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The Early to Mid 1970s: The Last Gasps of the Golden Era

FedoraFan112390

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Brooklyn, NY
I think it's generally thought here that The Golden Era lasted sometime between the 1930s to 1940s, very vaguely defined in terms of the actual specific years. Many would probably extend the duration of the Golden Era to sometime in the 1950s, possibly before 1956 and the rise of Rock N' Roll; Others to sometime in the early 1960s, before the British Invasion, possibly ending the Golden Era with JFK's assassination; Others somtime in the late '60s when the Hays Code died it's final death. I would say any of those end dates are valid, all for different reasons. I would say that, for myself, the Golden Era ended around 1967. Around the time when it became certain that the Rock N' Roll, Long Haired subculture wasn't just some passing, marginal fad like the Beatnik and Greasers of the '50s were, the stuff of the minority that wouldn't effect the nation much as a whole; That it wasn't simply a "subculture" but in fact a powerful COUNTER-culture, which was reshaping and would continue to reshape the way society as a whole looked and thought, which would redefine or toss aside long held mores, traditions, gender roles and standards of conduct.

But I would say that, under the glittery glam that most associate with the 1970s (which really comes mostly from the bright lights of the Disco era in the late 70s and the Glam Rock bands of the same late 70s period), the 1970s is the period when the Golden Era REALLY died it's final death, probably sometime around 1974 or 1975. Why do I say this?

Many things which could be associated with the Golden Era were still mainstream, or accepted by the mainstream. In the 1970s, a young man of my age (21) could still wear a dress shirt and slacks and not be considered weird or out of style or dressing "like an old man." In my family, my mother's first husband was 21 in 1972, and he wore his hair short and wore nothing but long sleeved dress shirts and slacks. He was not considered a "dork" or anything; My mother didn't date dorks. Her brother in law at the time wore the same--dress shirts and slacks, and had short hair slicked back in a very 1930s-esque style except for his longish sideburns. My family was not really conservative either. The 1970s was the last decade where what would be considered formal wear today was informal, casual wear. The last era where young people might've worn T-Shirts only as underclothes and not been considered odd by the majority for it. When T-Shirts, Jeans and long hair were still mainly the domain of a counter culture and not mainstream. The last time a woman could wear a dress or gloves on a consistent basis and not be looked at oddly.

In the 1970s, a young man could still wear a hat and get away with it. There was a nostalgia for the 1940s and 1950s in the 1970s and many items of those decades' fashions reappeared in the 1970s, particularly in women's fashion. Rotary phones were still the mainstay of most homes; Touch tone phones would not be common until more than a decade later. VCRs, and other home media, didn't come into play, in Americat least, until the end of the 1970s. Cell phones, computers (outside of government or business use), the internet, video games and the like were still over a decade away from either existing or being mainstream products. Cable television was still about a decade away from being mainstream; 24 News TV was still almost two decades away.Credit Cards were a relatively new product and wouldn't be in mass usage for another decade or so from 1970.

Despite the counter culture and the war in Vietnam, traditional culture was still the mainstream; The counter culture was still at this point just a very loud and annoying minority--As demonstrated in the overwhelming, crushing victory of Richard Nixon in the election of 1972, in which traditional America or "The Great Silent Majority" was pitted against the counterculture of "Acid, Abortion and Amnesty" as personified by George McGovern's campaign. Faith in America's institutions, leadership and America itself remained sound and secure until the Watergate Summer of 1973. The booming economy which had begun shortly after World War II ended continued without stop until 1973-1974. The Working Class Man was still a major player in society in the 1970s; He had not yet been marginalized. We were still in the era of cars with round head lights and tail fins, until the end of the 1970s.

Even at the movies, you had tons of films in the early 1970s fondly nostalgizing the '30s, '40s and '50s. There was still a great sense of decency even in the most scandalous TV shows of the early 1970s. With a relaxation in the Cold War and the end of the Vietnam War, too, you had, before Watergate, a resurgence of the more optimistic attitude that pervaded America in the Golden Era.

I could go on and on but my main point is, if you look beneath the cliched stuff of the Disco era of the late 70s and whatnot, I think at it's core, America was still holding on to the core principals and aesthetics of the Golden Era, except in a small but loud minority. Woodstock and what it symbolized had been repudiated and rendered null and void with the Moon Landing (the last gasp and ultimate product of the '50s Sci Fi obsessed futurism) and Altamont, and the values of the Hippies were defeated at the ballot box in November 1968 (which stressed returning the land to law and order), and November 1972, where the values of the "Hippie Generation" were put to a vote against Traditional America. One of 1972's biggest songs was American Pie--a song which longed for and endorsed the values more associated with the Golden Era than the modern day. Even the Disco movement was a repudiation of the Hippie movement and a return to older values in some ways: The first counter culture in which participants dressed UP (suits, ties, dresses, dress shirts), rather than DOWN. In some ways, with it's danceable beats, non-political lyrics, horns and saxophones, it was a child of Jazz and Swing, more than Rock ever was.

