CALIFORNIA has fallen on grim economic times, but there was a period not long ago when, in popular culture at least, the Golden State seemed like the best idea America had ever had. In the 1950s and ’60s, even with the Gold Rush a century past, California still had its sand and its sun and its surf to beckon the hopeful westward, and of course it had the movies too, on screens as big — and sometimes as loud — as giant waves. After the gloom and horror of the Second World War and in the midst of the cold war’s nagging anxieties, all those bright blue skies and that warm Pacific water and that clean, soft, shimmery sand looked mighty inviting. “Catch a wave,” the Beach Boys sang, “and you’re be sittin’ on top of the world.” They sounded as if they meant it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/movies/california-and-the-end-of-beach-movies.html
