The Fifties



""The world was beige and the music was crap... then "Heartbreak Hotel" came along and saved us all.""

- Billy Connolly

The Fabulous Fifties: An era of identical pink pressboard suburban houses filled with smiling, apron-clad housewives. All the men wear slippers and fedoras and smoke pipes, all the girls are teenaged and wear poodle skirts, and all the boys are cute, freckle faced scamps with slingshots in their pockets. Parents sleep in separate beds and only kiss each other on the cheek.

Anyone who isn't any of these characters are either greasers, Beatniks, gas-station attendants, or Elvis (who, in this era, wouldn't be caught dead in a rhinestone jumpsuit). With the possible exception of the gas station attendants, everyone on that list is a direct threat to the upright morals and values of the era and will not be afforded a spot in the basement bomb shelter when the Reds drop The Big One. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King and the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement stride across America, slowed down only by the occasional Corrupt Hick. The birth of rock 'n' roll took place in this era, to the horror of Moral Guardians, which also showed a resurgence in popularity.

At least that's the popular view of the real Fifties. In media, there are three versions of The Fifties. The first is the Fifties Fifties, i.e. how the time was portrayed in many works that were actually made then. In this version, The Fifties were a suburban paradise where everyone was always happy, either forgetting the bad events that happened during the last decade or reminiscing the prosperous times of previous decades, and there were no problems except for all those juvenile delinquents running around. Unless the local college had some commies spreading un-American values or the flying saucers are landing. The fifties uptightness was linked to real world social anxiety and atom-bomb jitters, after all. Don't expect the civil rights movement to show up. Hell, seeing actual black people is a bit of a crapshoot. The Fifties Fifties are now a popular subject of The Parody.

The next version is the Nostalgic Fifties of The Seventies and The Eighties. By that time, there were a huge number of adults nostalgic for the "simple times" of their youth and Hollywood obliged. The biggest difference between this version and the Fifties Fifties is that the rebellious teenagers are now the heroes. We learn that all the teenagers back then liked to hang out at the local Malt Shop, where a jukebox played Nothing but Hits. The girls were only Seemingly Wholesome and both sexes were experiencing their own Coming Of Age Stories while necking down at the Drive-In Theater and watching Robot Monster.

Finally, there are the Historical Fifties of The Nineties and the Present Day. The Nostalgic Fifties are now starting to die out, (although they've been replaced by The Eighties in spades; Tron Legacy is a particularly good example of this) as there are becoming fewer and fewer writers in Hollywood who remember the Fifties... and many of these writers are the children of those former "rebellious teens", and take a somewhat more jaundiced view of their parents' upbringing. Therefore, the time period, as portrayed by Hollywood, is becoming more the textbook version. Films about The Fifties today tend more to deal with the political issues of that era (civil rights, McCarthyism, etc.) and less with its teen culture. Which is not to say it is necessarily any more accurate of course, merely that the decade is now filtered more through a political/ideological lens than a nostalgic one and teenagers aren't the only people that matter.

For a glimpse of what (some) Americans actually living in the Fifties thought of their world, read the Time Travel stories of Jack Finney. His heroes are generally lonely, frustrated, unhappy bachelors eager to escape from their conformist gray-flannel-suited world, usually into The Gay Nineties.

Note that Film Noir was a major genre during the Fifties (though more so in the late 40s/early 50s) that doesn't easily fit in with any of the mainstream versions of the decade listed above. This includes modern noir set during the Fifties like L.A. Confidential or The Black Dahlia.

One of the longest cultural "decades"- in many ways its tropes cover the period from V-J Day to the Kennedy assassination, 1945-63, with a shift in trappings in about 1955-57 as TV ownership reached a tipping point, tailfin cars got REALLY wild, Rock and Roll started getting serious radio play and the first wave of Baby Boomers reached Junior High.

Interestingly, the decade has triggered highly contradictory reactions among people who do not remember it well since the 1970s. Fifties cars are still admired aesthetically (in some areas, you can still find them on the street), Fifties clothes are enormously popular for costume parties, and Fifties music (at least, the sort that doesn't sound like holdovers from the Forties) will probably never be thought unfashionable. In addition, many seem to view the decade, with much sadness, as a forever-vanished idyllic time that was infinitely more conservative and family-friendly (although this is not what people actually living through the decade necessarily thought). At the same time, the 1950s is often treated as a sort of historical Butt Monkey - an all-purpose dartboard on which anyone who is irritated by social repression - especially if it concerns sex - can feel free to take out their frustrations. (Whenever you hear of someone described as having "Fifties values," it usually isn't a compliment.)

