Yes, it is a tricky business quantifying the degree of nostalgia in the air at any particular point in time. Just to poke a hole in the premise of the OP, let’s focus on the 1970s. There was the 1950s nostalgia you mention, but we could just as easily say there was a 1940s or 1930s nostalgia going around at the time. Consider the evidence:
1940s
*Blockbuster movies such as That’s Entertainment - the motherlode of movie nostalgia, with emphasis on 1940s musicals; Play It Again, Sam & The Long Goodbye, both part of a film noir revival trend; Summer of '42, a sentimental coming-of-age tale with a sentimental theme song that was also very successful
*various big-band era songs being remade & converted into disco hits, such as Johnny Mercer’s “Tangerine” done by the Salsoul Orchestra
*in mens’ fashion wide jacket lapels & wide ties become stylish as they had not been since the 1940s
1930s
*The Waltons, TV’s sentimental look back at the Great Depression
*Blockbuster movies such as The Sting; What’s Up, Doc? (an homage to screwball comedies of the '30s); Paper Moon; and The Way We Were(actually '30s & '40s nostalgia); Cabaret with its hit soundtrack
There was even a creeping '60s nostalgia during the 1970s. Lest we forget, American Graffiti was set in the 1960s - in fact it was set only ten years earlier than it was filmed. Shampoo looked back at 1968; Beatlemania was big on Broadway; there was a movie version of Hair in 1979; and Laverne and Shirley were living in 1964 by the end of the 1970s.
My point is that it’s not as simple a picture as you may think.
Here’s something else to ponder: in 1959 there were 26 westerns being broadcast on TV every week in prime time. Does this indicate a rampant nostalgia for the 1870s in the 1950s?
1962 The Longest Day
1962 Hell is for Heroes
1963 Combat!
1963 Donovan’s Reef
1963 The Great Escape
1964 The Americanization of Emily
1965 In Harm’s Way
1965 Hogan’s Heroes
1966 The Rat Patrol
1967 The Dirty Dozen
1967 Night of the Generals
1968 Hell in the Pacific
In the 60s a lot of people who hated the Vietnam War were looking back fondly on a war that had clear-cut “good guys” and “bad guys”. Also, a lot of WW2 veterans were getting to the age where they started publishing their memoirs.
War movies are not nostalgia pieces. They certainly weren’t in the 1960s.
Sure, many people looked back on the war as the Good War, especially in contrast to Vietnam. But nostalgia? Not every look back at the past, even a favorable look, is nostalgia. As Ellis Aponte Jr. said, there were dozens of westerns on at about the same time. Were people being nostalgic for the Old West? No. Nostalgia is a different beast entirely.
The past is always an interesting place to visit. That’s all that 99% of pieces set in the past mean.
Actually there was some to a lot of 1940s nostalgia during the 60s. Comic books fo the 40s started to become big collectibles in the 60s and when the Batman TV show started, the prices of older comic books skyrocketed.
Some theaters also began to rerun 1940s serials in the 1960s.
World War II was horrible, of course, but the kid who was 8 in 1943, probably didn’t realize how horrible it was. He probably didn’t remember the world not at war nor realize how it affected him. In 1968, this child was 33. What he remembered from the war years was his comic books, toys, etc., many of which had probably be recycled as paper or metal scrap and were now hard to find.
Oh, no. In a few more years, we’re going to have to suffer through a bunch of 90’s crap again. There’ll be flannel shirts and Rob Liefield art everywhere…