1950s
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| Centuries: | 19th century - 20th century - 21st century |
| Decades: | 1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s |
| Years: | 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 |
The 1950s was the decade spanning the years 1950 to 1959. Some believe in a long Fifties going from the end of World War II in 1945 to the Kennedy assasination.
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Economy
Rebirth of Europe
Recovering from World War II and its aftermath, the economic miracle emerged in West Germany and Italy. Additionally, wartime rationing ended in the United Kingdom.
Ascendency of the United States
The 1950s in the United States of America were marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and a return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the baby boom from returning GIs who went to college under the G.I. Bill and settled in suburban America. Most of the internal conflicts that had developed in earlier decades like women's rights, civil rights, imperialism, and war were relatively suppressed or neglected during this time as a world returning from the brink hoped to see a more consistent way of life as opposed to the liberalism and radicalism of the 1930s and 1940s. The effect of suppressing social problems in the '50s would have a significant impact on the rest of the twentieth century.
Social and political movements
Trends
In the West, the generation traumatized by the Great Depression and World War II created a culture with emphasis on normality and conformity.
Korean War
The Korean War, lasting from June 25, 1950 until a cease-fire on July 27, 1953 (the war had not officially ended), started as a civil war between communist North Korea and republican South Korea. When it began, North and South Korea existed as provisional governments competing for control over the Korean peninsula, due to the division of Korea by outside powers. While originally a civil war, it quickly escalated into a Cold War-era conflict and served as a proxy war between the capitalist powers of the United States and its allies and the Communist powers of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union.
On September 15, General MacArthur planned grand strategy to dissect North-Korean-occupied Korea on the city of Inchoen (Song Do port) to cut off further invasion of North Korean army. Within a few days, MacArthur's army took back Seoul (South Korea's capital). The plan succeeded which allowed American and South Korean forces to cut off further expansion of the North Koreans. The war continued until cease-fire was agreed by both sides on July 27, 1953. The war left 33,742 American soldiers dead and 92,134 wounded.
In the end, neither side had won the war. Before the war, the border was a longitudinal line; after the war, it was shifted slightly diagonally.
U.S./USSR tensions result in "Cold War"
The "Cold War", which began as a geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States, intensified. During this time the Warsaw pact and NATO were founded.
Most above-ground nuclear test explosions happened during this decade.
The 1950s were also marked with a rapid rise in tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that would heighten the Cold War to an unprecedented level which would touch off the Arms Race, the Space Race, McCarthyism, and the Korean War. Stalin's death in 1953 left an enormous impact in Eastern Europe that forced the Soviet Union to create more liberal policies internally and externally. The rise of suburbia as well as the growing conflict with the East are the two generally accepted reasons for the conservative domination of this decade.
The most notable political shift in the Eastern bloc would be the Hungarian revolution of 1956 which would soon falter due to the Soviet Union's intervention.
Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro gained power ousting the government of General Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
In the United States there was a "Red Scare" resulting in the McCarthy Hearings.
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis is also known as the Suez War or the 1956 War, and is commonly known in the Arab world as the Tripartite aggression; other names include the Suez-Sinai war, 1956 Arab-Israeli War, Suez Campaign, Kadesh Operation, and Operation Musketeer, which was a war fought on Egyptian territory in 1956. The conflict pitted Egypt against an alliance between the United Kingdom, France and Israel. The United States also played a crucial role, albeit not a military one.
European Common Market
The European Community (or Common Market), the precursor of the European Union, was established.
Civil rights
Culture
- Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity
- Juvenile delinquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in USA, though some see this era as relatively low in crime compared to today.
- Continuing poverty in some regions during recessions later on in this decade. The 1950s is often mistakenly painted as the pinnacle of American prosperity; in reality, more than a fifth of Americans lived in poverty during this time, compared with roughly an eighth at the beginning of the 21st century.
- Fairly high rates of unionization, government social spending, taxes, and the like in the U.S. and European countries. Mostly liberal or moderate Western governments, though communism/Cold War play a role in reaction to, and within, domestic politics.
- Beatnik culture/The Beat Generation
- Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such devices as the flying car.
- The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.
- Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban African Americans; graffiti eventually becomes one of the four elements of hip hop culture
- Considerable racial tension with military and schools desegregation in the US, though controversy never truly erupts until later on in the 1960s.
