Arts & Entertainment
In the 1950's
New And Improved Movies
In the lives of many Americans, movies had been an enjoyed entertainment. In 1948, 18,500 movie theaters held nearly 90 million paid admissions per week. Once the TV industry hit their golden age, the movies had a challenge on their hands because the number of moviegoers decreased by nearly half. Hollywood took action and introduced many improvement to movies including size, color, and stereophonic sound. In 1952 a sound that surrounded the viewer, called stereophonic sound, was introduced. Color was then introduced to more than 50 percent of movies in 1954. In the same year TV introduced color, but that didn't take off until the next decade. Then with the help of 20th Century Fox movies were introduced to CinemaScope, which projected wide-angle images on a screen. Also movies introduced smell using Smell-O-Vision and Aroma-Rama. Finally movies introduce three-dimensional images, when viewed through glasses, it appears as if images from the movie are leaping out at the audience. These advances helped to make movies what they are today and it helped them to include things in the films to gain the interests of many Americans.
A New Look
An advertisement for the new 3-D glasses provided for a movie.
Enjoying The Text
Children reading magazines in the 1950's.
A New Sent
Movies introduced the Aroma-Scope. Viewers rubbed the numbers that appeared on the screen to smell what the characters in the movie are smelling.
With A Turn Of A Page
American people in the 1950's started to find a new entertainment in life that was found through books and magazines. One book called The Organization Man by William Whyte was on based "company people" and how companies would give personality tests to Americans who wanted to be hired for a job to see if they "fit in" to the business culture. The companies would then reward their workers if they showed teamwork , cooperation, and loyalty in the company, which helped lend a hand to the idea of people fitting into something. There was also the Readers Digest and other magazines that became popular to about 148-190 million readers in the 1950's. Overall magazines and books became an entertainment in the lives of people during the 1950's.