1960s

In the novel, the 1960s are not simply a backdrop but a pressure on identities: the decade makes old successes look newly fragile, reshapes the western, and brings a counterculture into Hollywood’s streets and homes. Its changes register differently for Rick Dalton, whose television fame no longer guarantees a future, and Cliff Booth, whose wartime experience and openness to foreign cinema give him a different measure of the period. Across the decade, the past remains visible in old roles and objects even as the industry tries on new styles.

Hollywood’s changing ground

Rick experiences the industry’s shifts as a personal verdict. In a meeting with Marvin Schwarz, he hears that Italian filmmakers may want him not as their first choice but as an available substitute for Steve McQueen. The distinction lands hard: while Marvin describes a market shaped by who can be obtained, Rick feels tears building and is stunned by the bluntness of the assessment. On the drive home, he calls himself a has-been and describes his career as five years of ascent, ten of treading water, and now a race to the bottom. Cliff points out that he himself has not worked full-time as a stuntman for a while and now drives Rick, runs errands, and house-sits; from his position, a chance to star in films in Rome does not look like a fate worse than death. Their exchange makes the decade’s changes more than a story of new fashions: they alter the practical value of a career and the way an old partnership understands its place.

The contrast between Hollywood and other national cinemas is also part of this generational divide. Cliff and Janet Himmelsteen enjoy I Am Curious (Yellow), while Rick’s view of film remains centered on Hollywood, with other industries treated as lesser versions of it. Cliff, after the violence of World War II, finds many Hollywood movies juvenile, with a handful of exceptions standing out against what he sees as a false normality. The novel sets this judgment beside postwar European and Asian filmmaking, describing films made amid the remains of bombed cities and for audiences less sheltered from war’s devastation. In this account, the decade’s arguments about cinema concern not only taste but also what kinds of experience film is willing to acknowledge.

Counterculture and the old star image

On the streets of Los Angeles, Rick sees hippies in blankets and frocks, with bare, dirty feet, and reacts with disgust. He complains that the town used to be a pleasant place to live and voices a violent wish to have the newcomers shot. His outburst exposes a sharp mismatch between his nostalgia for a settled Hollywood and the counterculture now visible around him. The book also shows the tension inside that counterculture: Dennis Wilson initially shares his home and musical enthusiasm with Charles Manson and the people around him, but the arrangement becomes costly and destructive. The group damages Wilson’s house, costs him thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lost or damaged property, and strains his standing with his bandmates. He eventually moves out and leaves the eviction to his business manager. A culture of sharing does not prevent exploitation; in this episode, its ideals and practical consequences pull apart.

The decade’s instability is carried by objects as well as street scenes. Outside Rick’s home on Cielo Drive, a large section of a billboard for Comanche Uprising shows him as a cavalry officer pinned to the ground, a defeated figure beneath an enemy’s boot. An old friend found the section in an antiques store in Dallas and sent it to him. Rick had little affection for the film beyond the fact that the poster featured him, and he left the painted panel outside in his driveway. The image preserves the television star he once was, but its placement makes that fame seem both present and neglected: a relic of an earlier professional identity sitting in the path of his current uncertainty.

The western remade

The changing western gives Rick a more active encounter with the decade’s new style. On the set of Lancer, he plays Caleb DeCoteau, a rustler and gang leader, rather than the familiar television cowboy Jake Cahill. At first he doubts the new look: the hat, boots, and brown fringed jacket make him wonder whether anyone will recognize him. But seeing his reflection in the window of a western-town set, he begins to accept that the different appearance may help him become Caleb rather than repeat his old persona. Without his customary pompadour, he sees a more modern actor, someone who might belong in a Sam Peckinpah film. The reflection connects an altered costume to the possibility of an altered career.

That production’s approach belongs to a wider shift described through the western genre. The Italian westerns had helped introduce a grittier look, and American westerns in 1969 were beginning to favor younger stars, more distinctive clothes, and antiheroes. Actors long identified with villain roles could become heroes, while villains themselves grew more sadistic and screen violence more graphic. Sam Wanamaker could not reproduce the full force of such films in a Sunday-night CBS series, but he sought their atmosphere through costume and character. Johnny Lancer, played by Jim Stacy, was conceived as a shadowed, antiheroic lead. Stacy wanted a mustache both to support the characterization and to distinguish himself from his fair-haired co-star, Wayne Maunder; the network refused, insisting that the mustache belong on the heavy. Rick’s casting as Caleb then made the old television star part of the new series’s appeal: Johnny’s victory over him could also read as a young hero defeating the familiar image of Jake Cahill.

Old experience, new perspective

The decade does not erase older histories; it places them beside changing entertainment fashions. Cliff’s reputation in the stunt community rests partly on his extraordinary military record, including more confirmed kills of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theater than any other American serviceman, and on the further, uncounted claims associated with his Filipino resistance fighters. He is also known as a ringer and later becomes notorious for his friendly contest with Bruce Lee. These details make his position in Hollywood unusual: he belongs to the workaday stunt world, but his past exceeds the legitimate job title by which that world knows him. His perspective on the period also includes an encounter in Paris with French pimps, a profession and system of exchange that had been wholly unfamiliar to him before the war. The novel uses these episodes to set Hollywood’s shifting styles against the experiences and social worlds that its performers carry with them.

At the decade’s close, Rick’s understanding of his own life changes without any assurance that the industry will restore his standing. After Trudi Frazer reminds him how fortunate they are to act, he takes stock of the actors he has worked with, the women he has kissed, his affairs, travels, hotel rooms, publicity, and unread fan mail. He looks around the house that his work has paid for and recognizes that his career grew from what he had done freely as a child: pretending to be a cowboy. The memory does not undo the insecurity that Marvin’s appraisal exposed, but it changes its scale. The 1960s leave Rick between a fading public image and a more durable recognition of what acting has given him; the decade’s upheaval is both professional threat and an occasion to see the old life anew.