I thought the same, wondered where the world war veterans were. They were everywhere in 1953, in small towns and big cities. In The Wild One the war is never mentioned, and most of the "older guys" are past forty and look out of shape; while the chief law enforcement officer looks to be about five foot four, maybe 120 lbs, and pushing sixty. There ought to have been some tough veterans in that small town, guys who knew how to fight and who owned and knew how to handle firearms. For all that, I really liked the movie. For me, the symbolism worked even as the movie wasn't too credible when viewed realistically. It was prescient: the bikers were the beatnicks of the road, used hipster slang and had hipster attitudes. In the 60s all this morphed into the counterculture, the hippies, the protesters, young people who called cops pigs. It was all there, in miniature, in The Wild One.
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