For a survey of musical styles that were big in the 1940’s you could do worse than watching A Song is Born, a Danny Kaye movie where he plays a music professor writing an encyclopedia of music but is completely unaware of anything post-Stravinsky.
The first 1/3rd of the movie is Danny Kaye learning about the latest in musical styles and is a pretty fascinating survey of where American music stood in 1948. The final 2/3rds of the movie is a silly story about how he hooks up with Virginia Mayo who is on the run from some gangsters. There’s still some great music in the final 2/3rds, but really, the first 1/3rd of the film is the most interesting part of the film. I highly recommend it if you’re willing to watch a film to answer this question.
By the way, I just looked it up on Turner Classic Movies and it’s playing on July 9th at 8:00pm: tw_default - Sign In
Hate to break your bubble, but the thin dark look didn’t come in till the mid 50s. It was a reaction to the post WW2 style for men, which was wide lapels, shoulders, knees and hat brims, long collars and very bright wide ties, with a wide range of colors used.
Those were loafer or Hollywood jackets, which were less tailored than dress clothes and had shirt-type collars. Some were two-tone, of different colors or types of fabric.
I can’t believe I’m the first person to mention the baby boom. When I think of the late 1940’s, the first thing I think of is the millions of babies being born. Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care was one of the biggest bestsellers of 1946 (and for years after). If I were throwing a late 1940’s party, I’d decorate it like one big baby shower.
And in addition, there was a lot of concern about reintegrating vets into civilian life. Things like ladies magazines offering advice to the wives of returning vets, etc.
I wasn’t able to get to it today, sorry… And I was even on a floor that deals mostly with the elderly… It was just too crazy an evening.
I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.
I must note, though, many of the people I know of who were alive at this time don’t actually remember very much… Dementia and Alzheimer’s being a factor in many of the patients I work with. I know there are some, though, that will remember those few years… So I’ll see what I can do.
I happen to be fascinated by the late 1940s era in the U.S.A., and if I had a chance to live in any period of U.S. history, that would be it.
• The complete University of Wisconsin Badger Yearbooks from that era are available for browsing online (click on “Browse Badger Yearbooks” near the top left of that page). A treasure trove of photos.
• But the majority of Americans over the age of 25 had not completed high school.
• Radio, newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures, and phonograph records were the mass media of the day.
• Network radio programs of that era.
• Only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set in 1946, 9% did in 1950.
• Network television wasn’t quite there yet. The television networks made the link from the East Coast to Chicago by 1949, but didn’t hit the West Coast until 1951. Network television schedules.
• The long playing, 33-1/2 rpm vinyl record was introduced in 1948. But thick, 78 rpm shellac records remained the standard well into the 1950s.
• The most popular weekly magazines were Time, Newsweek, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier’s. The Sunday newspaper supplement The American Weekly could also be counted among those.
• Women’s fashions from the 1940s.
• Best selling novels in the U.S., by year.
• Movies of American life in that era: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Naked City (1948), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), White Heat (1949), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Body and Soul (1947), Champion (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), The Egg and I (1947), The Stranger (1947), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Pinky (1949), Come to the Stable (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949), On the Town (1949).
The only person I ran into today that would actually remember that time in their life just said they were happy we beat the Nazis… They didn’t say much else.
Keep in mind that what we remember as the cultural 1950s didn’t hit until the mid to late 50s, and endured until about 1963-64. The '55 Chevy had modest fins and chromework that was exaggerated in later models. It took until 1955 for a rock and roll song to hit #1 in record sales.
The early 1950s were pretty close to the late 1940s culturally. A pretty fair representation of this on TV in recent decades was MASH.
Mr. Moto has a good point. The post-war in the U.S. from 1946 through 1963 can be considered one major era, divided into two sub-eras somewhere around 1953-1955.
Don’t forget the mustard, sour pickles, and mayonnaise. That’s basically a homemade version of the “sandwich spread” found at any supermarket deli counter today.
Somebody already got to this, but the Tiki Bar scene was getting really big at the time what with all the returning Sailors and Marines from the Pacific. South Pacific came out in this time. I’d suggest a conservative haircut and a few bottles of Sailor Jerry’s and some Mai Tais.
The Black Dahlia case also happened in this time, in 1947. A heavily stylized movie of this came out in 2006.
As has already been said, a lot of the early 1950s was just a continuation of the late 1940s (or 1946 the start of the 1950s), so there’s a lot of room to fudge in a strictly 1952 element and I don’t think people would mind too much.