On the home front, Harry S. Truman was president of the United States and Alben Barkley was vice president. Alben who? Truman submitted the biggest peacetime budget to date in U.S. history to fund American’s participation in the Korean War. The 22nd Amendment was ratified, which limited the number of terms a president may serve—good for us when we elect an ineffectual president; bad for us when we elect a productive, influential one. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for treason for passing atomic secrets to the Russians, and their execution in 1953 sparked controversy.
The federal debt was $255.3 billion compared to the over $8 trillion dollars of today. For those of you suffering and/or benefiting from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the debt of at this very moment to the penny is: $8,392,042,389,042.07. For today’s U.S. population, your share of this debt comes to $28,071.41.
Minimum wage was 75 cents an hour back in 1951 and the annual average income was $3,515. However, commodities were also much more economical at the time: first-class stamp, 3 cents; loaf of bread, 16 cents; milk, 92 cents a gallon; 72 cents per pound for ground coffee; eggs, 24 cents a dozen causing many chickens to leave the coop due to slave labor; and ground hamburger for 50 cents a pound, which was not enough to cover the cost of cow flatulence! You could own your own home for $9,000, buy a new car for $1,520, and drive your roadster to the hottest hangouts for a mere 19 cents a gallon, or if you preferred, to the movies for 65 cents—a really cheap $1.30 date as long as she did not ask for popcorn and soda!
Super glue was invented in 1951 in case you had the urge to dangle yourself or any part of yourself from a construction beam or anything else. Smile ?—still cameras were introduced with built-in flash units. Power steering was launched by Chrysler and they marketed this feature as “Hydraguide.” Colorforms was the hot new toy in 1951 even though it was flat and two-dimensional. More importantly for little girls (and some boys) everywhere, Mattel introduced Barbie in 1959. I do not know about my male peers, but Barbie never looked like any of the girls I knew… and nothing lasts forever, anyway, as Barbie and Ken have since separated.
Television was becoming the dominant mass media for communication and diminishing the role of radio. Color television was introduced in the United States just a month before I was born—clearly one of the more critical events in my personal history. However, back then our family did not even own a black and white TV set. We watched television at our grandmother’s next door on a black and white RCA Victor. The top opened like an old fashioned stereo to access the television controls, which to us looked like the baffling cockpit of a modern airliner. If you wanted color, you could buy a multicolored plastic screen that you placed in front of your black and white television display. It was a long time before I realized that color was not evenly horizontal! You could also enjoy a TV dinner in your own home in front of your television—the precursor of the dinner theater of today.
A number of classic TV shows were broadcast at the time, including Amos ‘n’ Andy, Dragnet, All Star Revue, The Jack Benny Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Roy Rogers Show, and Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now. The television soap opera Search for Tomorrow and the situation comedy I Love Lucy debuted. The first transcontinental television broadcast in America took place, as it televised President Truman’s address to the nation. Television also broadcasted its first human birth at mid-year. Woo-hoo! So much for the age of innocence and thinking we came from the cabbage patch or whatever patch that you crawled out of as declared by your parents!
It was a time when events drove the news unlike today where the news can drive events or perhaps gives them a good push tainted with shameless bias. News coverage was ½ hour daily of local and national news back in the 1950s, not the 24/7 coverage of today. The around-the-clock coverage and endless analysis are strained at times to make news out of the news in order to sustain on-air coverage. You used to have reasonable time to digest the coverage and then arrive at your own conclusions. And if the news runs dry today, somebody is sure to spot Elvis, Nessie, Big Foot, or Small Toed!
The first videotape recorded (VTR) was invented in this decade. An American in Paris won the Oscar for best picture in 1951. Best Actor was awarded to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen and Best Actress went to Vivian Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. Moviegoers of the time could also see All About Eve, Alice in Wonderland, Scrooge, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and A Place in the Sun.
Yul Brynner made his first appearance of many as the king of Siam in The King and I. Alan Freed used the term rock ‘n’ roll for the first time to describe R&B music. Top songs for 1951 blaring on jukeboxes included Come On-A My House (Rosemary Clooney), If (Perry Como), Cold, Cold Heart (Tony Bennett), Too Young (Nat King Cole), Cry (Johnny Ray and the Four Lads), and Be My Love (Mario Lanza). J. D. Salinger penned The Catcher in the Rye, Herman Wouk wrote The Caine Mutiny, James Jones penned From Here to Eternity, James Michener wrote Return to Paradise, and Tennessee William’s The Rose Tattoo was published.
Not in time to prevent my birth, but I suppose you readers may or may not be eternally grateful that the first oral contraceptive was developed. I think I hear snickering again. UNIVAC, the first computer to process both alphabetic and numeric data was introduced. The U.S. performed the first nuclear test in the Nevada desert as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission built the first nuclear power plant, which best explains why I have a tail—but that is another beginning!
In sports, the New York Yankees defeated the New York Giants in the 1951 World Series—no doubt a commercial bonanza for the east coast. Willie Mays began playing for the New York Giants at age 20 and Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball after signing his third $100,000 contract earlier in the year. The Pro Football champion was the Los Angeles Rams—the Superbowl extravaganza was not yet envisioned. The NBA championship was won by Rochester over New York. The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated Montreal for the all Canadian Stanley Cup. The Circle City’s Indianapolis 500 winner, who blazed the two and one-half oval at 126.244 miles per hour, was Lee Wallard. Ben Hogan was the U.S. Open Golf champion. At Wimbledon, Dick Savitt won the match for men and Doris Hart for women. The Kentucky Derby champion was Count Turf. Kentucky was the NCAA basketball champion and Tennessee the college football champion. Jersey Joe Walcott won the heavyweight title in boxing.
My birth aside, a number of influential and famous people were born in 1951. According to the Chinese Zodiac, this was the year of the Rabbit. Rabbit people are affectionate, obliging, and always pleasant, but they can get too sentimental and seem superficial. Being cautious and conservative, these people are successful in business but would also make a good lawyer, diplomat, or actor. I have no business sense and I am not a lawyer, diplomat, or actor—but those born in 1951 include John (Cougar) Mellencamp, Jane Seymour, Kurt Russell, Rush Limbaugh (EIB), Sally Ride (the first American woman in space flew on the space shuttle Challenger), Bonnie Pointer, Francis Ford Coppola, and Dan Fogelberg. At the same time people came into our world, others were exiting it. Those that died in 1951 include Will Kellogg, Ferdinand Porsche, John Alden Carpenter, William Randolph Hearst, Joe Jackson (of baseball’s black sox scandal), and Fanny Brice. We take notice of people leaving us, as with age it becomes a measure of our own mortality. And if the reader will forgive me for jumping out of character and time, as I write this particular day of July 27, 2003, Bob Hope is dead at age 100. Thanks for the memories, Bob!
There were other events shaping our world and neighborhoods in the 1950s. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 made it easier legally for immigrants to become United States citizens. In 1953, Lucille Ball gave ‘birth’ to Little Ricky on the I Love Lucy show after having given birth to her real life son Desi Arnaz, Jr. earlier in the day. In 1954, U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy began televised hearings into alleged Communists in America. Racial barriers in the United States were attacked by several marked events. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and reaffirmed that the separation of races violated the Constitution’s requirement of racial equality. In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman, Rosa Parks,