Really? Because even really old portraits had huge amounts of background blur: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/aU4oh69TPgC0JrujNVvk... for example.

Now of course, it wasn't trendy to take portraits with only one eyelash in focus, but the vast majority of people even on FF don't do that. On my 50 1.4 (a lens made for film cameras, btw) if you want to take a picture with such an extreme amount of blur you need to have your subject quite close to you. And there is virtually no one with a lens faster than f/1.4 nowadays.