Specifically wondering what chefs of higher end restaurants, food critics, and any sort of 'big name' in the culinary arts world thought of this 'gelatin with everything' trend at the time. Was it embraced? Frowned upon? Any examples of a restaurant of 'prestige' ever serving a menu that had a more unusual gelatin based dish.
Also curious if most folks thought the dishes were good or just saw it as more of a novelty than anything (such as bacon with everything about 10 years back).
So, a fun fact, part of the 1950s obsession with gelatin comes from the growing ubiquity of refrigerators (though in the early 50s they were still quite expensive). For a brief moment, having cold gelatin-based foods was a status symbol that demonstrated that you owned a fridge! And as you suggest, they were a novelty in large part because they (mostly) would not have been possible to make without a fridge.
Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" included a whole section of aspics which were produced in a similar way. Aspics are much older than this midcentury gelatin trend, but they did become more popular in the 1950s-60s (and never really got popular again). From what I understand as someone who cooks, it is much easier to make an aspic if you can refrigerate it, which made it possible to make them at home when they were previously fare for grand homes and restaurants with fully staffed kitchens. I am not personally an expert in culinary history, so I am not aware of other specific examples of chefs using or producing these recipes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/dining/jello-mold.html
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/why-were-there-so-many-gelatin-based-dishes-50s-and-60s