1960's: Overview - About | Important Events of the 1960s

I960

Movies: The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine; Elmer Gantry, starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons; Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman; Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins; Spartacus, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Peter Ustinov, and Jean Simmons.
Fiction: John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor; E. L. Doctorow, Welcome to Hard Times; John Hersey, The Child Buyer; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away; John O'Hara, Sermons and Soda-Water; John Updike, Rabbit, Run.
Popular: Songs Paul Anka, "Puppy Love"; Ray Charles, "Georgia on My Mind"; Chubby Checker, "The Twist"; Elvis Presley, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "It's Now or Never"; Johnny Preston, "Running Bear."

The second annual Photography in the Fine Arts Project is held at the IBM Gallery in New York; it is twice as big and occupies three times as much space as the original.
Leslie Fiedler's controversial Love and Death in the American Novel quickly becomes one of the best-known books in the history of American literary criticism.
Astounding Science Fiction, one of the most popular science-fiction magazines since the 1930s, changes its name to Analog.

3 Jan.: The Moscow State Symphony begins a successful seven-week tour of the United States at Carnegie Hall in New York. It is the first Soviet orchestra to perform in the United States.
Mar: Seven of the eight major film studios are crippled by an actors' strike.
4 Mar.: Baritone Leonard Warren collapses and dies during a performance of Laforza del destino at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
16 Mar.: The merger of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Random House, Inc., is completed, with Random in control.
3 July: The city council of Newport, Rhode Island, votes to cancel remaining performances at the annual Newport Jazz Festival due to riots led by drunken high-school and college students.
2 Nov.: Dimitri Mitropoulos collapses and dies while conducting at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy.

1961

Movies: The Absent-Minded Professor, starring Fred MacMurray; Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard; El Cid, starring Charlton Heston; The Hustler, starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason; Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Montgomery Clift; The Misfits, directed by John Huston and starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe; 101 Dalmatians, Disney animation; Splendor in the Grass, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty; West Side Story, starring Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood.
Fiction: John Hawkes, The Lime Twig; Joseph Heller, Catch-22; John O'Hara, Assembly; Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land; Walker Percy, The Moviegoer; J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey; Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Spinoza of Market Street; John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent.
Popular: Songs Ray Charles, "Hit the Road, Jack"; Jimmy Dean, "Big Bad John"; Dion, "Run-around Sue"; the Kingston Trio, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"; the Marvelettes, "Please, Mr. Postman"; Roy Orbison, "Cryin' "; the Shirelles, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"; the Tokens, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

The Museum of Modern Art holds a retrospective exhibit of the work of Mark Rothko.
Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land becomes the first science-fiction novel to appear on The New York Times best-seller list.

27 Jan.: Soprano Leontyne Price first performs at the New York Metropolitan Opera.
29 July: Ten paintings worth $300,000 are stolen from the private collection of G. David Thompson of Pittsburgh; others (including a Picasso) are damaged.
28 Aug.: A contract dispute concerning the musicians at the Metropolitan Opera in New York is settled when the musicians and the company agree to abide by binding arbitration by Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg.
13 Nov.: Cellist Pablo Casals performs at a White House dinner honoring Puerto Rican governor Luis Muñoz Marìn.

1962

Movies: The Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster; Days of Wine and Roses, star-ring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick; Dr. No, starring Sean Connery; Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean and starring Peter O'Toole; Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring James Mason; The Manchurian Candidate, starring Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, and Angela Lansbury; The Music Man, starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones; Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard; To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
Fiction: James Baldwin, Another Country; William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded; Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools; Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave; Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night.
Popular: Songs Tony Bennett, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"; Gene Chandler, "Duke of Earl"; Ray Charles, "I Can't Stop Loving You"; the Four Seasons, "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Sherry"; Little Eva, "The Loco-Motion"; Bobby "Boris" Pickett, "The Monster Mash"; Elvis Presley, "Return to Sender"; Neil Sedaka, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."

William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch (1959), initially published in Paris, is published in America for the first time.
After the death of Clara Langhorne Clemens Samossoud, the last surviving child of Mark Twain, his antireligious Letters from the Earth is published for the first time, as a book edited by Bernard De Voto.

30 May: Benny Goodman begins a six-week tour of Russia in Moscow arranged by the U.S. State Department. Some jazz aficionados feel a more respected all-around musician such as Duke Ellington should represent America, while others think a younger, more "modern" musician would be more appropriate.
25 Sept.: Philharmonic Hall, the first completed building of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, is inaugurated by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy is guest of honor.
25 Oct.: John Steinbeck is announced as the 1962 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature.
12 Dec.: French minister of culture Andre Malraux announces that France will loan the United States Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa for a short period for an American touring exhibit.

1963

Movies: The Birds, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Tippi Hedren; Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; Hud, starring Paul Newman; Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, directed by Stanley Kramer; Lilies of the Field, star-ring Sidney Pokier; The Nutty Professor, starring Jerry Lewis; Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney.
Fiction: Mary McCarthy, The Group; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Thomas Pynchon, V.; J. D. Salinger, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction; Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle.
Popular: Songs The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"; the Beach Boys, "Surfin' U.S.A."; Johnny Cash, "Ring of Fire"; the Chiffons, "He's So Fine" and "One Fine Day"; the Crystals, "Then He Kissed Me"; the Four Seasons, "Walk Like a Man"; Leslie Gore, "It's My Party"; the Kingsmen, "Louie, Louie"; Steve Lawrence, "Go Away, Little Girl"; Peter, Paul and Mary, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Puff, the Magic Dragon"; the Singing Nun, "Dominique"; Bobby Vinton, "Blue Velvet."

John Cleland's erotic eighteenth-century-style novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, is banned in several cities, but the courts declare it not to be obscene. Meanwhile, a bookseller in New Or-leans is arrested for selling James Baldwin's novel Another Country.
A member of the New York Public Library board of trustees borrows and burns the children's book My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Rebecca Reyher's retelling of a Russian folktale, because the book contains passages "favorable to Russia." He is suspended from the board for six weeks or until he replaces the book.
Andrew Wyeth becomes the first painter to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

8 Jan.: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is shown at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the first time the painting has ever appeared outside the Louvre in Paris. During its three-and-a-half-week stay it attracts 500,000 visitors. When the painting moves to New York, 23,872 people show up on a rainy day to see it.
7 May: The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the first major regional theater in the Midwest, opens.

1964

Movies: Becket, starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole; Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, and Slim Pickens; Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery; Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke; My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn; Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn.
Fiction: Saul Bellow, Herzog; Thomas Berger, Little Big Man; Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur; William S. Burroughs, Nova Express; James Gould Cozzens, Children and Others; John Hawkes, Second Skin.
Popular: Songs The Animals, "The House of the Rising Sun"; Louis Armstrong, "Hello, Dolly!"; the Beach Boys, "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "I Get Around"; the Beatles, "Can't Buy Me Love," "A Hard Day's Night," "I Feel Fine," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," and "Twist and Shout"; Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"; Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancing in the Street"; Dean Martin, "Everybody Loves Somebody"; Roy Orbison, "Pretty Woman"; the Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"; Mary Wells, "My Guy."

AMoveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway's memoirs of his early years in Paris, is published.
After three years of court battles in various states, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer is not obscene.
The Deputy, by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, is picketed at its New York performance by Catholics outraged at its suggestion that Pope Pius XII had tacitly allowed the Nazis to commit genocide during World War II.

28 Feb.: Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk is featured in a cover story in Time magazine.
May: After remodeling, the Museum of Modern Art reopens with a new gallery, named the Steichen Photography Center after Edward Steichen, its photography department director from 1947 to 1962.