But those who wish to Flanderize an entire decade should know that the 1950s were actually marked by great strides forward in social progress, sexual and otherwise. And in any case, they were a lot less repressed than the eras that preceded them. The decade was also a period of relative stability and unprecedented optimism, both probably enhanced by comparison since the period was bracketed by the horrors of World War II and the upcoming turbulence of The Sixties. This was particularly prevalent in the US, which had not only triumphed in the war but, more importantly, was just about the only major nation to come out of the conflict with its infrastructure intact. With no rebuilding to do, the focus was on innovation; there was a strong belief in the prospect of limitless progress through science and industry, which led to a lot of gee-whiz science fiction that's now covered with Zeerust. It's no coincidence that the ultimate embodiment of optimism, Disneyland, opened in 1955, with its cornerstone of Tomorrowland, promising a "great big beautiful tomorrow." Compare Aluminum Christmas Trees.

For more information, see our handy swell Useful Notes page.

See Also: The Roaring Twenties, The Thirties, The Forties, The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, Turn of the Millennium and The New Tens.

Fifties slang. If you want to talk like it's the Fifties, be sure to use these words:

 * "Swell" - Say this a lot, especially if you're a teenage girl and you're talking about something you like (usually a boy). Be sure to say it in an extra cutesy and/or sweet way. The more affected it sounds, the better. ("Oh, that's just swell!")
 * If you get tired of "swell" try "keen" or "neat" instead, but don't say "neat-o" or "cool" unless you're a beatnik.
 * "Gee whiz" - Be sure to say this every two seconds if you're a boy under twelve. It can be used in any situation since it doesn't really mean anything.
 * "Golly" can essentially serve the same purpose.
 * "Square" - Someone dull, out of it or otherwise not "in". Usually used to refer to a Nerd, since the Fifties were before Nerds Became Sexy and long before nerds were hardcore.
 * "Dreamboat" - If you're a girl, use this word to refer to your crush.
 * "Baby" - If you're a guy, this is what you call your girlfriend. Be sure to add the word "hey" before it whenever you address her, or start with "hello", but the second syllable should be of much lower tone. If you're The Big Bopper you can elongate both words. This is a great way to cover up if you can't remember her name (after all, all girls back then seemed to have names like Peggy Sue or Mary Lou, so it's easy to get them mixed up). If that doesn't work, call her the name of a candy, confection or anything else that tastes sweet. Fifties girls like to think that they remind you of what causes cavities.
 * "Dolls/Dames" - Girls/women collectively. If you happen to be a private detective, use it whenever you can justify it.
 * "Get with it, kid" - What you say to a square.
 * If you're a dad, call your teenaged daughter "Kitten" and your preteen son "Sport".

Popular tropes from this time period are:

