1. americans are real suckers for advertising. and chains do some serious advertising.

2. "better" or "fine" dining is a relatively new thing in the us. perhaps there was find dining in the 50's in nyc or sanfransisco, but other than that, not much.

3. no outstanding food for preparation and no cook books to work from.

any french was really basic. italian was southern tomato italian. chinese was mostly basic cantonese. the greek was real.

there were very few ethnic pockets back then that had brought cooking over from "old country"

my experiences are pretty much limited to DC, MA, OH, PA, MD, IL, FL. i did eat sometimes in NYC, and recall nice country french, and of course "real" chinese. italian was still peasant italian for the most part.