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Important Events of the 1950s

195O

Movies
Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden; All about Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter.
Fiction
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles; Budd Schulberg, The Disenchanted; Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and Into the Trees.
Popular Songs
Bing Crosby, "Dear Hearts and Gentle People"; Red Foley, "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy"; Eileen Barton, "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake"; Billy Eckstine, "My Foolish Heart"; Bill Snyder and His Orchestra, "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"; Nat "King" Cole, "Mona Lisa"; Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra, "Harbor Lights"; Betty Hutton and Perry Corno, "A Bushel and a Peck."
  • Musical festivals in the United States and abroad commemorate the bicentenary death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Notable among them are the yearlong Bach series of the University of California School of Music and the augmented program in the annual Bach series at the Berkshire Music Festival.
  • Basquet-Banquet by Karl Knaths wins the thirty-five-hundred-dollar first prize in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit "American Painting Today—1950."
  • Marilyn Monroe, twenty-four, makes her debut in John Huston's film The Asphalt Jungle.
Jan.
Alto saxophonist Charlie (" Yardbird") Parker and his quintet end a monthlong series of perfbmances begun on 15 December 1949 at Birdland, opening the jazz nightclub named for Parker located at 52nd St. and Broadway in Manhattan.
5Jan.
Carson McCullers's dramatization of her novel The Member of the Wedding opens at New York's Empire Theatre, beginning a run of 501 performances.
Mar.
Roberta Peters, a twenty-year-old opera singer from the Bronx, debuts with the Metropolitan Opera as a stand-in for Nadine O'Connor in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Mar.
The Boston Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the New York Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum issue a joint Statement on Modern Art opposing "any attempt to make art or opinion about art conform to a single point of view."
31 May
Edward Johnson retires after fifteen years as manager of the Metropolitan Opera. His successor is Rudolph Bing.
14 Nov.
The fiftieth birthday of composer Aaron Copland is celebrated by the League of Composers with a concert of his works.
24 Nov.
Guys and Dolls, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, opens at the 46th Street Theater. It is one of the longest-running and most popular Broadway musicals ever staged.
10 Dec.
The novelist William Faulkner receives the 1949 Nobel Prize in literature; no literature prize had been given in 1949, so both the 1949 and 1950 prizes are awarded in 1950. He is the fourth American to win the prize.

1951

Movies
The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn; An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron; Strangers on a Train, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Robert Walker; A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Karl Maiden, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Marlon Brando; Cinderella, Walt Disney animation.
Fiction
James Jones, From Here to Eternity; Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe; William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness; Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny; J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in The Rye.
Popular Songs
Patti Page, "Tennessee Waltz"; Perry Como, "If"; The Weavers with Terry Gilkyson's Choir and Vic Schoen's Orchestra, "On Top of Old Smoky"; Nat "King" Cole, "Too Young"; Tony Bennett, "Because of You"; The Four Aces, "Sin."
  • There are 691 orchestras in America, of which 32 are professional. The rest are college and community orchestras.
  • United Artists, a leading film studio in the silent-film era now losing one hundred thousand dollars a week, is taken over from surviving partners Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford by two New York lawyers under the condition that they make it profitable by 1954.
  • Hank Williams's "Cold, Cold Heart" is number one on the country-music charts; as sung by Tony Bennett, it is also number one on pop-music charts.
Jan.
President Harry S Truman requests that the congressional Commission of Fine Arts begin a survey of the "activities of the Federal Government in the field of art."
Summer
NBC televises a series of concerts from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. During intermissions, artworks are discussed.
25 Oct-16 Dec.
The sixtieth annual American Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago takes place. Willem de Kooning's Excavation wins the one-thousand-dollar first prize.
Nov.
The twenty-fifth anniversary issue of Art Digest is published; Art News celebrates its fiftieth annniversary.
1-15 Nov.
Orchestras and operas "receiving substantial support from voluntary contributions" are exempted from the 20 percent federal admissions tax; price controls are lifted from such organizations.

