In Music in the Age of Anxiety(University of Illinois Press), James Wierzbicki makes interesting observationsabout Hollywood during that anxious period, the 1950s. He calls out most filmhistorians for concentrating “on a relatively small handful of films” relevantto their own concerns (largely, the ‘60s) while ignoring or underplaying moviesthat mattered most to audiences at the time. And while leftist scholars dismissthe ‘50s as a wasteland and rightists glorify it as happy days, Wierzbicki seesa time of contradiction when affluence spread under the shadow of the atom bomband opposing ideologies engaged in a covert struggle for the narratives ofHollywood movies.
A University of Sydney musicologistwho grew up in Milwaukee, Wierzbicki devotes most of his book to Broadway,jazz, mainstream pop music and the rise of rock’n’roll—all within the contextof understanding postwar America as the middle class moved to the suburbs andeagerly conceived the Baby Boom. But he devotes a chapter to Hollywood, whose mogulswere anxious as the studio system crumbled under the twin blows of anti-trustrulings and television. Hollywood was also under pressure from Congressionalinvestigations into Communists in the movie industry and a contradictory tug ofwar pitting the censorious American Legion and Roman Catholic Church against thegrowing public appetite for more liberal depictions of sex and society.
Given the book’s focus, Wierzbickidevotes much of his Hollywood chapter to film scores. Most movie music fromHollywood’s golden age had been orchestral, not simply from the taste of studioheads but from musician union contracts mandating that studios maintain large stafforchestras. The system broke down by the late ‘50s, opening the door morewidely to the jazz-derived scores heard through the ‘70s and the use of familiarpop tunes that continues today.