I would say that the Golden Era lived on--even if it only on life support--until the four horrors beginning with the Oil Crisis of 1973, the Recession ending three decades of prosperity, which started in 1974, Watergate throughout 1973 and 1974, and the Fall of Vietnam in 1975. Those four horrors over a two year span mark for me the final death blows to the Golden Era. Even if we can't call it the Golden Era, perhaps it could be called The Silver Era--the last era where any shred of decency or the old fashioned way of things or the Golden Era, was mainstream and held sway.
 
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bulldog1935

Suspended
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232
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downtown Bulverde, Texas
It may have been a local thing, but when I was in high school ('72-75), I wore baggy cuffed pants, argyle socks, matching sweater vests - that was the style.
I'm wearing a bowtie in my senior picture.

Come to think of it, I dressed better in high school than I do for work now.
 
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Noirblack

One of the Regulars
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199
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Toronto
I guess you could say the Golden Era went on into the 1970s by itemizing the technologies, attitudes, fashions, and culture that continued to persist. But by many of the measures you mentioned you could say that it went on into the 1980s and 1990s and is even continuing today. For example, you mention having short hair and wearing better clothes. Lots of men do this today. I'd say they don't do this with any nostalgia for the Golden Era in mind, they simply prefer it as a style of dress. Lots of men did this during the 80s and 90s as well. Nowadays it seems that more people dress in other manners as well, but that was also true back in the 1970 when the hippie subculture was getting underway. As for technology as a measuring stick, we don't have rotary phones in widespread use any more, but I kept mine until well into the 1990s when the phone company stopped supporting them. Any era might be vague enough around the edges so that it is difficult to point to start and end dates with much accuracy.
 

Stanley Doble

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Cobourg
Wispy threads connect us to those times. Doc Severinson said in an interview that he was a very lucky man, getting the job of Johnny Carson's band leader when he did, in 1967. All the great Big Bands that survived from the forties were breaking up in the early seventies and he had his pick of the best musicians in the country.

Was Doc Severinson's the last nationally famous mainstream Big Band? He continued as Carson's musical director until 1992.
 

LizzieMaine

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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Pretty much. Les Brown was still active in the 90s, but once Bob Hope retired he lost his major platform for national exposure.

As for the Era's influence in the 70s it was still very strong in the form of authority figures -- for kids in those days nearly all the adults they came into contact with at school, at church, at work, at family gatherings and so forth were born between 1910 and 1940 -- and those adults didn't all grow their hair weird and dress up in polyester. In my town, very few of them did.
 

davidraphael

Practically Family
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790
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Germany & UK
Now that I'm living in Central Europe I've found that there was a real revival of swing and jazz in general in the early 70s. Big Band was all the rage.
For example, people like Benny Goodman, Ella, and Lionel Hampton toured in Germany and Poland a lot in this period and, thankfully, they were so revered here that the TV stations all wanted to record them. I'm a collector of unreleased concerts and broadcasts and some of the best examples of many of these artists' late-career recordings were captured here in central Europe.

Here's a classic example:
[video=youtube;sZfw5kr_YmE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZfw5kr_YmE[/video]
 
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m0nk

One Too Many
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1,004
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Camp Hill, Pa
This is definitely an interesting assessment. I had always thought that the beginning of the counter-culture in the 50's through the end of the 60's was the end of the Golden Era. Of course, we almost had a resurgence in the 90's with neo-swing, but it didn't span long or gather much popularity. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy still has a large following, and although they get close to my area, if they were a little closer I would go see them.
 

LizzieMaine

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The thing to remember is that the counter-culture was nowhere near as big as it is in the re-telling. The vast majority of the people in the late sixties and early seventies had nothing to do with it -- they just went along living the same way they always had. It's the same way that the vast majority of people in the twenties weren't shieks and flappers, and the vast majority of people in the forties never saw a zoot suit except in a newsreel.
 

LizzieMaine

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Most noticeable isn't always most influential. I don't think the sixties generation had much of an impact on the culture I, personally, lived in and experienced until well into the eighties -- when they had long since cut their hair, put down the bong, and decided that rather than wanting to fight The Man they wanted to *be* him.
 

Gingerella72

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Nebraska, USA
All you have to do is watch the first few seasons of All In The Family to see that vestiges of the "Golden Era" were still alive and well in the mid 70's.
 

