Hula Hoop

Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud" Melin, founders of the Wham-O Company, are the architects of the biggest fad of all time - the hula hoop!

In 1957, an Australian visiting California told them, quite casually, that in his home country, children twirled bamboo hoops around their waists in gym class. Most of us would have thought, "how nice" but for Knerr and Melin an idea spawned.

They understood how popular such an item could be and proceeded to manufacture one made of plastic, Marlex specifically, a lightweight but durable plastic then recently invented by Phillips Petroleum.

The name "hula hoop" came from the Hawaiian dance its users seemed to imitate.

Talk about sales! Wham-O sold 25 million hula hoops in two months. Almost 100 million international orders followed. They were manufacturing 20,000 hoops a day at the peak of popularity.

Not all nations thought this was such a spiffy idea. Japan banned the hoops thinking they might promote improprieties. The Soviet Union said the hula hoop was an example of the "emptiness of American culture." Well, okay, maybe they had a point there.

The faze was short-lived. But our young entrepeneurs were already onto another hot idea they had.

3-D Movies

Movie studio executives worried that the new medium, television, would steal away their audiences. What was required was a hook to bring people back into the movie theatre. As the strippers sang in "Gypsy," you gotta have a gimmick.

Even though 3-D movies had been around as far back as 1922 and had lost favor, it was decided to try again. Arch Oboler's "Bwana Devil" started the 3-D craze of the Fifties. It premiered on Nov. 26, 1952 and starred Robert Stack, Barbara Britton and Nigel Bruce. (see poster below)

An African adventure film (A Lion in Your Lap, A Lady in Your Arms!) about man-eating lions which would jump off the screen at you, it made for pretty exciting watching when the process worked right. People were issued glasses which facilitated the 3-D effect.

Previously, 3-D used the anaglyphic process and those glasses were the red and green ones. This distorted the whole film by discoloration. Enter Polaroid and a newer system called Natural Vision.

Here's how 3-D basically works. Each of your eyes sees a slightly different image which your brain combines into one. Unless that is artificially manipulated by say, 3-D glasses, in which case you brain processes the difference as depth or three dimensions.

The Polaroid system depends upon delivering to the viewer's eyes two separate images taken from a camera with twin side-by-side lenses. Now the glasses are actually Polaroid lenses. The color 3-D films made use of Polaroid separation, named after a process invented by Dr. Edwin Land, the camera guy. 3-D technology used two projectors showing the two camera views. The output of the projectors was run through a polarizing filter.

Polaroid glasses were nearly clear and so did not detract from the viewing expericence.

What was tricky about it was the projection. If it wasn't done perfectly by the movie theatre, the whole thing just looked like a blurry mess. And then there were the headaches many people suffered watching 3-D movies. Owners of movie houses weren't especially keen on exhibiting movies that made many of their customers run for the aspirin bottle.

At first industry experts predicted that 3-D would do for movies what the "talkies" had done. Some surprising titles were filmed in 3-D, such as Hondo, Kiss Me Kate and Dial M for Murder. But often their 2-D versions outsold the 3-D, and the industry got the big hint.

3-D comics fared a bit better and are still valued by collectors. But 3-D movies began a slide into low budget productions. Newer, more interesting technologies such as CinemaScope quickly eclipsed the 3-D movies. They only required one projector and saved on the aspirin costs!

Chlorophyll

Beat odor. I figured your first question would be - what is that supposed to do for you? And the answer is that it was widely believed that chlorophyll eliminated bad smells.

So they added it to every kind of product imaginable. The picture at left just suggests the variety and number of items to which chlorophyll became a promotable ingredient.

Yes, chlorophyll is the stuff that makes plants green. Today many people still tout the benefits of it for health. No, I don't think you can just go out and eat a shrub and get the same result.

While not engaging in the debate of chlorophyll's therapeutic properties, suffice it to say that it sold well. Until "The Journal of the American Medical Association" pointed out grazing goats virtually live on chlorophyll and they smell bad just the same.

Coonskin Caps

Davy Crockett was our hero. And to prove it, we all went out and bought coonskin caps. About 100 million dollars worth of raccoon caps sold in one year certainly qualifies as a fad of serious ecocnomic proportions.

But we didn't stop there. We also bought capguns, wrist watches, books, moccasins, lunch boxes and all manner of merchandise. America had a major case of Davy Crockett-itis.

Fess Parker portrayed both Davy Crockett and later Daniel Boone on TV. Many historians feel that this caused a permanent blurring of the two real life men into one entity forever making each less distinct.

What's curious about this is that Davy Crockett was only a five feature Frontierland adventure which aired as part of Disneyland.

The first three episodes were:
"Davy Crockett Indian Fighter" 12/15/54
"Davy Crockett Goes to Congress" 1/26/55
"Davy Crockett At the Alamo" 2/23/55

Now as any student of history knows, Davy at the Alamo kind of boxed Disney into a corner because that's where his tale ends. So they had to go back and make episodes about his earlier exploits. Which were:
"Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race" 11/16/55
"Davy Crockett and the River Pirates" 12/14/55

Davy Crockett never got a series of his own. Like most fads that come in with a vengeance, they tend to go out with the proverbial whimper. Thus it was with Davy Crockett and the coonskin cap.

Think Pink!

Formerly considered a "girlish" color, pink invaded men's wear. Yessir, pilgrims, even real tough hombres were donning pink ties, shirts, and bathrobes. Serious corporate types could be seen wearing pink under their grey flannel suits. This display of sartorial splendor was a radical departure from the drab neutral colors that once limited men's clothing choices.

Pink was everywhere. There were pink bathrooms with accessories to match, pink cosmetics and of course, the ubiquitous pink poodle. And then there was Elvis with his famous pink Cadillacs

Poodles

While the French poodle has always been popular, in the Fifties it was everywhere. There were ceramic poodles, plastic poodles, pink poodles, white poodles, black poodles. You could wear poodles, decorate with poodles, store things in poodles, even throw your trash in poodle wastecans.

Some of these items bear the label "Made in Occupied Japan." What does this mean? After World War II we were fussy about what we'd let Japan manufacture. In short, nothing that could possibly be used for making war. You get to do this when you are the victor and occupy a foreign country. The consequence? Japan made a lot of French poodles. And if all that wasn't enough, a poodle haircut was prevalent.

Telephone Cramming

Oddly enough, this fad began in South Africa, spread to England and then in 1959 went straight to - California!

The idea was to cram as many people as possible into a telephone booth. A competition sport, cramming soon spread across college campuses as each one tried to set a new record.

Sometimes called Telephone Box Squash, there were very few rules except that it was widely accepted that the booth must still contain a phone. Under British rules, you had to be able to be able to either place or receive a call, but that did not apply anywhere else. The door was left open and only half of a person must be inside the booth to be counted. And the booth had to upright.

The South African record of 25 people withstood all challengers. The English only made it to19 and hey, they had wider booths. A Canadian group made it to 40 but the booth was on its side and so that figure was discounted.

As for the spirit that built the West - the most efficient bunch we had was a group at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California.(Pictured above) In an effort to beat the South African record, they managed to cram 22 people in a booth. Well, you can't win them all.

Cramming expanded into other venues and VW Beetle cramming enjoyed a brief popularity. But like all good fads, this one ended rather quickly.