 * The All American Boy
 * Babies Ever After: The post-World War Two Baby Boom continued unabated throughout the decade.
 * People born in the second half of the decade only stopped being called "Baby Boomers" when people noticed that they, largely immunized from polio at birth, with TV in their homes from earliest living memory, too young to go to Vietnam with their adolescence well into The Seventies and at the start of The New Tens still a decade or more from retirement with kids just starting High School, are really a generation unto themselves.
 * Badass Biker -- James Dean and Marlon Brando.
 * Beatnik -- the original Hipsters, man.
 * Actually, the original Hipsters were the white, middle-class young adults following Jazz musicians in the 30s and 40s.
 * Cold War
 * Dad the Veteran: Of World War II, naturally.
 * Deliberately Monochrome: in many call-backs to the decade.
 * Dirty Communists
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck
 * Hays Code: The reason for many of these tropes in fiction of the period.
 * Hell Bent for Leather: The teenage greasers in their leather jackets.
 * The end of the golden age of film and animation
 * The Golden Age Of Television, in which a lot of shows killed radio stars.
 * I Love Nuclear Power
 * Jive Turkey: classic radio skits from The Forties make this (and the whole Beatnik thing) Older Than Television.
 * The Korean War
 * Malt Shop
 * Mister Sandman Sequence: Mister Sandman was a popular late-50s hit, thus fueling the trope in nostalgia flicks.
 * The New Rock and Roll (well... the original Rock and Roll)
 * Nuclear Family
 * Nuke Em
 * Old School Dogfighting (every film set During the War.)
 * Opera Gloves the Fifties were the very last era in which gloves were considered a standard- albeit no longer mandatory- part of a woman's outfit. Everything after that was either a special occasion (like a fancy dress ball or a wedding) or fetish-wear.
 * Pretty in Mink (It seemed every housewife wanted a mink wrap. A common accessory for teenage girls going to dances was a white fur shoulder wrap, especially white rabbit with two puff balls on either end.)
 * Pimped Out Dress: From poodle and circle skirts to cocktail dresses to evening wear made by world-class designers like Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel, etc., it was a decade of high fashion that women has never dreamed of wearing.
 * Red Scare
 * Mnogo Nukes (You really don't understand the Red Scare hysteria of this period until you get the "bomber gap": the perception that the Soviets had thousands of nuclear-armed bombers ready to unleash fiery death on American cities. )
 * Retro Rockets (the design theme for the whole decade, fins and all.)
 * Seemingly Wholesome Fifties Girl
 * The Silver Age of Comic Books: from decent scenes to wierd powers
 * Standard Fifties Father
 * Stay in The Kitchen
 * Stepford Smiler
 * Stepford Suburbia
 * Suburbia itself
 * Sweater Girl
 * Teens Are Monsters
 * Teen Idol (from Elvis to Frankie Avalon)
 * Theres No B in Movie
 * Three D Movie

Anime and Manga

 * Kimba the White Lion. The Manga character first appeared in November, 1950.
 * Hakaba Kitaro. Series started in 1959.

Comic Books

 * Tintin. Series started in 1929.
 * Recap (1950).
 * Recap (1953).
 * Recap (1954).
 * Recap (1956).
 * Recap (1958).
 * Piet Pienter En Bert Bibber. First appeared in 1950.
 * Disney Ducks Comic Universe
 * The Junior Woodchucks. First appeared in February, 1951.
 * The Beagle Boys. First appeared in November, 1952.
 * Gyro Gearloose. First appeared in May, 1952.
 * April, May and June. First appeared in February, 1953.
 * Glittering Goldie O'Gilt. First appeared in March, 1953.
 * Flintheart Glomgold. First appeared in September, 1956.
 * Little Helper. First appeared in September, 1956.
 * Argus McSwine. First appeared in July, 1957.
 * Grandpa Beagle/Blackheart Beagle. Composite Character based on two different depictions of the Beagle Boys' founder.
 * Blackheart Beagle. First appeared in August, 1957.
 * Grandpa Beagle. First appeared in March, 1958.
 * General Snozzie. First appeared in June, 1958.
 * Dennis the Menace UK. First appeared in March, 1951.
 * Archie Comics
 * Midge Klump. First appeared in April, 1951.
 * Miss Bernice Beazley. Appeared c. 1957.
 * Mr. Svenson. First appeared in July, 1958.
 * Mad originally started as a comic book, with it's first issue debuting in August, 1952. It later converted to a magazine format by issue twenty-four in order to appease Harvey Kurtzman and keep him on as editor.
 * The Phantom Stranger. First appeared in August-September, 1952.
 * Richie Rich. First appeared in September, 1953.
 * Red Skull/Albert Malik is established as a Communist agent. First appeared (in this role) in December, 1953.
 * Mickey Mouse Comic Universe
 * Gilbert. First appeared in May, 1954.
 * Scuttle/Weasel. First appeared in February, 1957.
 * Krypto the Superdog. First appeared in March, 1955.
 * Jommeke. First appeared in October 30, 1955.
 * Martian Manhunter. First appeared in November, 1955.
 * The Beezer. Magazine launched in January, 1956.
 * Batwoman/Kathy Kane. First appeared in July, 1956.
 * The Flash
 * Flash/Bartholomew "Barry" Allen. First appeared in October, 1956.
 * Kid Flash/Wallace "Wally" West. First appeared in December, 1959.
 * Gaston Lagaffe. First appeared in 1957.
 * Brainiac. First appeared in July, 1958.
 * Adam Strange. First appeared in November, 1958.
 * Supergirl/Kara Zor-El/Linda Lee Danvers. First appeared in May, 1959.
 * Suicide Squad. Debuted in August-September, 1959. Later stories established that the Squad was founded during World War II.
 * Green Lantern/Hal Jordan. First appeared in October, 1959.