1952

Movies
High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, The Greatest Show on Earth, starring Betty Hutton and Charlton Heston; Viva Zapata!, starring Anthony Quinn, Marlon Brando, and Jean Peters; The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara; Come Back, Little Sheba, starring Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster.
Fiction
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man; Shelby Foote, Shiloh; Bernard Malamud, The Natural; Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood; John Steinbeck, East of Eden; Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea; Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano; E. B. White, Charlottes Web.
Popular Songs
Pee Wee King with Redd Stewart, "Slow Poke"; Johnnie Ray, "Cry"; Kay Starr, "Wheel of Fortune"; Georgia Gibbs, "Kiss of Fire"; Johnnie Ray, "Walkin My Baby Back Home"; Vera Lynn, "Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart"; The Mills Brothers, "The Glow Worm"; Joni James, "Why Don't You Believe Me?"
Jan.
"American Bandstand," a popular-music show hosted by Dick Clark, debuts on ABC television.
July
The House Judiciary Committee recommends amending the U.S. copyright law to provide for payment of royalties to the copyright owner for jukebox play of music.
Sept.
Ernest Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea is first printed in Life magazine (1 September, 5 million copies), as September co-main selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club (153,000 copies), and then for the trade by Scribners (50,000 copies).
Nov.
Bwana Devil, the first 3-D movie, is released.
Dec.
The art critic Harold Rosenberg coins the term action painting to describe the work of the abstract expressionists.

1953

Movies
From Here to Eternity, starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Frank Sinatra; Stalag 17, starring William Holden; Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.
Fiction
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain; Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March; Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye; Louis L'Amour, Hondo; J. D. Salinger, Nine Stories; Leon Uris, Battle Cry; William S. Burroughs, Junkie.
Popular Songs
Perry Como with Mitchell Ayres's Orchestra, "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes"; Teresa Brewer with Jack Pleis's Orchestra, "Till I Waltz Again With You"; Frankie Laine, "I Believe"; Pattie Page, "The Doggie in the Window"; Nat "King" Cole with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, "Pretend"; Percy Faith and His Orchestra, "The Song From Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart?)"; Les Paul and Mary Ford, "Vaya Con Dios (May God Be With You)"; the Ames Brothers with Hugo Winhalter and His Orchestra, 'You, You, You"; Frank Chacksfield and His Orchestra, "Ebb Tide."
  • The National Music Council reports that of 1,834 performances by major symphony orchestras in the United States only 7.5 percent were of works by American composers.
  • Doubleday Anchor Books, a new line of quality paperbacks, is introduced.
  • Henry Koster's The Robe, starring Richard Burton, was the first film in CinemaScope, which used wider screens and stereophonic sound; the technique was designed to counter the popularity of television by attracting viewers to the big screen once again.
  • Former Harvard Lampoon editor George Plimpton begins publication of the Paris Review.
19 Feb.
William Inge's play Picnic, starring Paul Newman, opens a run of 477 performances at the Music Box Theatre in New York.
16 Mar.-11 Apr.
Willem de Kooning's Paintings on the Theme of Woman is exhibited at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City.
Aug.
The Commission of Fine Arts recommends that a music center be established in Washington, D.C., and that federal funds be appropriated for an auditorium to stage productions of operas, symphonies, and ballets.
Oct.
A survey by the Metropolitan Opera Guild indicates that 744 performances of seventy-three contemporary operas, about half of which were by professional companies, were produced in the United States between October 1951 and October 1952.
  • The Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, dramatizing the 1692 Salem witch trials, served as a parallel to the persecution of alleged Communist sympathizers in the United States.

1954

Movies
On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando and Karl Maiden; Rear Window, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly; Country Girl, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and William Holden; A Star is Born, starring Judy Garland.
Fiction
William Faulkner, A Fable; Evan Hunter, The Blackboard Jungle.
Popular Songs
Roy Hamilton, "Ebb Tide"; Tony Bennett with the Percy Faith Orchestra, "Stranger in Paradise"; Frank Sinatra with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, "Young at Heart"; Perry Como with the Hugo Winterhalter Orchestra, "Wanted"; Kitty Kallen with the Jack Pleis Orchestra, "Little Things Mean a Lot"; Archie Bleyer and His Orchestra, "Hernando's Hideaway"; Rosemary Clooney, "Hey, There"; Doris Day, "If I Give My Heart to You"; The Chordettes with Archie Bleyer's Orchestra, "Mister Sandman."
  • The Whitney Museum in New York is moved from quarters in Greenwich Village to a building adjoining the Museum of Modern Art.
  • The International Congress of Art Historians and Museologists estimates that there are ten million amateur artists in the United States.
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder is the first serious film to be released in 3-D; when it fails to reach as many viewers as Hitchcock is used to, he rereleases the movie in a standard version.
31 Mar.
Howard Hughes, criticized for capricious business practices in running RKO film studios, in which he has held controlling interest since 1948, buys the out-standing RKO stock for $23.5 million.
4 Apr.
Arturo Toscanini conducts the last broadcast concert of the NBC Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
July
The first Newport Jazz Festival is held in Newport, Rhode Island.
19 July
Nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley's first professional record, "That's All Right, Mama" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky," is released on Sun Records (#219).
28 Oct.
Ernest Hemingway wins the Nobel Prize in literature.

1955

Movies
Marty, starring Ernest Borgnine; The Seven Year Itchy starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell; Mister Roberts, starring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon; The Rose Tattoo, starring Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster; East of Eden, starring James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives, and Jo van Fleet.
Fiction
Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar; Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit; MacKinley Kantor, Andersonville; Norman Mailer, The Deer Park; Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find; John O'Hara, Ten North Frederick; Wright Morris, Field of Vision.
Popular Songs
Joan Weber, "Let Me Go Lover"; Fontaine Sisters, "Hearts of Stone"; McGuire Sisters, "Sincerely"; Bill Hayes, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"; Perez Prado, "Cherry Pink and Apple Blosson White"; Bill Haley and His Comets, "Rock Around the Clock"; Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons."
  • The American Shakespeare Theatre has its first season at Stratford, Connecticut, which was founded in 1623 by settlers from Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Jan.
The contralto Marian Anderson is the first black singer to appear at the Metropolitan Opera; the performance is Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in maschera, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.
24 Mar.
Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring Barbara Bel Geddes and Burl Ives, opens a 694-performance run at New York's Morosco Theater.
July
Howard Hughes sells RKO Corporation, the motion-picture subsidiary of RKO Pictures, to General Tire and Rubber Company for $25 million.
20 Aug.
Chuck Berry gains immediate success with his first release, "Maybeëene," which he follows with many other hits including "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "School Day" (1957), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958).
30 Sept.
Actor James Dean, twenty-four, is killed when he crashes his Porsche roadster.
Oct.
Leopold Stopowski begins a three-year engagement as conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
13 Oct.
Poet Allen Ginsberg gives the first reading of his controversial poem-in-progress, "Howl."
16 Nov.
The option owned by Sam Phillips of Sun Records on Elvis Presley's recording contract is purchased by the RCA Record Company for thirty-five thousand dollars.
5 Dec.
Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, a revision of The Merchant of Yonkers (1938), opens a 486-performance run at the Royal Theatre in New York. The play is the basis for the 1965 hit musical Hello, Dolly.

1956

Movies
The King And I, starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr; Lust for Life, starring Anthony Quinn and Kirk Douglas; Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner; Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean; Around the World in Eighty Days, starring David Niven and Shirley MacLaine.
Fiction
Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side; John Barth, The Floating Opera; Saul Bellow, Seize the Day; Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah; Grace Metallious, Peyton Place; William Brinkley, Dont Go Near the Water; Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame.
Popular Songs
Dean Martin, "Memories Are made of This"; Platters, "The Great Pretender"; Kay Starr, "Rock and Roll Waltz"; Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"; Perry Corno, "Hot Diggity"; Morris Stoloff, "Moonglow" and the "Theme from Picme.
  • Rock 'n' roll disc jockey Alan Freed stars in three movies: Rock around the Clock; Rock, Rock, Rock; and Dont Knock the Rock.
  • The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh opens; it is the first museum in the United States to use state-voted public funds to purchase art-works.
  • Construction begins on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
  • The Joffrey Ballet Company is founded by dancer-choreographer Robert Joffrey.
  • Elvis Presley makes his film debut in Love Me Tender.
20 Apr.
T. S. Eliot attracts an audience of fourteen thousand to a baseball stadium at the University of Minnesota to hear him speak on "The Frontiers of Criticism," a lecture on literary criticism.
10 Aug.
Jackson Pollock and one of his passengers are killed when he crashes his Oldsmobile convertible while drunk.
20 Oct.
At age twenty-four, country singer Johnny Cash releases "I Walk the Line," which makes the Billboard Top 40. As a result, he begins appearing on "Grand Ole Opry" and comes to be ranked as one of the top three male vocalists of the country charts.
29 Oct.
Soprano Maria Callas makes her New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Norma.
11 Oct.
The National Broadcasting Company of singers begins its first season with a fifty-performance tour in forty-seven cities in the East, Southeast, and Midwest.
7 Nov.
A Long Day's Journey Into Night, an autobiographical play by the late playwright Eugene O'Neill, opens at New York's Helen Hayes Theater.

1957

Movies
The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring William Holden and Alec Guinness; Twelve Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb; Love in the Afternoon, starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, and Maurice Chevalier; Sayonara, starring Marlon Brando, Miyoshi Umeki, and Red Buttons; The Three Faces of Eve, starring Joanne Woodward and Lee J. Cobb.
Fiction
James Agee, A Death in the Family; James Gould Cozzens, By Love Possessed; William Faulkner, The Town; Jack Kerouac, On the Road.
Popular Songs
Pat Boone, "Don't Forbid Me" and "April Love"; Elvis Presley, "Too Much," "All Shook Up," "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear," and "Jailhouse Rock"; Sonny James, "Young Love"; Buddy Knox, "Party Doll"; Debbie Reynolds, "Tammy"; Johnny Mathis, "Chances Are"; and Sam Cooke, "You Send Me."
  • The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss, is wildly popular with children learning to read, and becomes the first in a series of rhyming, entertainingly fanciful beginners' readers. The book is translated into many foreign languages and sells eight to nine million copies over the next twenty years.
  • Motown Corporation is founded by thirty-year-old entrepreneur Berry Gordy, Jr., who invests seven hundred dollars to start the recording company that helps define black popular music over the next two decades.
21 May
City Lights Bookshop owner and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti is charged with selling lewd and indecent materials when San Francisco undercover police buy a copy of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Later in the year Ferlinghetti is found innocent.
26 Sept.
West Side Story, a modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, premieres at the Winter Garden Theater with music by Leonard Bernstein.

1958

Movies
Gigi, starring Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, and Burl Ives; Marjorie Morningstar, starring Gene Kelly and Natalie Wood; Separate Tables, starring Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, and Wendy Hiller; I Want to Live!, starring Susan Hayward.
Fiction
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's; John O'Hara, From the Terrace; Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel.
Popular Songs
Danny and the Juniors, "At the Hop"; Elvis Presley, "Don't" and "Hard-Headed Woman"; McGuire Sisters, "Sugartime"; Silhouettes, "Get a Job"; Champs, "Tequila"; Everly Brothers, "All I Have to Do Is Dream" and "Bird Dog"; Platters, "Twilight Time"; Perry Como, "Catch a Falling Star"; and Laurie London, "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."
  • Seventy percent of all records sold are bought by teenagers.
  • Alan Freed is arrested in Boston for inciting a riot at a rock 'n' roll show he had staged.
  • Robert Rauschenberg pioneers "pop art" by creating a "semiabstraction" with a hole into which he has inserted four Coca-Cola bottles.
  • The first Grammy Award is presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to the song "Volare" by Italian composer Dominic Modugno, with English lyrics by Mitchell Paris; the award is widely criticized for favoring older, more conservative white artists over youth-oriented pop artists.
13 Apr.
American pianist Van Cliburn wins the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow.
29 July
Fifteen-year-old Paul Anka becomes an instant success with his first release, "Diana"; he has three more hits within a year and is a millionaire by the time he is seventeen.
2 Oct.
Leonard Bernstein begins his first season as director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra by introducing "previews," in which he comments on works being played.

1959

Movies
Anatomy of a Murder, starring James Stewart and Lee Remick; Ben Hur, starring Charlton Heston; The Diary of Anne Frank, starring Millie Perkins and Joseph Schildkraut.
Fiction
William S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch; William Faulkner, The Mansion; Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus.
Popular Songs
Platters, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"; Lloyd Price, "Stagger Lee"; Frankie Avalon, "Venus"; Fleetwoods, "Come Softly to Me"; Dave "Baby" Cortez, "The Happy Organ"; Wilbert Harrison, "Kansas City"; Bobby Darin, "Mack the Knife."
  • E. B. White's revision of The Elements of Style, by his Cornell teacher, the late William Strunk, Jr., is published.
3 Feb.
Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J. P. Richardson are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. They are the first rock 'n' roll stars to die.
11 Mar.
Lorraine Hansberry's play Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier, opens a 530-performance run at the Ethel B anymore Theatre in New York.
21 July
The U. S. Post Office ban on distributing the 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D. H. Lawrence, is lifted by a federal district court. Judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan rules that the postmaster general is not qualified to judge obscenity of material to be sent through the mail.
21 Oct.
New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to mixed reviews.
7 Oct.
One hundred eight musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra accept a contract after a strike that caused cancellation of the first three concerts of the season; the new contract stipulates a minimum wage of $170 per week for instumentalists.
16 Nov.
The long-running Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music opens at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theater.