What of American culture from the 1940s and 1950s deserves to survive?

In the comments, Elijah asks:

Would love to read a post about which movies and novels from this era do and do not deserve to survive and why.

I do not love 20th century American fiction, so maybe I am the wrong person to ask.  I started with GPT-5, which gave this list of novels from those two decades.  I’ve read a significant percentage of those, and would prefer:

Raymond Chandler, J.D. Salinger, Nabokov, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and lots of science fiction.  The I, Robot stories are from the 1940s, and the book published in 1950.  A lot of the “more serious” entries on that list I feel have diminished somewhat with age.

Great Hollywood movies from that era are too numerous to name.  In music there is plenty of jazz, plus Elvis, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Buddy Holly, doo wop, “the roots of rock” (includes some one hit wonders), Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, the Everlies, the Louvin Brothers, Johnny Cash, lots of country and bluegrass and blues, and many other very well known names from the 1950s.  It is one of the most seminal decades for music ever.  The 1940s are worse, perhaps because of the war, but still there is Rodgers and Hammerstein, lots of big band, and Woody Guthrie.

Contra Ted Gioia, much of that remains well-known to this day, though I would admit Howard Hanson and Walter Piston have fallen by the wayside.  Overall, I think we are processing the American past pretty well.