O2BSwank

One of the Regulars
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137
Location
San Jose Ca.
I think that extending the Golden Age into the 70's is pushing it quite a bit, but to each their own. Don't think 70's topics exactly fit here. I went to high school in the early 70's and ended the decade hitting the discos! It was a "golden age" in my life but don't think it fits the Lounge.
 

Amy Jeanne

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Colorado
The original poster says the last gasps of the 30s and 40s were still being breathed into the 70s. Those who grew up in that generation were now older adults so their culture was still having an impact on things. By the time they were beginning to die in the later 70s and 80s, the golden era culture came to an end. He didn't say the 70s still were the golden era ;) And I can totally see what he's saying because I've always said the same thing. I'll even extend it in the mid 80s in my experiences. The 90s killed off everything that came before it, in my opinion/experience.

Now, I'm not saying the 80s were anything like the golden era AT ALL, but there were still some relics hanging around -- especially in the movie humour. "Take my wife, please!" comedy was still going in the 80s. The overly-PC 90s KILLED it.
 
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Aerojoe

Practically Family
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587
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Basque Country
Golden era during 1970s?
rofl.gif


Everybody does a vintage movie or play a vintage tune at any time. That doesn't involve GE being still alive. BTW, do we have any I hate the 70s thread that I can resurrect? :D
 
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DnD Ranch, Cherokee County, GA
My father was born on the last day of 1930, 12/31/1930, & my mother was born just 29 days later, 1/28/1931. Their childhood was the 30's & 40's. They met in college in 1947-1948. High School was only 11 grades back then. They danced to Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, etc. big band era music. No doubt their early years influenced my up-bringing in the 60s & 70s.....
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Keep in mind that the Golden Era generation was still in positions of power and authority in much of the world right thru the 1980s -- we had a World War II veteran as President as late as January 1993, and a World War II veteran last ran for President in 1996. (Our friends in the UK still have a World War II veteran as their head of state.)

Here's some more perspective:

In 1975, Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Orson Welles, Omar Bradley, Haile Selassie, Joe Louis, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Rudy Vallee, Johnny Weissmuller, Alfred M. Landon, three of the five Dionne Quintuplets, all three DiMaggio brothers, Father Charles E. Coughlin, Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan, and Emperor Hirohito were all still very much alive.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco died that year. Charles A. Lindbergh had only died the year before.

The average veteran of World War I was in his early 80s. Thousands of WWI vets were still alive.

The average veteran of World War II was in his early fifties. Millions of WWII vets were still alive, active, and working in their communities. Many were the parents of school-age children.

Black-and-white films from the thirties and forties were routinely shown in the afternoons and late evenings by television stations in every city. Television series from the 1950s were widely syndicated as reruns. Radio programs from the thirties and forties were also being widely rebroadcast and still had strong followings. Newly-produced radio drama, featuring many actors and writers from the Era, was on the air seven nights a week. It was very easy for anyone who wasn't particularly interested in contemporary popular culture to find Golden Era alternatives.

A person born in 1910 would have only just reached retirement age in 1975. A person born in 1930 would have reached retirement age in 1995. The Era, and the direct influence of the Era, wasn't anywhere near as remote for we who were around then as it is to the generation that's come of age since.
 
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Amy Jeanne

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Colorado
Black-and-white films from the thirties and forties were routinely shown in the afternoons and late evenings by television stations in every city. Television series from the 1950s were widely syndicated as reruns.

This is how I got interested in "old stuff" when I was a child -- before I even realized what it was. "Old" movies from the 30s and 40s were usually shown on Sunday afternoons and "the late show" and I would watch them in awe. This was a late as 1987.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
This is how I got interested in "old stuff" when I was a child -- before I even realized what it was. "Old" movies from the 30s and 40s were usually shown on Sunday afternoons and "the late show" and I would watch them in awe. This was a late as 1987.

The thing I remember most is that those movies weren't presented as "old." You didn't need, the way TCM does today, to have an erudite host to come on and explain why these Films were Important and contextualize them as Cultural Art or any of that stuff. They weren't even "Films," they were *movies,* and they were presented as perfectly viable entertainment, not as musty old museum pieces for enthusiasts and specialists only. Everybody watched them, everybody enjoyed them, everybody was able to relate to them. A 1940s movie viewed in the mid-'70s was seen on the same level as an 80s movie is viewed today: the past, certainly, but not some lost civilization incomprehensible to the viewers without explanations.
 

scottyrocks

I'll Lock Up
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9,178
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Isle of Langerhan, NY
The cross over point, as far as I'm concerned, was the rise of VCRs and cable TV, followed by personal computers, cell phones, and then internet accessible cell phones, that essentially was the gradual opening of the pandora's box that has overtaken old-fashioned good taste and sense. I guess that began, in earnest, in the early to mid '80s, and is, or course, still going on today.
 

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