Film

 * See also Films of the 1950s
 * The golden age of Science fiction films, including:
 * The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a film about the human race being punished for the foolishness of the Cold War.
 * Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a horror movie (with at least one good remake in The Seventies) about conformism.
 * Marlon Brando made his name threatening the status quo as a bikers in:
 * The Wild One (1953)
 * Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
 * Godzilla. The film series started in 1954.
 * James Dean made his name threatening the status quo as a greaser in:
 * Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
 * Several films by Marilyn Monroe, including:
 * The Seven Year Itch (1955): the film that launched a thousand skirts.
 * A lot of B-Movies
 * Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
 * The Brain From Planet Arous (1957). It came from Planet Arous... with a taste for Earth Women!
 * Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
 * Attack of the Eye Creatures (1965) is a remake of the above.
 * Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
 * Matinee (1993) features MANT!, a Show Within a Show. It is a thinly-veiled expy of 3-D / Smell-O-Vision novelty maestro William Castle. WARNING: Not responsible for any occurances of sudden death by FRIGHT!
 * Pleasantville (1998) is a Deconstruction.

Literature

 * The works of The Beat Generation of writers were typically both written and set here.
 * My Fathers Dragon series by Ruth Stiles Gannett.
 * Elmer and the Dragon (1950)
 * The Dragons of Blueland (1951)
 * A Murder Is Announced (1950) by Agatha Christie.
 * The Daughter of Time (1951) by Josephine Tey.
 * The Old Man and The Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway.
 * Wise Blood (1952) by Flannery O Connor.
 * James Bond. The novel series started in 1953.
 * Live and Let Die (April, 1954).
 * Moonraker (April, 1955).
 * The Quiet American (1955) by Graham Greene.
 * The Last Hurrah (1956) by Edwin O'Connor.
 * Seize the Day (1956) by Saul Bellow.
 * Pnin (1957) by Vladimir Nabokov.
 * Naked Lunch (1959) by William S Burroughs.
 * The Tin Drum (1959) by Günter Grass. The frame story is set in the 1950s.

Live-Action TV

 * The Adventures of Superman
 * Alfred Hitchcock Presents
 * American Bandstand
 * Blue Peter
 * The Burns and Allen Show
 * Colgate Comedy Hour
 * Ed Sullivan Show
 * Father Knows Best
 * The Friendly Giant
 * Howdy Doody
 * I Love Lucy
 * The Jack Benny Program
 * Lassie
 * Leave It to Beaver
 * The Lone Ranger
 * The Mickey Mouse Club
 * The Muppets. Debuted in 1955
 * Sam and Friends
 * Panorama
 * Peter Gunn
 * The Phil Silvers Show
 * The Twilight Zone (Though often with a lot of none-too-subtle political commentary disguised as Sci Fi.)

Music

 * Chuck Berry. First recording in 1955.
 * James Brown. Debuted in 1955, first hit single in 1956.
 * Johnny Cash. Debuted in 1955.
 * Ray Charles. Career started in the 1940s. First chart hit in 1953.
 * Bobby Darin. First recording in 1956.
 * Bo Diddley. First recording in 1955.
 * Aretha Franklin. Debuted in 1956 with the album Songs of Faith.
 * Buddy Holly. Had his first recording in 1956, first studio album in 1957.
 * George Jones. Debuted in 1954, first chart hit in 1955.
 * Jerry Lee Lewis. First recording in 1956.
 * Little Richard. First recording in 1951, first chart hit in 1955.
 * Roy Orbison. Released a number of singles, starting in 1956.
 * Elvis Presley. Had his first recording in 1953, signed a professional contract in 1954.
 * Cliff Richard. First hit single in 1958, debut album in 1959.
 * Simon and Garfunkel. Duo formed in 1957.
 * Frank Sinatra. Recording career started in 1939. Sinatra continued to enjoy mainstream popularity through this decade.
 * Dean Martin. Made two recordings in the 40s but didn't become a major success until the following decade.

Music Genres That Started in the Fifties

 * Rock and Roll

Newspaper Comics

 * German comic Nick Knatterton. First appeared in 1950.
 * Beetle Bailey. Started in September, 1950.
 * Peanuts. Started in October, 1950.
 * Dennis the Menace US. Started in March, 1951.
 * Marmaduke. Started in 1954.
 * Andy Capp. Started in August, 1957.

