The Cool and the Crazy

Pop Fifties Cinema

By Peter Stanfield

Rutgers University Press

Explosive! Amazing! Terrifying! You won’t believe your eyes!

Such movie taglines were common in the 1950s, as Hollywood churned out a variety of low-budget pictures that were sold on the basis of their sensational content and topicality. While a few of these movies have since become canonized by film fans and critics, a number of the era’s biggest fads have now faded into obscurity. The Cool and the Crazy examines seven of these film cycles, including short-lived trends like boxing movies, war pictures, and social problem films detailing the sordid and violent life of teenagers, as well as uniquely 1950s takes on established genres like the gangster picture.

Peter Stanfield reveals how Hollywood sought to capitalize upon current events, moral panics, and popular fads, making movies that were “ripped from the headlines” on everything from the Korean War to rock and roll. As he offers careful readings of several key films, he also considers the broader historical and commercial contexts in which these films were produced, marketed, and exhibited. In the process, Stanfield uncovers surprising synergies between Hollywood and other arenas of popular culture, like the ways that the fashion trend for blue jeans influenced the 1950s Western.

Delivering sharp critical insights in jazzy, accessible prose, The Cool and the Crazy offers an appreciation of cinema as a “pop” medium, unabashedly derivative, faddish, and ephemeral. By studying these long-burst bubbles of 1950s “pop,” Stanfield reveals something new about what films do and the pleasures they provide.

Fresh ideas, fresh arguments, and a good feel for the 1950s—Stanfield has it all. This book is one of a kind. Wheeler Winston Dixon, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

This dazzling archaeology of cycles and genres in postwar cinema goes deep into cultural history, then pulls back to reveal patterns and movements unseen until Stanfield saw them. Highly recommended. Will Straw, McGill University

The Cool and the Crazy is a breath of fresh air in that it takes a new look at film cycles that have been written about on multiple occasions—1950s B motion pictures—studying them from topical, social, and production-level perspectives ... This is indeed the 'jazzy, accessible' read it claims to be. Highly recommended. CHOICE

One of the strengths of Stanfield's work is his willingness to resist easy and superficially satisfying answers in favour of demonstrating the imprecise and often awkward ways in which cinema relates to public debates and social trends. Journal of American Studies

Uptight yet simmering below the surface, the fifties were a great decade for style and culture. Peter Stanfield’s The Cool and the Crazy explores the pulpy cinema of the era with aplomb. Campus Circle

Fresh ideas, fresh arguments, and a good feel for the 1950s—Stanfield has it all. This book is one of a kind. Wheeler Winston Dixon, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

This dazzling archaeology of cycles and genres in postwar cinema goes deep into cultural history, then pulls back to reveal patterns and movements unseen until Stanfield saw them. Highly recommended. Will Straw, McGill University

The Cool and the Crazy is a breath of fresh air in that it takes a new look at film cycles that have been written about on multiple occasions—1950s B motion pictures—studying them from topical, social, and production-level perspectives ... This is indeed the 'jazzy, accessible' read it claims to be. Highly recommended. CHOICE

One of the strengths of Stanfield's work is his willingness to resist easy and superficially satisfying answers in favour of demonstrating the imprecise and often awkward ways in which cinema relates to public debates and social trends. Journal of American Studies

Uptight yet simmering below the surface, the fifties were a great decade for style and culture. Peter Stanfield’s The Cool and the Crazy explores the pulpy cinema of the era with aplomb. Campus Circle

PETER STANFIELD is a professor in the film department at the University of Kent, UK. His previous books include Maximum Movies—Pulp Fiction: Film Culture and the Worlds of Mickey Spillane, Samuel Fuller, and Jim Thompson, "Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (both Rutgers University Press), and Horse Opera: The Strange History of the Singing Cowboy.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Monarchs for the Masses: Boxing Films

2 War Fever: Korea—Timely! Powerful! Exploitable!

3 Got-to-See: Teenpix and the Social Problem Picture

4 Teenpic Jukebox: Jazz, Calypso, Beatniks, and Rock ’n’ Roll

5 Intent to Speed: Hot Rod Movies

6 Punks! JD Gangsters

7 Dude Ranch Duds: Cowboy Costume

Conclusion

Notes

Index