The American Dream of the Fifties

or the pop culture notes

The GI Bill of Rights

• Formal name: Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944

• Paid part of college tuition

• Provided a year’s worth of unemployment benefits

• Low interest loans made available

Daily Life in the Fifties

Levittown

• Mass-produced houses- “build a house in sixteen minutes”

• Less than $7,000 (about $62,000 today)

• Located on New York’s Long Island

• Suburbs encouraged conformity

Gender Roles

• Male = work, financial decisions, authority figure

• Female = house, children, support husband

• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)

Baby Boom

• Late 1940s through early 1960s

• Largest generation in nation’s history

Leisure• Labor saving devices, 40 hour work

week = leisure time

• Bowling, golf, boating, sporting events

• Books, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, Life, comic books

• Television

• Rock and roll– Roots of rock and roll– Elvis Presley

Automobile Culture• 40 million cars in 1950, 60 million in 1960

• Suburbs made them necessary

• Interstate Highway System– Eisenhower authorizes 41,000 miles of

expressway in 1956– Towns die or prosper

• Impact on society– Drive-in movies, restaurants, malls, cruising– Noise and exhaust, stress of traffic– Middle & upper classes leave cities-cities decline-

economic gap widens

Consumerism

• Buying stuff = success

• Appliances & electronics

• “Planned obsolescence”

• Credit cards introduced- “buy now pay later”

• Advertising – Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, billboards– Psychology

Nationwide Business

• Major corporations like AT&T, General Electric, etc.

• Holiday Inn

• McDonald’s

• Things in different parts of country start to become more similar