I have no trouble believing it was wonderful to drive a big heavy piece of Detroit iron at 90 miles an hour. Been there and done that. I’ve had that experience too.
And I have no trouble believing that it was good marketing to have some glamorous movie star advertising a consumer product while clad in a beautiful gown.
What I was wondering was, did the people of the period not look at the three dorky-looking guys driving with lovely, vivacious Dinah Shore and think, “Those guys look gay.” In real life, nobody ever gets into a car and drives along singing; didn’t that bother consumers? Did it really motivate them to buy?
I’m asking because I was a very small child in 1959, and I’m trying to understand my parents and the apparently golden time in which I was born. I’m wondering how we can take steps toward recapturing the best of America’s past. It seems there was a sort of naïveté, a willing suspension of natural skepticism. Was this a reaction to the sorrows of World War II?
“It seems there was a sort of naïveté, a willing suspension of natural skepticism.”
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I think the key to it was, Americans did not have the sick, jaded view that infests our society today. The “natural skepicism” was not so natural back then, at least it wasn’t front and center. These days if you aren’t worldly wise and cynical you are viewed as a polyanna, naive or unsophisticated.
In the things that matter, people of that era were every bit as sophisticated and worldly as we are today. They were just more positive, optimistic and quite frankly, civilized.
That’s my take looking down the retrospective gateway. Take it for what its worth, as I was born in 1958.
I don't recall anyone using the term gay for homosexual back in the fifties even for what now looks “dorky”. And remember every other pop male singer was named “Bobby” and had a big greasy pompadour hair style.
The “pansies” used to hang around the movie theater when I was young but had any even said a word to a kid the police would make sure he didn't walk for a long time. So there were homosexuals just as now but it was waaay back in the closet. Liberace was near the top of his career and played it straight as a arrow.
I think it was Frank Sinatra that made a movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, about drug addiction and it couldn't be shown most places. Some things were not for public discussion. At all.
“Did it really motivate them to buy?”
Evidently it did. Detroit sold all it could produce with no rebates or cash for clunkers. And they could sneer at the few foreign oddities imported. (see some of David Halberstams commentary and books).
But also during the period just after WWII research was being conducted in depth to discover what motivated people psychologically to act as they did and how to manipulate those motivations.
The advertising industry is simply more blatant about it now.
And yes Dinah Shore was a sex symbol but the image of a nice wholesome type. She had a simple message, She was moral and Chevrolets were for people like her and for people who liked her. See America but only in a Chevrolet. With a big kiss!