Fifties (122 page)

Alger Hiss was the epitome of Establishment sophistication: He had attended the best schools and had been a Frankfurter law clerk. Whittaker Chambers named him as a former Communist conspirator. Tried twice on charges of perjury, Hiss was convicted the second time.
ELLIOT ERWITT, MAGNUM PHOTOS, INC.

Charlie Wilson, shown with models of some of the Pentagon’s best toys, went from being head of General Motors to a job that seemed much the same—head of the defense department. At his confirmation hearings, he was thought to have said that what was good for General Motors was good for the country. He didn’t actually say it, but surely he believed it.
HANK WALKER/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER, INC.

When it was time for Frank Costello, allegedly the head of organized crime in the United States, to testify, his lawyers asked that the camera not show his face. An enterprising cameraman showed Costello’s hands instead, producing dramatic footage as they writhed, sweated, tore up pieces of paper, and shook.
ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER, INC.

Mickey Spillane was a self-taught writer whose tough-guy detective stories, featuring a character named Mike Hammer, became the bestselling paperbacks of the era. Hammer was a two-fisted street guy on the lookout for crooked pols; at the height of the Cold War, he turned his attention away from taking down the usual rats to cleanse the country of commies.
PETER STACKPOLE/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER, INC.

The early computers were big, clunky, and slow. However, their invention and increasingly frequent use was not only of exceptional value to the defense department and some large corporations, but promised an eventual technological revolution for smaller companies and ordinary people.
CULVER PICTURES.

The Motorama shows were the brainchild of General Motors’ domineering chief designer, Harley Earl, and were a great success. Buyers not only could get a look at the company’s latest models, but could enjoy the modernist look of cars of the future.
DENNIS STOCK, MAGNUM PHOTOS, INC.

The McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, had not been very successful in their business ventures until they opened this small fast-food restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Almost overnight, they became the country’s reigning geniuses on the mass production of the American hamburger.
TIME

Kemmons Wilson, founder of Holiday Inn, at Holiday City, the Holiday Inns of America Headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, circa 1958.
COURTESY OF KEMMONS WILSON, INC.

C. Wright Mills in his study in 1950.
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, COLUMBIANA COLLECTION

Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso were among the first Beat poets, and Barney Rosset, right, of Grove Press, was one of the first publishers who encouraged them. Founding fathers of a counterculture, the Beats deliberately rejected any possibility of success in traditional society.
BURT GLINN, MAGNUM PHOTOS, INC.

Writer William S. Burroughs with his assistant, Alene Lee, in 1953 on top of Allen Ginsberg’s roof.
ALLEN GINSBERG/ALLEN GINSBERG ARCHIVES