1950s — Television Arrives

About the 1950s in screen music

Network television explodes into the American living room and creates an entirely new market for short, recognizable musical hooks. The decade's sitcom themes (I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners), western theme music (Gunsmoke, Bonanza), and detective scoring (Perry Mason, Dragnet) define the language of broadcast theme writing for the next half-century.

For decade-by-decade scoring history, the chronological essay archive at Marquee & Reel is one of the more useful free reading lists we recommend.

This page collects every 1950s theme profile catalogued in ToneVault, alongside related public-domain ringtone downloads from the same era. The original network and label master recordings of these themes are usually still under active copyright; the ToneVault archive provides historical context, install instructions, and stylistically related public-domain audio you can legally download and use as a phone ringtone.

Iconic 1950s Composers

Composers who shaped the 1950s theme-music landscape include — among many others — the working studio writers who scored network television and the major-studio film composers whose work defined the cinematic side of the decade. To browse by individual composer, see the full composer index.

Installing a 1950s theme as a ringtone

The technical workflow is the same regardless of the source: get a clean MP3 file under 30 seconds, then either run it through GarageBand to produce an M4R for iPhone or drop it into the Ringtones folder on Android. Step-by-step instructions are at iPhone via GarageBand and Android via Files App.