Call It Frisco

Don’t Call It Frisco, the book in which Herb Caen first popularized the phrase, was published in 1953. So for those who insist on clinging so tenaciously to an idea from that year, here are some other popular views from 1953 that you might want to support:

• Women earned about 60 cents for every dollar men earned.

• President Eisenhower approved National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, maintaining and expanding the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons to “counter the communist threat.”

• In South Africa, the Apartheid Separate Amenities Act was passed, creating separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities.

• Cigarettes were considered to be healthy.

Welcome to flavor country!

• Homosexuals were commonly convicted on “morals” charges - most notably Bayard Rustin, advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. and driving force behind the historic March on Washington.

• Pointy Bras.

• Senator Joseph’s McCarthy’s Red Scare was in full swing, and Charlie Chaplin was labeled a communist and unable to reenter the U.S. after a trip to Europe.

• The top 5 Billboard songs were:

1. Song From Moulin Rouge by Percy Faith
2. Vaya Con Dios by Les Paul & Mary Ford
3. Doggie In The Window by Patti Page
4. I’m Walking Behind You by Eddie Fisher
5. You, You You by the Ames Brothers

Two of the other top 10 hits were by Perry Como.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.