterling and they think I'm showing off when I spend my money on it they think plated's just as good. But the kids think they're way off base.'") Get them in schools, churches, sororities, social clubs; get them through home-eco­nomics teachers, group leaders, teenage TV programs and teen­age advertising. "This is the big market of the future and word-­of-mouth advertising, along with group pressure, is not only the most potent influence but in the absence of tradition, a most necessary one."
As for the more independent older wife, that unfortunate tend­ency to use materials that require little care--stainless steel, plastic dishes, paper napkins--can be met by making her feel guilty about the effects on the children. ("As one young wife told us: `I'm out of the house all day long, so I can't prepare and serve meals the way I want to. I don't like it that way--my husband and the children deserve a better break. Sometimes I think it'd be better if we tried to get along on one salary and have a real home life but there are always so many things we need."') Such guilt, the report maintained, can be used to make her see the product, silver, as a means of holding the family together; it gives "added psychological value." What's more, the product can even fill the housewife's need for identity: "Suggest that it becomes truly part of you, reflecting you. Do not be afraid to suggest mystically that sterling will adapt itself to any house and any person."


Betty Friedan, “The Sexual Sell,” The Feminine Mystique

The fur industry is in trouble, another survey reported, be­cause young high school and college girls equate fur coats with "uselessness" and "a kept woman." Again the advice was to get to the very young before these unfortunate connotations have formed. ("By introducing youngsters to positive fur experiences, the probabilities of easing their way into garment purchasing in their teens is enhanced.") Point out that "the wearing of a fur garment actually establishes femininity and sexuality for a woman." ("It's the kind of thing a girl looks forward to. It means something. It's feminine." "I'm bringing my daughter up right. She always wants to put on `mommy's coat.' She'll want them. She's a real girl.") But keep in mind that "mink has con­tributed a negative feminine symbolism to the whole fur market. "Unfortunately, two out of three women felt mink-wearers were "predatory . . . exploitative . . . dependent . . . socially non­productive . . ."
Femininity today cannot be so explicitly predatory, exploita­tive, the report said; nor can it have the old high-fashion "con­notations of stand-out-from-the-crowd, self-centeredness." And so fur's "ego-orientation" must be reduced and replaced with the new femininity of the housewife, for whom ego-orientation must be translated into togetherness, family-orientation.
Begin to create the feeling that fur is a necessity--a delightful neces­sity . . . thus providing the consumer with moral permission to pur­chase something she now feels is ego-oriented. . . . Give fur femin­inity a broader character, developing some of the following status and prestige symbols . . . an emotionally happy woman . . . wife and mother who wins the affection and respect of her husband and her children because of the kind of person she is, and the kind of role she performs. . . .
Place furs in a family setting; show the pleasure and admiration of a fur garment derived by family members, husband and children; their pride in their mother's appearance, in her ownership of a fur garment. Develop fur garments as "family" gifts--enable the whole family to enjoy that garment at Christmas, etc., thus reducing its ego ­orientation for the owner and eliminating her guilt over her alleged self-indulgence.

Learning the Ropes about American Commerce--Part 2

As a child growing up in a Dallas suburb, I crossed the divide between shopping in an old central business district and the new suburban shopping centers. Downtown Dallas was a man’s world in the fifties and early sixties—congested with diversity of Dallas’s population, noisy, dirty, smelly, with shopping excitement I could not find elsewhere. It was the central district for entertainment, with its movie row, bars, tea rooms, Magicland, Planters Peanuts, and the best restaurants.

In contrast, nearby forties/fifties shopping centers were a feminine world, designed for suburban housewives and populated by them during the men’s workweek, when fathers left the suburbs.

My father was a businessman, dressing in a business suit (Hart Schaffner and Marx with Dobbs felt hat) who made the daily drive, sometimes in a carpool, to the manly caverns of downtown.


My mom was a stay-at-home housewife during most of those years. During the fifties, her shopping occasionally took her downtown, but she preferred the convenience of the shopping centers, where parking was accessible, fellow shoppers were just like her, and stores were designed to fit the tastes of fifties moms—they had everything she could find downtown and more.

Like other suburbs across America, Dallas exploded with new shopping opportunities—Lochwood, Big Town, Preston Center, Northpark, all with their anchors such as Titche’s, Sangers, Neiman Marcus, Sears, et al. It was not a coincidence that when my mother decided to go back to work—to make some supplementary income for her kids’ college--she chose to work as a part-time credit department clerk at Titche’s in Lochwood. She had been collecting credit cards from the major department stores (VISA and Mastercard were yet to be Discovered), which emancipated her from the scrutiny of weekly allowances and budgets and allowed my family to step forward into debt to take full advantages of Postwar America’s civic obligation to grow the American Pie through consumption.

