Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up (12 page)

While much has been written about the relationship of fifties teens with the adult world, there has been less interest
in the interaction between adolescents and younger children in the era. If the “first teenagers” were perplexing, bewildering, and exasperating to parents, they also evoked a response from their sibling rivals.

One of the first defining realities in the relationship between fifties teenagers and Baby Boomers was whether it was based on family or neighborhood, and this often depended on parents' age and World War II experiences. Boomers with teen siblings tended to have parents who were a bit older than average or fathers who had spent a major portion of their military experience in a stateside assignment. This group included couples who had married in the 1930s and produced children relatively quickly; men who were excused from the draft because they were parents or were employed in critical occupations; or servicemen who were stationed in the United States long enough to be married and have children before the end of the war. Boomers who were acquainted with teenagers only outside the immediate family tended to have parents who had met during the war and delayed marriage or childbirth due to overseas assignments, or had met just after the war and produced postwar children.

By the 1950s most Boomers viewed teenagers with a certain awe and probably saw many of them as “cool,” with their greater independence in clothes selection, entertainment, activities, and freedom of movement. On the other hand, in those families where the oldest children were postwar babies and teens were next door or down the street, the adolescents held more of a mystique than in those households where siblings were fighting for bathroom space or privacy in shared bedrooms. In turn, most teens were both more caring and more mature than the characters in period
teen films and TV shows, and more than a few felt special protective bonds for siblings or neighbors who had adolescence ahead of them.

Several opportunities helped create a relatively normal bond between the “first teenagers” and the Baby Boomers. First, in the fifties the American public education system was undergoing a massive administrative restructuring in which thousands of school districts transformed the old elementary and high school configuration (K–8, 9–12) into an elementary, junior high, and high school system (K–6, 7–9, 10–12). Boomer children, whose parents may have spent the seventh and eighth grades in single-teacher classrooms in a school with children as young as five, now switched classes, encountered multiple teachers, and interacted with full-fledged teens attending ninth grade. More than a few smaller districts combined junior and senior high schools in the same building, and in some elective subjects, such as creative writing, public speaking, and art, it was possible to have a twelve-year-old sitting next to an eighteen-year-old. Generally these junior high kids were called “preteens,” teenagers in training as it were. Their world was very different from the elementary school they had left behind.

A second bonding opportunity emerged as overstretched parents used their teen children to act as parents with some of their younger siblings. Since most teenagers could drive at sixteen, teens could take younger children to doctors' offices, stores, or movies. More than a few boys discovered, to their dismay, that a parental offer of the use of the family car for a date at the drive-in theater might also include a back seat filled with younger siblings, complicating the romantic possibilities for the evening. The numbers of young children provided an expanded opportunity for teens to sample the
responsibilities of parenthood, a valuable experience in a society where the average bride was just over nineteen at marriage and the groom not much older.

Finally, Boomers and teens bonded in their mutual fascination with an emerging popular culture that often separated them from the larger adult world. Science fiction and monster movies, television programs aimed at less than mature viewers, and new comic superheroes and satirical publications such as
Mad
magazine provided enormous common ground for prewar, war, and early postwar babies. The more their parents and other adults disparaged those pastimes, the more enjoyable they were for teens and Boomers. Near the end of the fifties, this shared culture gradually began shifting to the tastes of the younger generation. One of the first places it became apparent was in the world of popular music.

By the end of 1958, rock-and-roll music had become a significant element in teenage culture. It featured celebrity performers, inexpensive record players, emerging transistor radio technology, and exposure on national television. Yet within a few months the first incarnation of this new music format was fraying markedly. When impresario Alan Freed's Big Beat Show rock-and-roll concert series played in Boston on May 3, 1958, a frenetic white female member of the audience jumped onto the stage and began embracing a startled black performer in a cross between dancing and sexual contact. An outraged white policeman shoved through the audience toward the stage as security guards began clearing the auditorium. Soon teens and police were skirmishing outside, and media outlets reported a “teen riot.”

