443 Films & TV Shows Set In North America During The 1950s
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Tail Gunner Joe
District of Columbia The 1950sSenator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin accuses prominent people of Communist sympathies in order to give him a national power base when he later planned to run for President.
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The Front
New York The 1950sAmerica's most unlikely hero. — A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.
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Obsession
Louisiana 🇮🇹 Italy The 1970s The 1950sA bizarre story of love. — New Orleans businessman Michael Courtland’s life is shattered when his wife and daughter are tragically killed in a botched kidnap rescue attempt. Many years later whilst visiting Italy he meets and falls in in love with Sandra Portinari, who bears a striking resemblance to his wife.
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Next Stop, Greenwich Village
New York The 1950s1953 Was a Good Year for Leaving Home — An aspiring Jewish actor moves out of his parents' Brooklyn apartment to seek his fortune in the bohemian life of Greenwich Village in 1953.
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Ode to Billy Joe
Mississippi The 1950sWhat the song didn't tell you, the movie will. — Billy Joe confesses his love to the lovely Bobbi Lee only to cover his growing fear that he may, in fact, be homosexual. One night, at a barn dance, he gets a little drunk and rather than going with the hired whores, gives into his desires and sexual relations with an unnamed man. The guilt causes him to run away, hide in the woods and eventually confess everything to Bobbi Lee who doesn't want to believe him only because she was enjoying the forbidden nature of their love. In the end, he cannot accept his sexuality nor can he hide behind Bobbi Lee and that's why he throws himself off the Tallahachee bridge.
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W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings
Tennessee Kentucky The 1950sBack in 1957, sweet-talking W.W. lived in a '55 Olds, loved bubble gum, Errol Flynn, country music, fried chicken, robbing filling stations, and a girl named Dixie. Not necessarily in that order. — Story of a happy-go-lucky small time crook who runs into a country music group looking for their big break. They end up helping each other out in unexpected ways.
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Return to Macon County
Georgia The 1950sTwo guys, a chick and the hottest '57 Chevy on the road! — In 1958, two teenagers take their pride and joy, a hopped-up Chevy, and start a cross-country journey to enter it in the National Championship drag races in California. Along the way they hook up with a pretty but dingy waitress who quits her job and hops in their car--and turns out to be more trouble than they thought--drag-race a gang of town punks who lose to to them and then accuse them of cheating, and come up against a local cop who is obsessed with putting these two "juvenile delinquents" in jail.
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Crazy Mama
Nevada Arkansas California Florida The 1950s The 1930sIn 1957 Cheryl Drove Her Mom's Chevy on a Heavy Date: Got Knocked Up, Knocked Over a Bank, Smashed Four Police Cars, and Kidnapped Her Stepfather. It Was a Crazy Year! — Melba Stokes, her mother Sheba and daughter Cheryl embark on a crime spree after their California beauty parlor is repossessed. Their destination is Arkansas, where the three generations of women want to reclaim the family farm.
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Tivoli
Ciudad de México The 1950sThe movie plot revolves around a burlesque theater called "Tivoli", located in downtown Mexico city. The Tivoli is about to be demolished by the corrupt major of Mexico city, and the artists struggle to try to save their workplace. Throughout the movie we see a strong critique towards the Mexican political system of the time, where corrupt politicians run everything like a fiefdom, and live with double standards. While they publicly criticize the Tivoli as obscene and indecent, many of them are regular customers and they even "hire" the artists to do private functions in their mansions.
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The Godfather: Part II
🇨🇺 Cuba 🇮🇹 Italy Nevada New York The 1900s The 1950s The 1940s The 1920s The 1910sI don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies. — In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
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Lenny
California New York The 1960s The 1950sLenny Said It. "Hot Honey" Did It. Together They Shocked America. — The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establisment as too obscene for the public.
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The Lords of Flatbush
New York The 1950sWhen was the last time someone gave you a hickey? — Two members of a social club in 1950s Brooklyn have more interest in romance than in rumbles.
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Macon County Line
Georgia The 1950sThey're on the bad side of the wrong man. — A vengeful Southern sheriff is out for blood after his wife is brutally killed by a pair of drifters. Low-budget film set in Georgia in 1953 and based on fact.
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The California Kid
California The 1950sIn this town a speeding ticket is a death sentence. — A sadistic small-town sheriff has a habit of deliberately forcing speeders to their deaths on the mountain roads leading into town. The brother of one of the victims rolls into town in his hot rod to investigate his brother's death.
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It's Good to Be Alive
New York The 1950sThis movie details the struggles of former Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella to adapt to life in a wheelchair following his crippling automobile accident in 1959. Cinematographer Ted Voigtlander was Emmy-nominated.
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Our Time
Massachusetts The 1950sDrama about students at a girls' school, their boyfriends, and an unexpected pregnancy.
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Badlands
Montana South Dakota The 1950sIn 1959, a lot of people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people. — A dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950s, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.
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Papillon
🇬🇫 French Guiana 🇭🇳 Honduras The 1930s The 1940s The 1950sThe greatest adventure of escape! — A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
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The Way We Were
New York California The 1950s The 1940s The 1930sEverything seemed so important then... even love! — Two desperate people have a wonderful romance, but their political views and convictions drive them apart.
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Lucky Luciano
New York 🇮🇹 Italy The 1960s The 1950sThe real story behind Lucky Luciano, the high priest of crime — Lucky Luciano is one of the bosses of the Mafia. He orders the slaughter of 40 other responsibles, therefore becoming the only boss. But a few years later he is put into jail. In 1946, he got a pardon and is sent back to Sicilia. There, he begins becoming one of the chief of the Mafia. The US Army seems to refrain from interfering.
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The Godfather
California Nevada New York 🇮🇹 Italy The 1940s The 1950sAn offer you can't refuse. — Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
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Silent Night, Bloody Night
Massachusetts The 1970s The 1950sThe mansion… the madness… the maniac… no escape. — On Christmas Eve 1950, Wilfred Butler dies in a burning accident outside his mansion in East Willard, Massachusetts. The residence is bequeathed to his grandson, Jeffrey. Twenty years later, lawyer John Carter arrives in East Willard on Christmas Eve with his assistant and mistress Ingrid, having been charged by Jeffrey (now registered as a patient in a mental asylum) to sell the house. The house, the town, even Jeffrey himself-- all hold dark secrets that will be brought to light.
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The Valachi Papers
New York The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930sWhen Joe Valachi has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese, he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An unsuccessful attempt to slit his throat puts him over the edge to break the sacred code of silence.
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The Last Picture Show
Texas The 1950sAnarene, Texas, 1951. Nothing much has changed… — High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures. Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.
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Carnal Knowledge
New York Massachusetts The 1970s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sIts time has come. — The concurrent sexual lives of best friends Jonathan and Sandy are presented, those lives which are affected by the sexual mores of the time and their own temperament, especially in relation to the respective women who end up in their lives.
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