At first, she had to work an occasional Thursday night and Saturday—those being the only times stores were open outside the Monday-Friday workweek. Blue laws (protecting Sunday rest and small retailers) shut down commerce for a time, but soon large retailers won out to the desires of the suburban populace and were open when suburbanites preferred to make their buying decisions, at night or on weekends. Housewives, working at minimum wage and without benefits, were an ideal manpower. My mom helped her employer by spending much of her check on purchases from Titche’s. She also was full of excitement as she sat with my father at the kitchen table in the evening, talking about her work successes (she was a smart, conscientious worker recognized as a winner by her Titche’s bosses) and able to experience for the first time the adult-like frustrations and challenges of dealing with bosses, coworkers and customers.

See The Consumer's Republic by Liz Cohen for more on this topic.

From The Feminine Mystique, Chapter 9 “The Sexual Sell”

In 1957, a survey told the depart­ment stores that their role in this new world was not only to "sell" the housewife but to satisfy her need for "education"--to satisfy the yearning she has, alone in her house, to feel herself a part of the changing world. The store will sell her more, the report said, if it will understand that the real need she is trying to fill by shopping is not anything she can buy there.
“Most women have not only a material need, but a psychological compulsion to visit department stores. They live in comparative isola­tion. Their vista and experiences are limited. They know that there is a vaster life beyond their horizon and they fear that life will pass them by.
“Department stores break down that isolation. The woman entering a department store suddenly has the feeling she knows what is going on in the world. Department stores, more than magazines, TV, or any other medium of mass communication, are most women's main source of information about the various aspects of life . . .
"There are many needs that the department store must fill,” this report continued. For one, the housewife's "need to learn and to advance in life.”
“We symbolize our social position by the objects with which we surround ourselves. A woman whose husband was making $6,000 a few years ago and is making $10,000 now needs to learn a whole new set of symbols. Department stores are her best teachers of this subject.”
For another, there is the need for achievement, which for the new modern housewife, is primarily filled by a "bargain. . . . Since buying is only the climax of a complicated relationship, based to a large extent on the woman's yearning to know how to be a more attractive woman, a better housewife, a superior mother, etc., use this motivation in all your promotion and advertising. Take every oppor­tunity to explain how your store will help her fulfill her most cher­ished roles in life . . .”
“If the stores are women's school of life, ads are the textbooks. They have an inexhaustible avidity for these ads which give them the illusion that they are in contact with what is going on in the world of inani­mate objects, objects through which they express so much of so many of their drives. . . .”

Learning the Ropes About American Commerce

Reinhardt kids were surrounded by advertising appeals. Stepping across the great divide of the older reading culture and the new media of electronic images, we had many sources for our shopping. A child bookworm like me could spend hours reading every line of type within a comic book, a Mad magazine, or a Boy’s Life, including ads like these:

Several of my greatest sources of excitement and greatest disappointments were mail order transactions from these types of ads. For instance, I had the same experience as Louise in joining the Smokey Bear Club. Read her MySpace blog story by clicking the link below. Scroll down to her blog dated Saturday, July 28, 2007--The Story of My Life Day 8:

http://blog.myspace.com/198075569

[A Smokey Bear doll was released by Ideal Toys in 1952, which included a mail-in card for children to become junior forest rangers. Within three years, half a million kids had applied. In April 1964, Smokey was given his own ZIP code, 20252.]

I wasn’t stupid enough to get sucked into buying the x-ray glasses described in this piece:

http://freakcomics.com/2005/09/14/false-advertising-in-comics/

As a Mickey Mouse Club member and avowed straight shooter, I likely had my share of Mattel guns.





And I believe I spent 15 minutes or so of my life trying to figure out this idiotic toy:

The picture shows all (6) 1954 Kellogg's Corn Flakes Cereal U.S. Navy Frogmen Premiums in this lot. These Navy Diver figures dive with baking soda. All six have their metal caps on the bottom. A 1954 Kellogg's adverisement states: "6 COLORS - COLLECT THEM ALL!" well, there are six different colors here. Included here are:
(3) Torch Man figures
(2) Obstacles Scout figures
(1) Demolitions Expert figure.

And my skinny brother got clipped on this one:

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, downtown Dallas had a store where we could see what we were purchasing before we bought it--Magicland and pick up a snack on the way at Planters Peanuts. [more to follow]

http://www.dallashistory.org/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=72767

One Man’s Dream Is Our Reality

Mr. and Mrs. Hancock and Mr. and Mrs. Williams encouraged my participation in many structured activities such as Sunday school, Cub and Boy Scouts, baseball and basketball team sports and Demolay. But for me at age 6-8, the most exciting structured activity to belong to was The Mickey Mouse Club, a relationship carried out entirely between me and my television set. The Mickey Mouse Club had members, hierarchy, songs, creeds, moral lessons (a la Disney), boy-girl attractions and much other excitement—especially the Hardy Boys mystery serials which aired afternoons in 1956.

