As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s » (1st Edition)

Karal Ann Marling is Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota.

America in the 1950s: the world was not so much a stage as a setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when how things looked—and how we looked—mattered, a decade of design that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. From the painting-by-numbers fad to the public fascination with the First Lady's apparel to the television sensation of Elvis Presley to the sculptural refinement of the automobile, Marling explores what Americans saw and what they looked for with a gaze newly trained by TV. A study in style, in material culture, in art history at eye level, this book shows us as never before those artful everyday objects that stood for American life in the 1950s, as seen on TV.

Publishers Weekly

Historian Marling (Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American Hero) takes us back to those early days of television, when Ike was in the White House and everybody loved Lucy. The author explains TV's tremendous influence: it allowed Mrs. Eisenhower to give the nation the "Mamie Look,'' and advertised both Disneyland and the big-business "leisure society'' created by the 40-hour workweek. Marling also looks into America's love affair with the automobile ("Drive your Chev-ro-lay through the USA,'' sang Dinah Shore); the importance of Elvis and Betty Crocker; and Cold War politics, featuring Richard Nixon in the kitchen with Nikita Khrushchev. A nostalgic, informative and sometimes funny view of 1950's American culture. Photos. (Sept.)