In many respects they are the forgotten generation. They were born in the years between Wall Street's implosion and Hiroshima's explosion. Some know them as Depression kids; to others they are war babies; to others again they are the silent generation.Their birthplace is the rarely explored windward side of the baby boomer mountain. This generation claims, and is afforded, no defining letter of the alphabet. They are most popularly known as the diminutive pre-boomer generation, where "diminutive" refers to their number rather than to the scale of their cultural contribution. And yet, of all God's generations it is the pre-boomers who have perhaps most profoundly shaped today's Australia, especially at the political level.
Much of this generation was too young to participate in World War II and the Korean War; by Vietnam they were too old.
Either through skilful navigation or by damn good luck these kids, born after and before calamitous events, morphed in the 1950s into the world's first teenagers.
The first incarnation of this bold new life form is thought to have been the "bobby-soxer" - girl fans of Frank Sinatra who in the late 40s boogied and bebopped dressed in full skirts and short white socks and with hair in ponytails.
Richie Cunningham was a teenager from the pre-boomer generation. But then so too were James Dean, Elvis Presley and Prime Minister John Howard. (Although - and there is no firm evidence to support this theory - I suspect John Howard as a teenager was much closer to Richie Cunningham than to James Dean.)
Not that pre-boomers were white-bread teenagers.
Perhaps in anticipation of the youth revolution that would follow in the 1960s, pre-boomers invented primitive forms of teenage counter-culture. There were beatniks and bodgies; the latter manifested in a uniquely female form known, delightfully, as widgies. (The 1950s widgie should not be confused with the contemporary wedgie, which you may be assured is a different concept altogether.)
Maynard G.Krebs, subject of the popular television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963), was a self-styled beatnik who, interestingly enough, would later inspire the Gen-Y cartoon character Shaggy in Scooby Doo.
Yoko Ono was arguably the first global beatnik; even today at the age of 74 she remains proudly and defiantly beatnikesque in her fashion and demeanour. (I am sure I have seen recent pictures of Yoko in a black beret.)
Unlike modern genres of urban sub-culture, such as "Goths", the highest and purest form of beatnikism was never defined by youth. While young Goths look cool, Goths who are middle-aged, let alone geriatric, are frankly a bit of a worry.
The pre-boomer generation delivered this nation two prime ministers: John Howard and Paul Keating. The brash baby-boomer generation, for all the big talk of changing the world, has yet to catapult anyone beyond leader of the opposition. (Baby boomers are such political teasers.)
But the fertile generational brine that delivered our most recent prime ministers also yielded colourful mutations: teddy boys, mods and rockers were, with perfect 20-20 hindsight, the necessary building blocks upon which stronger, sharper and edgier sub-groups would be later based.
Academics enjoy musing deferentially about "standing on the shoulders of giants", but then so too must London's late-1970s punks, who could not have manufactured their in-your-face subculture without a rebel heritage stretching back to the bobby-soxers. After all, the punk Mohican hairstyle is surely nothing more than an erect pony tail.
Beyond their teenage years the pre-boomers tackled the 1960s with a style and panache that was, well, decidedly 1960s. Those pesky baby boomers were culturally impotent; they were epitomised at this time by the hapless Theodore (Beaver) Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver (1964).
Fashion and form quickly evolved around pre-boomer tastes. This was the era forensically spoofed by Mike Myers as Austin Powers. Austin's shagadelic world delivered slim ties, popularised the Watusi and the now-famous faux sophistication of "Bond, James Bond".
But the pre-boomer's grip on youth culture came crashing down in the northern summer of 1967. The boomers would wait not a moment longer for their summer of love. Pre-boomers, perhaps content with their lusty fling with cultural power, retreated to the background, happy to watch on as long-haired hippies slogged it out with the frugal establishment over the following decade.
From there the pre-boomers morphed into middle age, where they once again blossomed. By the mid-1980s pre-boomers were at the peak of their corporate power and once again they set the cultural agenda.
The messianic Gordon Gekko delivered what would turn out to be the pre-boomer's parting shot: "greed is good". And at that time greed did indeed seem good. The shoulder pads were big and the hair was even bigger. Conspicuous consumption by middle-aged pre-boomers delivered the perfect antidote to a Depression-ravaged and war-rationed childhood.
Actors Joan Collins and Larry Hagman in Dynasty and Dallas served up, and spiced up, a heady mix of materialism and Machiavellian manipulation to a pre-crash world awash with pre-boomer ideals.
But the pre-boomer's shooting star fizzled out in the late 1980s. It was at this time that circling, cawing, carnivorous boomers swooped and seized control, just as they did with youth culture in that single northern summer more than two decades earlier.
From that point onwards the pre-boomers hunkered down into retirement, where they remain today passively observing and quietly remembering a time when the Watusi ruled the world.
Now aged between 61 and 76 this generation has either actually or virtually seachanged; many are, in either case, wistfully musing on the merits of a wanderlust life as a grey nomad.
Author Bernard Salt, a KPMG Partner in Australia
bsalt@kpmg.com.au