Theatre

 * The Mousetrap. Premiered in October, 1952.
 * The Crucible. Premiered in January, 1953.
 * A View From the Bridge. Premiered in September, 1955.
 * The Music Man. Premiered in December, 1957.

Professional Wrestling

 * WWE. Established in 1952/1953.

Video Games

 * OXO. Created in 1952.
 * Tennis for Two. Created in 1958.

Western Animation

 * Limited Animation became popular, first as a stylistic choice, reflecting the modernist aesthetic of the period, and only later as a cost-saving measure. UPA Studios produced:
 * Mr. Magoo
 * Gerald McBoing-Boing
 * Rooty Toot Toot (1953)
 * The Unicorn in The Garden (1953)
 * Popeye and other animated shorts still appeared in theatres, the only place you could see in color.
 * Despite that most cartoon studios were in decline during this decade, Looney Tunes reached its heyday under the direction of Chuck Jones, as their most acclaimed shorts came out in the Fifties (though only 3 years into the next decade and the studio would be shut down).
 * Looney Tunes in The Fifties
 * The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950)
 * Rabbit of Seville (1950)
 * Rabbit Fire (1951)
 * Feed the Kitty (1952)
 * Rabbit Seasoning (1952)
 * Duck Amuck (1953)
 * Duck Dodgers in The Twenty Fourth And A Half Century (1953)
 * Bully for Bugs (1953)
 * One Froggy Evening (1955)
 * Ali Baba Bunny (1957)
 * What's Opera Doc (1957)
 * MGM was another cartoon studio that was still going strong through most of the Fifties, though they began to cut more corners and use more Limited Animation as time went on, to the point where the later Tom and Jerry shorts look a lot like Hanna-Barbera's 60's television work (they were both done by the same people).
 * The Dark Age of Animation began as studios used the techniques of limited animation as an excuse to crank out productions faster. Many Dark Age TV shows through the late '60s depicted a Nuclear Family straight out of The Fifties, with the rare subversive cartoon (including fifties animated shorts themselves, that hadn't been told what the decade was about.)
 * Baby Huey debuted in 1950.
 * Humphrey the Bear debuted in 1950.
 * Adventures in Music Duology. Debuted in 1953.
 * Speedy Gonzales debuted in August, 1953.
 * Chilly Willy debuted in December, 1953.
 * Tom Terrific debuted in 1957.
 * Sidney the Elephant debuted in 1958.
 * Hashimotosan debuted in 1959.
 * The Hanna Barbera studio was launched in this period and created some of its earliest characters:
 * The Ruff and Reddy Show (the first animated series made specifically for television)
 * The Huckleberry Hound Show
 * Yogi Bear
 * Quick Draw McGraw

Film

 * American Graffiti (though technically set in 1962)
 * The version of 1955 seen in the Back to The Future films has elements of both the Nostalgic Fifties and the Historical Fifties, but seems to generally lean more in the direction of the Nostalgic Fifties.
 * The John Waters movie Cry-Baby is more like an Affectionate Parody of the fifties and juvenile delinquent movies, but it still counts.
 * Grease
 * Peggy Sue Got Married
 * The Last Picture Show is bit more complicated than some on this list, in that it is both a rather bittersweet version of the period and one set unusually early (in 1951) which means it predates a lot of the standard decade tropes like rock 'n' roll or B-Movies. It's also set in a dying town in rural Texas, placing it at some remove from the middle-class "mainstream" of the era. (The teen characters listen to country and western songs and watch cowboy flicks!)
 * The Porky's movies were a particularly sex-crazed version, or maybe just riding the coattails of a Seventies trend.
 * Diner
 * Though the decade is never properly defined, Fido is set in a kind of alternate-history Fifties where a Zombie Apocalypse nearly wiped out humanity approximately twenty years before, and survivors live in fortress-like Stepford Suburbias surrounded by zombiefied wasteland.
 * Matinee (1993), though technically set in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, attempts to pinpoint on film the moment when a town full of adorable scamps and movie lovers left The Fifties and entered The Sixties.
 * It's a very troperrific rendition, complete with the protagonist's bratty younger brother who is obsessed with The Lone Ranger and carries around die-cast pistols everywhere, "the love interest in poodle skirt" who his best friend is afraid to ask out to the dance, and the love interest's "abusive greaser ex-boyfriend".
 * Stand By Me (set in 1959 and featuring an all-star soundtrack) attempts to do the same thing (mark the transition from The Fifties to the Sixties, from Innocence to Experience) on a smaller scale, reflecting the coming of age of four Maine Oregon youths (and the youths of director Rob Reiner and author Stephen King).

