October 2021 Group Meeting Report
‘The Fabulous 50’s....Do You Remember?’ was the title of Delia Taylor’s lively, educational and entertaining presentation at our October meeting. Life was very different all those decades ago from the digital age of today. Moving on from the war years Britain was a top manufacturing country in products such as ships, steel, cars and coal and everyone was released from rationing during this decade. In the summer months of 1951 ‘The Festival of Britain’ featuring The Skylon, showed our confidence in the future. Things were not the same for everyone of course and the famous ‘I look up to him/I look down on him’ sketch performed by John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, satirised the British class system.
By illustrating how we lived then through photographs, film clips and musical recordings Delia certainly awakened memories long asleep. For me it was the theme tunes to favourite radio, television programmes and films. Many more women than today were full time ‘housewives’ and radio programmes such as Housewives Choice, Music While You Work and Mrs. Dale’s Diary and of course ‘Listen with Mother’ were broadcast during the daytime for this audience. I can clearly remember sitting round the radio with my brother and a couple of friends, each of us with a pet chicken on our knees, to listen to the story. There were no fridges so shopping was done daily – who remembers ‘Divi Day’ at the local Co-op? Dewhurst, Freeman Hardy and Willis and Mac Fisheries were popular shops on Britain’s High Streets.
Gone was ‘Make Do and Mend’ and influenced by America, in came glamorous fitted sweaters and blouses, halter-neck swishy dresses, slim slacks, stilettos and scarves for gals and for guys cardigans, cufflinks, and pompadour and crew-cut hair styles. Televisions – usually rented - appeared in ordinary homes. Popular programmes included Sunday Night at the Palladium, Take Your Pick, Dixon of Dock Green, I love Lucy and for children The Flower Pot Men, Andy Pandy and Muffin The Mule. Going to the pictures was a frequent outing to see films such as On The Waterfront, Gigi, Ben Hur and most popular of all Walt Disney’s Cinderella. Most people had record players. Favourites were songs from the shows such as South Pacific, The King and I, West Side Story and artists such as Frank Sinatra – until Bill Haley and His Comets got us rocking and rolling to ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
There were some tragic events too. 6,000 Londoners died in The Smog of 1952 ushering in the Clean Air Act of 1956 and in 1953 140,000 acres of land was flooded and 307 people died in The North Sea Floods.
We ended the evening on a high, admiring the gyrating leather-clad bottom of ‘The King’.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser