Air
conditioning was introduced in motor vehicles.
Popular films
included:
Double Indemnity directed by
Billy Wilder
Gaslight starring Ingrid
Bergman
Hail the
Conquering Hero directed by
Preston Struges, Henry V directed by
and starring Lawrence Olivier
Laura starring Gene
Tierney and
Dana Andrews
Meet Me In St.
Louis
starring Judy Garland and
Margaret O’Brien
National Velvet starring
Elizabeth Taylor
Since
You Went Away starring
Claudette Colbert
and Joseph Cotton
Thirty Seconds
Over Tokyo
starring Van
Johnson
To Have and Have
Not
starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren
Bacall.
Fiction of the year included: Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man,
Kay Boyle’s Avalanche, Harry Brown’s A Walk in the Sun,
Isak Dinesen’s Winter Tales, Charles Jackson’s The Lost
Weekend, D.H. Lawrence’s The First Lady Chatterly, Somerset
Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Katherine Anne Porter’s The
Leaning Tower and Other
Stories, Jean Stafford’s Boston Adventure, and Lillian
Smith’s
Strange Fruit.
Popular songs included: “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” by The
Andrews Sisters, “Be-Bop” by Dizzy Gillespie, “Gonna Build a Big Fence
Around Texas” by Gene Autry, “Groovin’ High” by Dizzy Gillespie, “I’m
Making Believe”
by Ella Fitzgerald, “Just a Prayer Away” by Bing Crosby, “Sentimental
Journey” by Les Brown and his Orchestra with Doris Day, “That Ole Devil
Called Love” by Billie Holiday, and “You Always Hurt the One You Love”
by the Mills Brothers.
The first automatic, general-purpose computer was created.
The first tertracycline, Aureomycin, was discovered.
The United Negro College Fund was established..
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act became law, helping servicemen and
women to obtain low-income housing and educational loans.
April 2: Shostakovich’s Symphony no.
8 was played by the U.S. Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall.
April 3: The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that blacks couldn’t be barred from voting in political party
primaries.
July 1: The first TV commercial, a
ten-second announcement for Bulova watches, was aired for $9.00.
December 7: CBS televised news of
the attack on Pearl Harbor.