Live-Action TV

 * Happy Days: home of Fonzie, America's favorite greaser!
 * Sha Na Na

Music

 * "American Pie", the song written by Don McLean in 1971, is in part a nostalgic look back at the more innocent Rock and Roll music and culture of his youth in the 1950s...
 * And, of course, memorializing Buddy Holly's plane crash in "The Day the Music Died".

Theatre

 * Bye Bye Birdie (quite possibly the Ur Example of the Nostalgic Fifties, having been written in 1960)

Comics

 * Blacksad. A Furry Comic about a feline private detective. The series features a Film Noir-influenced version of the 1950s. But the storylines feature interracial violence, racial discrimination (based on fur color), the Red Scare, and McCarthy-style persecution of leftist intellectuals.
 * DC: The New Frontier. The classic superheroes of DC set in an era of McCarthyism, Super Registration Acts, and Cold War tensions.

Film

 * Good Night and Good Luck - a true story about Edward R. Murrow, the intrepid TV journalist out to expose the hypocrisy of Senator Joe McCarthy (as himself), who preyed upon Americans' fears of Communist infiltration for his own political gain.
 * Clue - Earlier than most examples, as it was made in the mid-eighties, but the Fifties of the movie revolves around the post-WWII/early Cold War politics of that decade, which it plays for laughs.
 * LA Confidential
 * Revolutionary Road - A great wardrobe and a nice kitchen are no substitute for one's soul in a Marriage Half Empty.
 * Quiz Show - Based On a True Story about the rigging of the game show '"Twenty One''
 * Capote

Literature

 * The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit, one of the most popular and influential books in the 1950s, Trope Codified (and attacked!) the whole concept of 50's conformism.

Live-Action TV

 * Mash - the show either takes places in the Historical Fifties or else in a Present Day Past

Theatre

 * Death of a Salesman, though released in 1949, is the archetypal play about the aforementioned Man in a Grey Flannel Suit who suffers a nervous breakdown. "Attention must be paid!!"

Video Games

 * Mafia2 plays in the 50s. It does however also show the dark sides of the 50s beyond Suburbia, like racial segregation, corruption, black market, slums, and mafia. But hey, at least you can encounter at every 1950s stereotype known to man:
 * the charming housewife returning from her local Piggly Wiggly (after visiting the opium house),
 * the friendly next-door neighbour with the tie and the suitcase who scratched your car the other day,
 * the friendly gas station attendant after robbing him and blowing up his petrol pump,
 * the greasy radio host who ends every sentence with "folks" and promotes cigarette smoking,
 * the no-nonesense, deep-voiced radio host who will piss off commies and promotes family values,
 * the old grumpy hag who runs the local diner and still has problems with fitting her hair net,
 * the shoeshine guy who shines shoes,
 * the newspaper guy who begins and ends every sentence with "Extra!",
 * the good-hearted Irish police officer who will most likely shoot you at sight,
 * those greasers who always hinder your black trade because you're in their territory, and
 * the bomberjacket-clad afro-americans who do the same thing, only on the other side of Hudson Bay Empire Bay.

Comics

 * The Silver Age of Comic Books began in this period, following the red-baiting and obscenity hysteria fueled by the publication of Dr. Frederick Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent, which helped end the E.C. Horror Comics catalog that had supplanted superhero comics through most of the 1950s with grotesque and Weird Tales from the Crypt. The only E.C. comic to survive was...
 * MAD Magazine, which defied the image of '50s conformity by satiring and skewering pop culture with a countercultural Manhattanite wit.
 * League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier is set in a ... somewhat skewed version of 1950s Britain. (It doesn't help that Nineteen Eighty Four has just happened.)