- Rise of evangelical Christianity including Youth for Christ (1943); the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Council of Christian Churches, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (1950), and the Campus Crusade for Christ (1951). Christianity Today was first published in 1956. 1956 also marked the beginning of Bethany Fellowship, a small press that would grow to be a leading evangelical press.
- Carl Stuart Hamblen religious radio broadcaster.
Emerging social perspectives in the 1950s
Music
Rock-and-roll music
Traditional pop music such as the bebop era of jazz hit its peak and climaxed as early rock and roll music led by Elvis Presley was embraced by teenagers and the emerging youth culture as the first wave of the Baby Boom reached its teen years. Rock music was generally dismissed or condemned by older generations. Other prominent rock and roll musicians inclued Paul Anka, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
The 1950s in cinema
World cinema
Hollywood
Known as the "Golden Age", this era of movie-making could or would see the release of many classics and a slew of talented stars and directors. Films like Sunset Boulevard with William Holden and Gloria Swanson, All About Eve with Bette Davis, and Ben-Hur with Charlton Heston, would become instant classics.
Westerns were getting bigger in the 1950s, with films like High Noon starring Gary Cooper, and Cheyenne with Clint Walker, wrangling moviegoers back to the time of outlaws and wild shoot-outs. There was no shortage of war movies: the 1950s saw the release of Stalag 17, directed by Billy Wilder, The Bridge over the River Kwai starring Alec Guinness, and Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, a potent anti-war film that starred Kirk Douglas as the French Col. Dax, defending three soldiers of cowardice.
Thrillers were also turning into a huge genre in post-war Hollywood. Alfred Hitchcock directed many big name pictures, including Rear Window, starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, North by Northwest with Cary Grant, and Vertigo, also with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.
Comedies are always popular, and the 1950s were no exception. It Happens Every Spring, Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, and The Ladykillers starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, would be loved by many. The year 1951 would have an important comedy milestone, the last film of the great comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy, Atoll K, in which the pair starred as the inheritors of an island in the Pacific.
Radio and television
Television replaced radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries. Popular television programs in the U.S. included Texaco Star Theater, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, I Love Lucy, The $64,000 Question, and Gunsmoke. The Twilight Zone premiered as the first major science-fiction show.
In the United Kingdom
In the United States
Literature
Beatniks and the beat generation, an anti-materialistic literary movement that began with Kerouac in 1948 and stretched on into the 1960s, was at its zenith in the 1950s. Such groundbreaking literature as William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Allen Ginsberg's Howl, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye were published.
Architecture
Science and philosophy
- Urey-Miller experiment shows that under simulated conditions resembling those thought to have existed shortly after Earth first created, many of the basic organic molecules that form the building blocks of modern life are able to spontaneously form
- Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge
- Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- Polio vaccine in 1955.
- The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris in 1954.
The 1950s in sports
- Alberto Ascari (Italian racing driver)
- Roger Bannister (English track and field athlete)
- Yogi Berra (American baseball player)
- Maureen Connolly (American tennis player)
- Colin Cowdrey (English cricketer)
- Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentinian racing driver)
- Neil Harvey (Australian cricketer)
- Gordie Howe (Canadian ice hockey player)
- Len Hutton (England cricketer)
- Mickey Mantle (American baseball player)
- Rocky Marciano (American boxer)
- Stanley Matthews (English soccer player)
- Willie Mays (American baseball player)
- Ferenc Puskás (Hungarian soccer player)
- Maurice Richard (Canadian ice hockey player)
- Sugar Ray Robinson (American boxer)
- Bill Russell (American basketball player)
- Gary Sobers (West Indies cricketer)
- Brian Statham (England cricketer)
- Frank Tyson (England cricketer)
- Frank Worrell (West Indies cricketer)
- Lev Yashin (Russian soccer player)
- Jackie Robinson (American baseball player)
- Pelé (Brazilian soccer player)
The Olympics
- 1952 Summer Olympics held in Helsinki, Finland
- 1952 Winter Olympics held in Oslo, Norway
- 1956 Summer Olympics held in Melbourne, Australia
- 1956 Winter Olympics held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
The 1950s in technology
- Sputnik I launched
- Fortran perhaps the single most important milestone in the development of programming languages
National issues
In the Middle East
The growth of the state of Israel occurred.
Mahmoud Abbas becomes involved in Palestinian politics in Qatar.
In Africa
Decolonization: Algeria, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
Asia
Early history of the People's Republic of China and of the Indonesian state.
In Japan
In South America
The United States CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