At about the same time the highly publicized government investigation of corruption in the television quiz-show
industry began lapping over into the popular music business. More than a few legislators believed that if game shows were rigged, so was rock and roll. Some disk jockeys, it turned out, lined their pockets while “seducing” teens into listening to particular songs that record companies had bribed them to play. Freed and a number of other pioneer rock-and-roll “DJs” would be professionally ruined by the investigations.

Finally, just after the group Danny and the Juniors followed their smash hit “At the Hop” with the almost euphoric prediction song “Rock and Roll Will Never Die,” many of the genre's stars either figuratively or literally did exactly that. In an appalling litany of death notices, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, Eddie Cochran, and Frankie Lymon died, the first three in the same plane crash, Cochran in a British auto accident, and the teenage Lymon in a supposed drug overdose. Chuck Berry found himself fighting gun-possession charges instead of playing his guitar, Little Richard spurned music for the ministry, Jerry Lee Lewis's marriage to his underage cousin was nearly fatal to his career, and the emerging King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, traded his sideburns for a G.I. crewcut, beginning a two-year stint in the army.

The summer of 1958 not only brought warm breezes across America but the hint that the music the first teenagers called their own was changing, and the new target audience was rapidly becoming the Boomers. At school, picnics, church carnivals, boardwalk hotdog stands, and other recreational activities, loudspeakers and radios blared two new hits that had a rock-and-roll beat but were quickly adopted by children and preteens. David Seville's “Witch Doctor” and Sheb Wooley's “Purple People Eater” were impossible to miss that summer, and both songs essentially parodied
serious rock-and-roll love songs with their nonsense premises of a witch doctor as a relationship counselor and a visiting, one-horned alien joining a rock-and-roll band. By mid-June, “Purple People Eater” was the number-one-selling record with “Witch Doctor” close behind. Soon “novelty tunes” dominated radio play lists, as TV horror show host John Zacherle's “Dinner with Drac,” the Playmates' satire of car racing, “Beep Beep,” Bobby Day's parody of avian teen romance in “Rockin' Robin,” and Jan and Dean's lighthearted romance between toddlers in “Baby Talk” were nudging many more serious songs off the radio waves. That 1958 holiday season produced the biggest-selling hit of the year when Seville expanded his “Witch Doctor” nonsense verses into a Christmas wish list from three chipmunks, Theodore, Simon, and the new star of novelty, Alvin.
Alvin and the Chipmunks
albums, toys, and paraphernalia rivaled the earlier Davy Crockett craze and left more than a few teenagers wondering what had happened to their music.

Dick Clark, who had avoided Alan Freed's fall from grace in congressional hearings through a combination of businesslike responses and a well-timed divestment of entangling deals, quickly emerged at the forefront of a changing popular music industry that now viewed Boomer preteens and children as the market of the future while actively toning down those musical elements that seemed to produce adult hostility. By the close of 1959 the young people who had become teenagers during the fifties were turning to a new product, compilation albums of “Golden Oldies,” presenting nostalgic collections of songs two or three years old by performers who were no longer the stars of the industry. These teens also became even more deeply connected to the Elvis Presley persona as the King returned from the service
in 1960 with films and songs that found a huge audience among his initial fans.

