The Law: Back to the Unfabulous '50s

The sounds, vaguely familiar, echo in the void: Patti Page and the Tennessee Waltz; Jo Stafford and Shrimp Boats; Rosemary Clooney and Come On-a My House. Elvis, Bobby Darin, Fabian with a slew of golden oldies. At the drive-ins, American Graffiti and The Lords of Flatbush re-create the oleaginous pompadours and switchblade rhetoric of the Shook-Up Epoch. In affluent circles there are Fabulous '50s parties: the debutantes rigged out in calf-length skirts and open-toed, high-heeled numbers, and their dates in narrow ties and pink shirts and trousers that bag at the ankle.

Nostalgia students can hardly be astonished. The '20s, '30s and '40s have all passed in review. Gatsby, The Sting and The Way We Were indicate that they are passing still. The '50s, ever in character, have been waiting silently for their turn. No one can begrudge the decade its place in the fun; yet anyone over the age of 25 may object to the prefix Fabulous.

Coming of age in the '50s was something less than storied. It was rather like taking a walk in a fog; one had to grope to achieve anything, from political experience to sexual savvy. It was not mere whim that caused Gadfly I.F.

Stone to call his book on the period The Haunted Fifties. Historian Fred J. Cook is harsher: his volume is entitled The Nightmare Decade. "To the young generation of today," writes Cook, "it may seem fantastic that for a whole decade there was hardly a whisper of dissent in the land." It was not necessarily for want of courage. Public protest and massive dissent were akin to the four-minute mile: until the first demonstration, the feat was assumed to be impossible; after that, the deluge.

While America looked on numbly, Joe McCarthy bullied Senators and scholars in his wild search for Reds in high places. Thousands of boys went off to Korea in a war that was as complex and controversial as the one in Viet Nam, but protest found its outlet at the polls, not in the streets. Ike's promise, "I shall go to Korea," was enough to quiet the nation. In the '50s the flag remained unassailable, the military beyond challenge. After all, only a few years before, another group of boys had gone off to war and had returned covered with honor and rewards. The movies advertised the glories of The Sands of Iwo Jima and Battleground. Who were a bunch of 18-year-olds to dispute their elders on the draft board?