V

		White House, following eight years that had been dominated by older men who stuck to views shaped by their experience in the forties: Dwight Eisenhower as President, Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, and Charles Wilson from General Motors in charge of the economy. Not only was Kennedy young and his wife beautiful but his vitality, liberal social ideas, and an economic policy resolutely directed toward growth, resonated well with a generation disenchanted by the ever-present social conformity propounded by families, churches, businesses, and the media. For a while, the Peace Corps and other New Frontier programs were able to quench the idealistic thirst of the young. The failed invasion of Cuba and the shock of multiple political assassinations, however, quickly reawakened doubt about who was really in charge of the country. Were there conspiracies after all? LBJ replaced Kennedy. The Great Society got moving. The war on poverty blitzed through Congress: school lunches, Head Start, etc. With the Civil Rights Act, the Administration assuaged some of the shame of segregation that had been exposed to the world by Martin Luther King Jr. and his marchers in Birmingham and elsewhere. Yet explosion after explosion continued to rock the land. Racial unrest destroyed parts of many cities. An unpopular war was raging in Asia. Draft cards were burned on campuses. ROTC recruiters were expelled from colleges and universities. Dow Chemical came under attack for manufacturing napalm. Other businesses were indicted for being socially or ecologically irresponsible. There were sit-ins everywhere. Large demonstrations in Chicago, Washington, and elsewhere united all those who demanded not only an end to the war but also radical changes in the way this country was run.

		On the cultural front, hair grew longer, clothing loosened up, jeans were everywhere, the pill pushed sex out of the closet, film and book censorship disappeared, and rock music exploded on the scene, at Woodstock and in the record stores' cash registers. More ominously, drugs became prevalent. Ken Kesey perfectly summarized the mood of the times when, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he portrayed the United States as an asylum-society with nefarious leaders bullying and domineering the rest of the population.

		VI

		Through it all, Hollywood remained aloof, incapable of addressing the issues that were tearing the country apart. Although in the past, the stu-