While teenagers who had been old enough to appreciate the excitement of rock and roll in its formative years now often returned to their roots in “Oldies but Goodies,” Dick Clark and other promoters were quickly shifting their energies to discover profitable attractions for preteen Boomers. Clark ventured from his
Bandstand
offices to nearby South Philadelphia to discover a quartet of Italian-American teens who had the looks and just enough musical talent to appeal to preadolescent Boomer girls. Fabian Forte, James Darren, Frankie Avalon, and Bobby Rydell all emerged as multimedia phenomena, cutting records, making television appearances, playing supporting roles in general-audience films, and even shooting TV pilots. New York talent scouts countered with Dion DiMucci, Neil Sedaka, and Bobby Darin while fifteen-year-old Paul Anka emerged from his native Montreal as a Canadian-American teen idol. In turn, preteen boys were quickly attracted to Mousketeer Annette Funicello, Connie Francis, and Brenda Lee. Even young television stars who were not primarily singers were encouraged to tap into the new young audience as Connie Stevens of
Hawaiian Eye
, Johnny Crawford of
Rifleman
, and both Shelley Fabares and Paul Peterson of
Donna Reed
enjoyed substantial success in the recording field. Perhaps the most successful of all teen idols was Ricky Nelson, the ebullient younger son of
Ozzie and Harriet
. Under the careful tutelage of his father, Ricky was given substantial time to demonstrate both acting and singing skills on the weekly program, which brought him almost twenty major records and choice movie roles.

The transfer of media interest from fifties teens to Boomer preteens was equally noticeable in the film industry.
The peak period of the “teenpics” was 1955 to 1958, yet even in the latter year change was in the air: the great concern with juvenile delinquency was waning. One of the most successful fifties teen movies was
High School Confidential
, which is replete with stock teen characters and jargon. In one scene, a teen hood played by John Drew Barrymore teaches a mock history lesson using only teen language. As the film unfolds, it becomes apparent that the only teen who can outdo Barrymore in confrontational delinquency is a character played by Russ Tamblyn, who is eventually exposed as an undercover police officer. The last major teen film of the fifties,
Because They're Young
, released at the turn of the decade, shifted focus even more dramatically in centering on a young history teacher played by Dick Clark, more than his students, and depicting a high school where the only student wearing a black leather jacket changes to a shirt and tie by the climax of the story.
High School Hellcats
and
Hot Rod Girls
were now largely replaced by much lighter fare directed at preteen Boomer audiences.
The Parent Trap
and
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
featured Boomer actors such as Hayley Mills and Tommy Kirk.

The change in emphasis is also noticeable in the world of print. Alarming articles of the mid-fifties lamenting juvenile delinquency and teen rebellion faded significantly by the end of the decade. Mainstream magazines now ran features on the pros and cons of preteen dating, the pitfalls of preteen girls attempting to grow up too soon with adult encouragement, and the potential overcrowding of American high schools as the first Boomers reached adolescence. At the same time features on “exotic” or “nonconformist” cultures in America shifted from teens to older subjects such as the Beat Generation. The late fifties and early sixties offered
dozens of satirical articles on the newly designated Beatniks, but it was clear that few of them were teenagers.

The fifties teenagers may have been pushed out of the limelight by younger Boomers and older Beatniks, but as they moved toward college and careers they soon realized they had been born at an extremely propitious time. Many more of them were encouraged to attend college in the lull between the G.I. Bill veterans and the looming Boomer generation. When they applied for jobs, they found themselves a small cohort entering a blooming job market. In a slightly ironic twist, the huge teacher shortage created by the Boomers allowed pre-Boomer teacher candidates to have their pick of instructional assignments. A large proportion of Boomer high school and college students would find themselves in classes taught by their still relatively young siblings and neighbors who had been the adolescents of the fifties. And the males of this generation would be too young to serve in the Korean conflict, too old to fight in Vietnam.

The two groups who experienced the 1950s as young people were both adept at befuddling parents and other adults. Each group also represented enormous market potential and became the targets of advertising campaigns, film directors, and television producers. The Boomers often viewed their teenage siblings and neighbors as “cool” and sophisticated, and carefully observed them as they dealt with that formidable entity called the “adult world.” In turn, most teenagers saw their younger counterparts as junior admirers and tacit allies in conflicts with parents and authorities. The annoyance of shared bedrooms or crowded recreational facilities was often more than compensated for by parental involvement with the more numerous Boomers, deflecting unwanted attention from the teens.