New York in the Fifties is a documentary film about the budding art and music scene in New York City in the 1950s. While the 50s is a time that is typically synonymous with white picket fences and conventional families, New York City, specifically Greenwich Village, was painting a very different picture. Based on the book by Dan Wakefield, Betsy Blankenbaker tells the story of the many free thinkers, artists, and the like that embraced an radical scene in New York, wanting no part of the cookie cutter life that was so encouraged in much of the rest of the country. Wakefield himself, an Indiana native that flocked to the east coast metropolis, tells stories of watching Jack Kerouac read poetry, and heading over afterward to see a set by jazz great Thelonious Monk. While middle America was eating story bought cookies and getting to bed by nine, in New York patrons would stay drinking until the late hours, discussing Hemingway and Faulkner. Through interviews and great archival footage, Blankenbaker tells the story of a city that was and continues to be a cultural hotbed for art art and cultural just a bit to the left of the norm.moreless