1965

Movies: Cat Ballou, starring Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda; Doctor Zhivago, directed by David Lean and starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie; The Greatest Story Ever Told, starring Max Von Sydow, Charlton Heston, and Telly Savalas; The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer; Thunderball, starring Sean Connery.
Fiction: Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists; Frank Herbert, Dune; Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird; Norman Mailer, An American Dream; Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge.

1965

Popular Songs: Fontella Bass, "Rescue Me"; the Beach Boys, "California Girls" and "Help Me, Rhonda"; the Beatles, "Eight Days a Week," "Ticket to Ride," and "Yesterday"; James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"; the Byrds, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"; Petula Clark, "Downtown"; Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"; Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"; The McCoys, "Hang On, Sloopy"; Roger Miller, "King of the Road"; the Righteous Brothers, "Unchained Melody" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' "; the Rolling Stones, "Get Off of My Cloud" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"; Sonny and Cher, "I Got You Babe"; the Supremes, "Stop! In the Name of Love"; the Temptations, "My Girl"; Dionne Warwick, "What the World Needs Now."

A three-person music jury suggests that the advisory board for the Pulitzer Prizes grant jazz musician, composer, and bandleader Duke Ellington a special citation for his lifework. The board rejects the recommendation, leading one jury member to voice his dissatisfaction with the decision publicly. Ellington, 66, shrugs it off: "Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young," he says.
The Metropolitan Museum in New York stages a successful exhibit, "Three Centuries of American Painting," of more than four hundred works from those of colonial times to those by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko.
More than seventy thousand listeners attend the first of the New York Philharmonic's free concerts in Central Park.

26 Apr.: Charles Ives's Symphony No. 4 (1916) is performed in its entirety for the first time by the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. A grant is required to finance the extra rehearsals needed for the extremely difficult piece.

1966

Movies: Batman, starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, and Lee Meriwether; The Chase, starring Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, and Jane Fonda; The Group, starring Candice Bergen; One Million Years B.C., starring Raquel Welch; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolff, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis.
Fiction: John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy; Truman Capote, In Cold Blood; William H. Gass, Omensetters Luck; Bernard Malamud, The Fixer; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49.
Popular: Songs The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"; the Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby," "Paperback Writer," and "We Can Work It Out"; the Lovin' Spoonful, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" and "Summer in the City"; Loretta Lynn, "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin' (with Lovin' on Your Mind)"; the Mamas and the Papas, "Monday, Monday"; the Monkees, "I'm a Believer" and "Last Train to Clarksville"; Napoleon XIV, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha"; Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"; Simon and Garfunkel, "I Am a Rock" and "The Sounds of Silence"; Frank Sinatra, "Strangers in the Night"; Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"; Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"; the Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love"; the Troggs, "Wild Thing"; the Young Rascals, "Good Lovin'."

Jazz pianist Earl Hines tours die Soviet Union, sponsored by the U.S. State Department The touris a tremendous success: in thirty-five concerts in eleven cities Hines plays for nearly one hundred thousand jazz fans.
The Sound of Music (1965), having earned $70 million in one year, becomes the top-grossing movie in American motion-picture history.
Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown, changes the name of the Supremes to Diana Ross and the Supremes.

11 May: Joseph H. Hirschhorn donates his art collection, including fifty-six hundred paintings, drawings, and sculptures, to the United States. The collection's value is appraised at $50 million.
8 Dec.: Paul Mellon donates his collection of British rare books, paintings, drawings, and prints to Yale University. The collection's value is appraised at more than $35 million.

1967

Movies: Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Cool Hand Luke, star-ring Paul Newman; The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, starring Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, and Katharine Hepburn; In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, The Jungle Book, Disney animation.
Fiction: Donald Barthelme, Snow White; Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America; Norman Mailer, Why Are We in Vietnam?; William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner; Gore Vidal, Washington, D.C.
Popular: Songs The Doors, "Light My Fire"; Aretha Franklin, "Respect" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"; Bobbie Gentry, "Ode to Billie Joe"; Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant"; Engelbert Humperdinck, "Release Me"; Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit"; Procol Harum, "A Whiter Shade of Pale"; Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "I Second That Emotion"; the Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday"; Tommy James and the Shondells, "I Think We're Alone Now"; the Turtles, "Happy Together"; Frankie Valli, "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

M-G-M Studios turns down a $10 million offer to broadcast Gone with the Wind on television.

