A Decade of History in Easy-to-Swallow Format

When we reflect on the culture of the ‘00s, the aughts or whatever this decade will come to be known as, will we look back fondly on the dominance of top 10 lists in nearly all segments of popular culture? Television is increasingly counting down all manner of arcane events into lists—the 10 most dangerous jobs, the 10 biggest celebrity skirmishes, the five greatest defensive plays in Pittsburgh Pirates history. Numbered lists dominate print and online media, with everything from the old chestnuts like album of the year and top-78-tips-to-drive-him-wild-in-bed to most emailed stories and top political turkeys.

Robert A. Rodriguez’s The 1950s’ Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Rock & Roll Rebels, Cold War Crises, and All-American Oddities arrives as the latest in the “Most Wanted” series of books, on the heels of efforts like Business’s Most
Wanted, Country Music’s Most Wanted, and Broadway’s Most Wanted. Rodriguez (not that Robert Rodriguez, he winks in the introduction) asks the reader for a lot of trust, explaining that he “bring[s] to the table, I think, a handle on what the average reader will be interested in learning about.” He invites readers to read at random rather than cover-to-cover, an astute, unselfconscious recognition of this book’s ancestry in the bathroom book family. It goes down easier that way.

Born in 1961, this is the author’s first book. His points to the nostalgia that swept the country following George Lucas’ 1973 film American Graffiti, the subsequent return of “Rock Around the Clock” on the top of the charts and Happy Days on television as the root of his lifelong fascination with the era. Rodriguez’s focus is similarly nostalgic, though he occasionally reminds himself to keep a skeptical eye. It’s of equal importance, he implies, to shatter fallacious mythology to celebrate the cultural events that made the capital-“F” Fifties (or at least peoples’ rose-colored perceptions of them) seem a simpler, more innocent time.

The lists are each based on a category determined by the author, often arbitrary piles of the note-cards on which Rodriguez has collected his factoids, anecdotes, and momentous events. Take “This Could Be the Start of Something Big,” where cultural landmarks like credit cards, color television, and fast-food burger joints sit alongside the invention of canned laughter, the release of the Lincoln Memorial Penny, and the first Peanuts comic strip. Undoubtedly all significant events, but what’s the common element?

Rodriguez is more successful in a number of categories that collect forgotten popular culture, and speak to the notion that American television viewers can make anything a hit and just as quickly erase it from popular memory. Whatever happened to Mama, the story of the Hansen family, Norwegian immigrants in 1917 San Francisco, which ran for seven years as part of CBS’s Friday night lineup? Or “Private Secretary,” where the sassy Ann Sothern administered the office of her talent agent boss? Rodriguez suggests that without reruns of these programs in later years, they never reinforced themselves as memorable touchstones of television’s golden age.

It’s these forgotten artifacts that prove more interesting than the rehashed accounts of momentous events, political leaders, and fads. Rodriguez looks at the B-sides of 10 of the era’s biggest singles, describing forgotten hits like “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” the flipside on the Weavers’ “Goodnight, Irene.” A reworked Jewish folk song, “Tzena” became a widely recognized around the country thanks to the smash success of its single-mate “Irene,” becoming a sing-along classic for years to come.

Some segments are sure to provoke I-remember-where-I-was-when nostalgia for those who lived through the era. Collections of the decade’s biggest catastrophes reveal the timelessness of natural disasters and mining explosions, while the decade’s most notorious crimes also get thorough coverage. Rodriguez also looks to challenge nostalgia, disproving 10 myths that seeped into public consciousness despite never having occurred. Frank Zappa wasn’t the son of Mr. Green Jeans? Fidel Castro didn’t try out for the Washington Senators? Nobody actually died in the chariot race in Ben-Hur?

Proving that gossip is as timeless as air disasters, we learn about 10 then-closeted celebrities who came out in subsequent decades. Rodriguez loves laying out other stories, including the Quiz Show scandal, Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, and Jerry Lee Lewis’ 12-year old bride, that had American tongues wagging. Other segments are really a stretch. “The Signpost Up Ahead”, for instance, describes events involving people who would become famous in later decades: Martha Stewart appeared in a television commercial! Charles Manson was sent to jail a handful of times! Liz Sheridan (Jerry’s mom on “Seinfeld”) dated James Dean at the time of his death!

Such stretches, though, aren’t surprising considering the book’s approach to history borrows so strongly from contemporary local evening newscasts and celebrity gossip, bloody murders, and surface level biographies of political leaders. Additionally, sports are almost entirely ignored, save the occasional starlet-dating New York Yankee. (Check out the sports-themed entries in the Most Wanted series, Rodriguez helpfully offers.) Another shortcoming is the relative lack of photographs, which would undoubtedly increase printing and licensing costs but provide a welcome additional scope.

This is the harmless fun of a VH1 Remember the ‘80s episode without the annoying talking heads or compelling visual references. With its everyman’s prose and preference for straight description rather than intellectual analysis, it’s an ideal stocking stuffer for that family member who, after a few too many ladlefuls of eggnog, won’t stop reminding you that things were better then.