Comedy

 * Lenny Bruce, the infamous comedian who broke free of "obscene language" taboos in the 1950s, got his start doing stand-up comedy in strip clubs in the heart of Los Angeles' middle-class suburban mecca of San Fernando Valley in the early 1950s.
 * Bob & Ray, who themselves fit into the Historical Fifties as a result of spoofing the media conventions inherent in the Fifties Fifties.

Film
"Audrey: I'll cook like / Betty Crocker / And I'll look like / Donna Reed!"
 * Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull could easily fall in several of the above categories.
 * The Golden Age of Hollywood wound down during the Fifties, drifting into formulaic musicals, Hays Code-approved thrillers, and big production numbers, leading to more adventurous directors refining their technique in romantic films and character dramas.
 * An Affair to Remember. Yes, that's right: a Fifties Hollywood blockbuster and critically acclaimed romantic film about an affair on a cruise ship with a woman on the way to her wedding. Inspiration for The Nineties film Sleepless in Seattle.
 * The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, possibly the biggest film of the 1950s, aside from the similar Ben Hur.
 * John Wayne codified the genre of film set During the War (WWII, of course!) with a slew of films. Every boy who didn't collect baseball cards, collected toys and books about Old School Dogfighting.
 * This was also the golden age of The Western:
 * Shane
 * The Searchers, the original revisionist Western
 * Marlon Brando made his name in films as the original and most intense Method Actor, including:
 * A Streetcar Named Desire, a film about a play set in the 1930s-1940s in steamy depression-era New Orleans, where he plays the archetypal sexually-threatening working class schmuck in a wife-beater shirt. "STELLLAAAAAA!"
 * On the Waterfront, a film that established the Hoboken of Joisey trope, immortalizing the town where Frank Sinatra grew up as a seedy place of gangsters and palookas and shattered dreams, verges on Film Noir. "I coulda been a contender!"
 * Frank Sinatra himself proved He Really Can Act, and codified the Brainwashing Commies trope, in The Manchurian Candidate, a classic Cold War thriller which came out in 1962 at the end of the period.
 * The Musical still dominated the landscape. Costume Drama classics and Sword and Sandals pics began to dominate at the end of this period as film budgets got bigger.
 * Singin in The Rain, the classic musical about musicals.
 * The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) the only live-action film by Dr. Seuss, possibly the most bizarre film made in the Fifties itself. Its child star, Tommy Rettig, went on to star in Lassie (see above). Think Return to Oz meets Leave It to Beaver meets Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory meets Rocky Horror Picture Show (you know... for kids!)
 * Little Shop of Horrors is set on Skid Row in an indefinable period between the early 50s and the Motown era. Elevated trains rumble overhead and working-class men stumble to work in grey flannel suits. The hero and heroine dream of escaping to the pastel suburbs.


 * The Hudsucker Proxy is set in the same indefinable period, in a sort of comic-book version of the Mad Men universe. Pneumatic Tubes are, in this version of an art deco metropolis, the dominant means of communication. The film centers around the creation of the classic '50s icon.
 * Akira Kurosawa legitimized Japanese film in the West and created classic Lost in Imitation films which were influenced by, and in turn influenced, the development of The Western.
 * Rashomon (1950), the original Rashomon Style plot.
 * Seven Samurai (1954), later remade as The Magnificent Seven: see also Magnificent Seven Samurai.
 * The Godfather (set 1945 to 1955) and The Godfather Part II (mostly set 1958 to 1959) are set in the Fifties and are rich with period detail, but the focus is so removed from conventional depictions of the decade that is difficult to pigeonhole them.
 * Film Noir in general (see above) was inspired by the depression and urban decay of the prewar and postwar years, especially in the years 1945-1949. Which is what prompted many Americans to abandon the city in the first place...
 * Heavenly Creatures is based the outrageous-for-its-time 1950s murder of a mother by her daughter and the girl's best friend, but it doesn't seem make a huge deal about the era aside from the "homosexuality is just a phase/mental illness" thing.
 * The Red Balloon
 * Stilyagi looks at the rebellious youth in the Soviet Union, which was even more regimented and conservative than the USA until the Khrushchev Thaw.
 * Cool and The Crazy, produced for Showtime's Rebel Highway series.

Literature

 * Bill Bryson's The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, an autobiographical and historical account of 1950s and early 1960s America, when he was a child.
 * Lolita was not only written in the 1950s, it was set in Nabokov's idea of a typical American community and helped inspire the later concept of "dark pathology hidden behind a facade of '50s conformity".