18 Feb.: The National Gallery of Art in Washington arranges to purchase Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra dei Benci from Prince Franz Joseph of Liechtenstein for $5-6million, the highest price to that time for a single painting.
26 Apr.: Pablo Picasso's Mother and Child sells for $532,000, the highest price to that time for a single painting by a living artist.
Dec: Unable to compete with television news, the last of the movie newsreel companies, Universal News, closes.

1968

Movies: Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda; Funny Girl, starring Barbra Streisand; The Green Berets, directed by and starring John Wayne; The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter OToole; Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero; The Odd Couple, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau; Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall; The Producers, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder; Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey; Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia Farrow; 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Keir Dullea.
Fiction: John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice; Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar; Robert Coover, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.; James Gould Cozzens, Morning Noon and Night; Ronald Sukenick, Up; John Updike, Couples; Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge.
Popular: Songs The Beatles, "Hey Jude"; James Brown, "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)"; the Doors, "Hello, I Love You"; Marvin Gaye, "I Heard It through the Grapevine"; Bobby Goldsboro, "Honey"; Ohio Express, "Yummy Yummy Yummy"; the Rascals, "People Got to Be Free"; Otis Redding, "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay"; Jeannie C. Riley, "Harper Valley P.T.A."; the Rolling Stones, "Jumpin' Jack Flash"; Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"; Steppenwolf, "Born to Be Wild"; Dionne Warwick, "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?"

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces that it will no longer offer separate Oscars for films in color and in black and white because of the rapidly shrinking number of black-and-white films. Separate awards had been given in cinematography since 1939, art direction since 1940, and costume design since 1948.
Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times, retires after disagreeing with most critics and moviegoers over Bonnie and Clyde(1967), which he disliked and the public loved.
Switched-On Bach, an album of music by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the Moog synthesizer by Walter (later, after a sex change, Wendy) Carlos, is popular with classical listeners as well as young people. A second album the following year, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, is equally successful.

1969

Movies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford; Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson; Goodbye, Mr. Chips, starring Peter O'Toole; The Love Bug, starring Dean Jones and Buddy Hackett; Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, starring Maggie Smith; True Grit, starring John Wayne; The Wild Bunch, directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden and Ernest Borgnine.
Fiction: Robert Coover, Pricksongs and Descants; Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness; N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain; Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor; Joyce Carol Oates, Them; Mario Puzo, The Godfather; Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down; Philip Roth, Portnoys Complaint; Ronald Sukenick, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories; Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five.
Popular: Songs The Archies, "Sugar, Sugar"; the Beatles, "Get Back"; Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"; Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Proud Mary"; Bob Dylan, "Lay Lady Lay"; the Fifth Dimension, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"; Merle Haggard, "Okie from Muskogee"; Peter, Paul and Mary, "Leaving on a Jet Plane"; Elvis Presley, "Suspicious Minds"; Frank Sinatra, "My Way"; B. J. Thomas, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"; Stevie Wonder, "My Cherie Amour" Tommy James and the Shondells, "Crimson and Clover."

Ten-year retrospectives are held featuring the work of pop artists Claes Oldenburg (at the Museum of Modern Art) and Roy Lichtenstein (at the Guggenheim Museum).
Twenty-five writers at Newsday, convinced that they could write a best-selling sex novel of the type popular at the time, create Naked Came the Stranger by "Penelope Ashe"—which indeed became a best-seller.
In response to the new MPAA ratings system, many newspapers either re-fuse to advertise X-rated movies or list only the title, rating, and theater for such films.