Though my parents had little knowledge or involvement in this club activity, they probably weren’t concerned. The great heyday of the Mickey Mouse Club was actually in the 1930s, when kids my parents’ age joined this bizarre animal cult at their local theatres. Toy companies were often sponsors of the Saturday club meetings. The 30s MMCs eventually had 150,000 - 200,000 kid members, equal to the U.S. memberships of the Boy and Girl Scouts at the time.

Mickey Mouse Club Creed
“I will be a square shooter in my home, in school, on the playground, wherever I may be. I will be truthful and honorable and strive always to make myself a better and more useful citizen. I will respect my elders and help the aged, the helpless and children smaller than myself. In short, I will be a good American.”

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7477&si=121

During the thirties, some Soviet thinkers saw Mickey as in the vanguard of proletariet heroes, but Disney cleansed his studios of left-leaners in the late forties. Some modern critics liken the 30s MMC to Hitler's Youth of Nazi Germany, but by the fifties MMC was a tame capitalist's pipedream.

Mickey Mouse moved into his new home at the Disneyland Theme Park in Anaheim in 1955, and my family had been continuously apprised of this fun vacation opportunity while watching the Wonderful World of Disney and “Davy Crockett” in the early fifties. Through the sixties, seventies and eighties, various Hancock families spent tens of thousands of dollars on fun pilgrimages to the Disney parks. [From The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard: "An evidence of how big the business can be is that the Davy Crockett craze of 1955, which gave birth to 300 Davy Crockett products, lured $300,000,000 from American pockets."]

While the Wednesday night Disneyland shows had been a phenomenon never before seen—some shows attracted 90 million viewers, virtually every TV household in the country--the after-school bunch got in on another television growth extravaganza with the beginning of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955.

At age 7, I could hardly contain my excitement to rush home after school to watch “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure” series.

I’m sure that our family also bought many products advertised, such as the Mattell burp gun, for which Mattel paid $500,000 for a season’s advertising and struck the jackpot with 1 million orders between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mattel, #536, "Burp gun" Automatic cap gun. Safe 1 to 50 shots at trigger touch, noisy fire bursts, smoking barrel. All metal working parts. Perforated roll caps....1957.

The Hardy Boys series was kicked off with a preview promo in October, 1955. Click here to watch the promo.

Here are some other links about MMC and the 1956 Hardy Boys series.

http://www.tvdays.com/mattelstory3.htm

http://www.micechat.com/forums/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_anthology_series

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/hardys.html

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/10/07/hardy_boys/index.html

http://www3.sympatico.ca/farini/peacock/pages/Aexcerpts/FatherOfTheHardyBoys.html

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0319288/

http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article130.html

http://imagineerebirth.blogspot.com/2006/03/restoring-walt-disneys-disneyland.html

http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/hb0.htm

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/annette.htm

http://www.youthspecialties.com/articles/topics/culture/walt.php

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874558,00.html

http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/9434_10529Chp1.pdf

Critique of the disneyization or disneyfication of the world is a burgeoning academic industry. The 1955-58 Mickey Mouse Club and Hardy Boys serials are a tiny and relatively uncontroversial part of the larger story. But it is a worthy subject to ponder: what unique effects did TV and Disney have on Reinhardt kids of that time period?

Toward a Natural History of Reinhardt Boys—Part 2

When I was about 7 years old, my brother—five years older than me—had many anxieties about his small stature. His biggest fear was that, while walking to Gaston, he would be attacked by a roving gang of hoods intent to rip the leather patch from the waist of his new pair of Lee jeans (James Dean wore Lee's in "Rebel.") I should be concerned too walking to Reinhardt—sometimes the gangs would just rip off your pants and leave you on the street in your underwear.



Our new television culture of the mid-fifties provided my brother with some remedies for his anxiety—wrestling moves such as the half nelson, the full nelson, the scissor lock and, most terrible of all, the stomach (or tummy) claw.



Of course, what better object on which to practice your wrestling abilities than on your weakling younger brother?

Before he would practice on me, he would have me join him in watching the weekly televised matches. Our heroes were Pepper Gomez and Lou Thesz. The bad guys included Duke Keomuka and the guy we learned the stomach claw from—I believe Killer Kowalski.

Click here for a clip from an early Pepper Gomez fight

And more info about Pepper Gomez and fifties wrestling, click here.

Hoods

When I was growing up in the fifties in East Dallas, we used the term "hood" to refer to adolescent boys that were on the edge, i.e., engaged in various juvenile delinquent activities such as Elvis hairdoes, drinking, smoking, having sex, riding motorcycles, carrying firearms, drag-racing, using marijuana, or vandalism/gangfights/crime.

The origin of this term distinguishes it from the later slang term associated with "neighborhood."

Check these links:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010327

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=hoodlum

http://www.answers.com/topic/hoodlum

http://www.answers.com/hood