Live-Action TV

 * The Honeymooners was made in the fifties, but it's far from "suburban paradise": it features a married couple, who live in a crappy, cold-water walk-up apartment, can't afford a TV or a vacuum cleaner, and fight all the time. This was, of course, typical for many Americans at the time.
 * Dragnet was a Police Procedural that ran from the late Forties through the Sixties. While there is Fifties conformity scattered throughout the series, the show is not completely clean, showing the ugly side of society as they solve each week's crime. Was somewhat made in response to the negative view of the police force during the time period.

Theatre

 * Rhinoceros by Ionesco, an absurdist play about stultifying conformism. Like Pod People, everyone transforms into Kafkaesque rhinoceroses.
 * Waiting for Godot, the classic absurdist masterpiece about Those Two Guys in a World Gone Mad, waiting interminably for a man (friend? employer? supervisor?) who never comes.

Video Games

 * Destroy All Humans
 * Stubbs the Zombie A parody of the 50's mindset with large doses of cold-war hysteria and obsession with The Future.... as envisioned by someone from that era.
 * The Fallout series not only is a throwback to 1950's sci-fi, it also have many parodies of that time period - such as a virtual reality 50's simulator with kids and adults repeating those same phrases at the beginning of the page.

Western Animation

 * The Iron Giant is mainly a deconstruction of Fifties alien invasion movies, but it also has large dollops of nostalgia (the director was born in 1957, the year the movie was set) and delves into some of the issues of the day, particularly Cold War paranoia, as personified by Kent Mansley.
 * Moral Orel has no set time period, but its characters are blatant 50's stereotypes, a lot of 50's architecture and technology is present, and there's an omnipresent theme of hiding away your sins and mistakes.

Anime and Manga

 * Astro Boy. First appeared in April, 1951. Set in the Turn of the Millennium.
 * Princess Knight. First appeared in January, 1953. Set in a Medieval European Fantasy world.
 * Tetsujin 28-go. Manga started in July, 1965. Set in the aftermath of World War II. Later adapted into Gigantor.

Comics

 * Dan Dare. First appeared in April, 1950. Set in The Nineties.
 * Johan and Peewit. Series started in September, 1952. Set in The Middle Ages.
 * Legion of Super-Heroes. Debuted in April, 1958. Their tales were set in The Future.
 * The Smurfs. First appeared in October, 1958. Set in The Middle Ages.
 * Sgt Rock. First appeared in April, 1959. His series was set in World War II.
 * Asterix. First appeared in October, 1959. Set during The Roman Republic.
 * Barbe Rouge. First appeared in October, 1959. Set during The Cavalier Years and The Age of Sail.

Literature

 * All You Zombies
 * The Astronauts
 * Atlas Shrugged
 * A Town Like Alice
 * Breakfast At Tiffanys
 * The Catcher in The Rye
 * The Caves of Steel
 * The Chronicles of Narnia
 * The Cone Gatherers
 * Detectives in Togas
 * The Devil to Pay In The Backlands
 * Doctor Zhivago
 * The Eagle of the Ninth
 * East of Eden
 * The End of the Affair
 * Fahrenheit 451
 * The Go Between. Apart from the opening and the coda, set in 1900.
 * Felse Investigates. The series started in 1951, but the setting of the first novel is in 1949.
 * Foundation
 * Have Space Suit Will Travel
 * Invisible Man
 * I Robot
 * Judge Dee. The series started c. 1957, but it is set in Imperial China.
 * Lolita
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * The Naked Sun
 * On the Road
 * Pedro Paramo
 * A Separate Peace
 * Return From The Stars
 * The Stars My Destination
 * Sword of Honour
 * Things Fall Apart
 * Till We Have Faces

Live-Action TV

 * The Adventures of Robin Hood

Theater

 * Amahl and The Night Visitors

Western Animation

 * Cinderella (1950). Set in the nineteenth century.
 * Alice in Wonderland (1951). Set in the Victorian era in which the book was written.
 * Peter Pan (1953). Set in The Edwardian Era (although Never-Never Land appears to be stuck in some time Before Steam).
 * Lady and The Tramp (1955). Set in The Edwardian Era (if you're willing to ignore those jazz-singing pound dogs, of course).
 * Sleeping Beauty (1959). Set, as one character admits, in "the fourteenth century."