Before '50's nostalgia - which really began in the 1970's with "American Graffiti", "Grease", "Happy Days", etc. - Hollywood sold the same fantastical nostalgia for the 1890's & 1900's in many movies made during the '30's & '40's (when many of the old-time studio moguls were children).
And let us not forget that wave of 20s and 30s nostalgia that started in the 50s ("Singin in the Rain", "Some Like It Hot") and peaked in the 60s ("The Roaring 20s" TV series, "Thoroughly Modern Millie", "Bonnie and Clyde")
Our image of the 20s and 30s is informed by the clichés of the 1960s.
As many people who were children or teens during the 1980's and 1990's move into middle age, we can expect a similar wave for those decades, if in fact it hasn't already begun. I'm not immune; my own nostalgia is for the late 1970's and early-to-mid-1980's. The problem is the unrealistic view.
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Our image of the 20s and 30s is informed by the clichés of the 1960s.