Was the TV in Jim's 1955 household meant to imply that Jim's family was rich? I'm not really up on my TV history, so I'm not sure how common TVs were at that point.
Also, I was kind of surprised when Jim's father mentioned hearing about the car crash on the local TV news. Was local TV news common then too, or was that just because they were in the huge media market of LA?
........From my understanding of period TV sets were generally inexpensive enough for middle class and even lower middle class people to afford. Since Jim had his own car, as did other young people in the upscale looking neighborhood, his family was apparently middle class if not upper middle class.........From the late forties on the Federal Communications Commission insisted TV stations carry local programing which usually meant news casts. It was usually someone reading regional stories from a piece of paper, including auto accidents, and an occasional film clip, but it was a newscast. In major market areas with network owned flagship stations, like LA, there was far more coverage local stories..........One thing, never seen in an early fifties, was a TV set in a Warner Brothers Movie. The management believed TV was hurting their theater ticket sales, which it was, and if they just ignore it, in their movies, it would go away which it didn't. By the mid fifties, when "Rebel Without a Cause" was filmed they dropped the rule. During the next few years they started filming TV westerns and other programs; ironically saving the studio.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.
I thought the same thing about the evening news!
The car crash must have been a "special bulletin."
My family was neither rich nor poor, but my parents didn't decide to get a tv until 1958, when they bought a used set. It wasn't that they couldn't have afforded one earlier, they just weren't interested enough yet. All of our relatives and friends had tv sets, and none were more than middle class. In the '50s (and before and after) teenagers almost always got their driver's licenses as soon as they turned sixteen. Many had their own cars because they were willing to buy old junkers, and most boys learned how to fix them up. My dad's first car in the early 1940s cost him $15.00. My first car in 1969 cost me $75.00. Gasoline was cheap and insurance was not required but cheap if you wanted it. Traffic tickets cost as little as $15.00, and usually no more than $50.00.
shareAt the time the movie came out, 55% of homes have a TV. I know my Mom was poor growing up and when she met my Dad in the '50s she thought he was well off since his family had a TV.
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