I come from a family of Ford fanatics, but I envy anyone driving a 50s model anything.
Sadly, the days when you could just replace tubes in a set and get it working good as new have passed. I know you wanted to avoid it, but the first thing to do is to replace the capacitors. A handy guide on this can be found here:
Replacing Capacitors in Old Radios and TVs
I'm sure everyone here would be happy to help you get started on that process.
Anyways, welcome aboard!