Fabulous
films included:
The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer
starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy
The Farmer’s
Daughter
starring
Loretta Young
Gentleman’s
Agreement
starring Gregory Peck and
directed
by Elia Kazan
The Ghost and Mrs.
Muir
starring Gene Tierney
and
Rex Harrison
Miracle on 34th Street starring Edmund
Gwenn and
Natalie
Wood
The Street Life of
Walter Mitty starring Danny
Kaye.
Fiction included: Saul Bellow’s The Victim, John Horne
Burns’s The Gallery, Erkstine Caldwell’s The Sure Hand of
God, Theodore Dreiser’s The Stoic, John Gunther’s Inside
U.S.A., Chester
Himes’s Lonely Crusade, Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement,
James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Kenneth Roberts’s Lydia
Bailey, Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion, John
Steinbeck’s
The Pearl and The Wayward Bus and Lionel Trilling’s The
Middle
of the Journey.
Popular songs included: “Christmas Dreaming” by Frank Sinatra,
“The Dum Dot Song” by Frank Sinatra, “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Gene
Autry,
“I Want to Cry” by Dinah Washington, “I’ve Only Myself to Blame” by
Doris
Day, “Mam’selle” by Art Lund, “Move it on Over” by Hank Williams, “Near
You” by The Andrews Sisters, “Peg O’ My Heart” by the Harmonicats. and
“Wedding
Bells” by Hank Williams.
Bernard
Baruch coined the term “Cold War.”
The CIA was
founded.
April 10: Jackie
Robinson signed
with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black to play in white
major league basketball.
May 22: Poet Archibald MacLeish was
inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
September 13: TV Syndication was
developed between Eastman Kodak and NBC which took form in “kinescope.”
September 15: Time magazine reported
that many American women were rejecting Christian Dior’s “New Look” as
expensive and trendy.
September 30: The first World Series
game between the New York Yankees and the New York Dodgers was seen by
4,000,000 people on television.
October 5: Harry S.
Truman became
the first president to address the television public from the White
House.
October 13: The Hollywood Ten began
appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
November 6: “Meet the Press”
premiered on television. The next year Alger Hiss was attacked as
a Communist while appearing on the show.
December 3: Tennessee
Williams’s A
Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway.
December 29: “The Howdy
Doody Show”
premiered on NBC.