Looking for novels, movies, and especially illustrated books dealing with the mid-to-late 1960s middle-class, solidly Republican, social-climber wannabes stuck in the midwest cocktail culture. Though covering the late-60s, I’m not talking about hippies, or bell-bottoms or free love types, but more the white middle-class, where perhaps letting ones sideburns creep halfway down the length of the ear was daring. Avocado and Harvest Gold-colored appliances, not floral-patterened. Orangish-brown couches, brass lamps, bright-red button-up sweaters for men, sky-blue cocktail dresses for the ladies. Sunbust wall-clocks and art prints of Venice-like scenes, not love beads and Andy Warhol.
“the Ice Storm” novel by Raymond Moody, film by Ang Lee. Set in 1973, upstate New York, among the stolidly middle-class. (Although it does involve a “key swapping” party.)
A conversation on this board about the car from that film got me on the whole subject, but that is more 1970s than I’m looking for, more “hip” than I’m looking for.
Hard to explain, but I remember as a very little kid it all being very “square.”
Sounds like my childhood, except my parents were upper-middle class, intellectual, East Coast liberals. But the parties! Dad in his suit with the skinny tie; Mom in her Jackie Kennedy dress. The patio strung with Japanese lanterns; my father’s records on the hi-fi (early Barbra Streisand; the Weavers or Tommy Makem; classical). The neighbors talking about Bobby Kennedy (not pro–they remembered his days with McCarthy), poor Adlai Stevenson, That Was the Week That Was . . .
My sister and I staying up late to peek out the windows at all the glamorous grown-ups.
I would never ask a lady her age, but it definitely sounds like your were an eye-witness to what I was getting at. The furniture is key, it seems to me, sort of left-over 50s.
And the records would have to include a couple by Robert Goulet, wouldn’t they?
Whay don’t you publish your family album from that era?
I’d say just about any of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies from the early-mid-Sixties seem to come from that time and place, even if not focusing on cocktails specifically. It’s the whole upper middle class milieu of commuting into New York by train, from a nice suburb, belonging to the country club, and so on. A slightly more updated look would be “The Impossible Years”, where David Niven plays college professor who comes into contact with, among other early mod/counterculture phenomena, a motorcyclin’, long-haird and hirsute artist, who has just finished a nude painting of the Professor’s daughter.
For a more serious look at suburban culture with more emphasis on corporate career issues, check out the novel The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit by Sloane Wilson. It’s from the 1950s, but virtually the same, culturally, as the early 60s. There was a movie of it, starring Gregory Peck, but it might be hard to find now.
You read my mind–I was vaguely recalling a David Niven film, though he clashes with the mods, the middle-class 60s look was there. I think “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” has that look as well.
You might stroll through James Lileks offering The Institute of Official Cheer, and other areas of his site. Matchbooks, hotel postcards, odd food items, menswear of that era, etc.
No Down Payment with Tony Randall (but not a comedy) about keeping-up-with-the-Joneses suburban angst. I don’t remember if there were any tiki torches, but patios definitely.
Strangers When We Meet with Kirk Douglass assuaging his suburban angst with adulterous canoodling.
One stars Kim Novak, the other Sheree North, back when women weren’t just blonde, but were blondes.
(My parents had those same swanky parties as Eve’s; my mom had a closetful of those wide leather belts dyed in primary colors with matching shoes, to accessorize her wool dresses. Still, I’m more of a fan of 1960’s movies about the 1920’s, such as “Elmer Gantry,” or “Darkness at the Top of the Stairs.”)
In a somewhat related vein–I should have put this in the “Things only you seem to do and nobody else” thread–I drink my coffee out of a cup that sits on a saucer, like in a 1950s coffeeshop. I love the retro look of it. I remember my parents used to do that at breakfast when I was very little. When I got older, it was always mugs, with dancing teddy bears, cute sayings, and a variety of other embellishments. Aside from the fact that I think the cup and saucer provides a more practical arrangement, most mugs are too big for my taste. I need no encouragement to drink even more coffee than I already do.
In fact, that’s my one big complaint about Starbucks: that they serve you in paper cups, even when you want to have it there. If you’re going to pay a buck fifty or whatever it is, the least they could do is give it to you in a real cup.
Thanks for the LILEKS link. I just read the Dorcas Menswear section. I’m still convulsing with horror at the fashions and with laughter at the captions.
**Sir Rhosis **, your OP is a little confused. The avocodo and harvest gold color scheme is Seventies, not Sixties. And there is no reason why it would have to be in the Midwest. You could just have easily found the milieu in suburban Connecticut or Southern Cailfornia. For the former, see The Swimmer (1968), for the latter see The Graduate (1967).
^^^I’ve been called more than a “little confused.”
The midwest (Ohio, specifically) is just from personal experience, and I should have qualified. I’m sure I recall those colors from around '68, but I could be off by a year or five. The OP was a quickly-typed stream of conscious thing, that if I had a chance to edit and clarify, I would.
Nontheless, the answers I’ve received are pretty much what I was looking and hoping for.
It’s a strange movie, in many ways, but compelling nonetheless. It deals with the segment of society the OP is interested in- well-off, suburban WASPs in the 1960’s.
