Popular films
included:
Adam’s Rib starring Spencer
Tracy
and Katherine Hepburn
The Heiress starring Olivia
de Havilland
and
Montgomery Clift
In The Good Old
Summertime starring Judy
Garland
and Van Johnson
Samson and Delilah directed by Cecil
B. De
Mille
Sand of Iwo Jima starring John
Wayne,
She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon
directed by John Huston and starring John Wayne, and White Heat
starring
James Cagney.
Popular fiction included: Nelson Algren’s The Man With The
Golden Arm, Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, Truman
Capote’s A Tree of Night and Other Stories, William Faulkner’s Knight’s
Gambit, John Hawkes’s The Cannibal, Shirley Jackson’s The
Lottery,
Sinclair Lewis’s The God-Seeker, Robert Lowry’s The Wolf
That Fed
Us, John P. Marquand’s The Point of No Return, John
O’Hara’s A
Rage to Live, Harold Robbins’s The Dream merchants, Upton
Sinclair’s Oh Shepherd, Speak! and Eudora Welty’s The
Golden Apples.
Popular songs included: “Baby It’s Cold Outside” by Dinah Shore
and Buddy Clark, “Bali Ha’i” by Perry Como, “The Blossoms on the Bough”
by The Andrews Sisters, “Boogie Chillin’” by John Lee Hooker, “Cabaret”
by Rosemary Clooney, “He Calls Me Crazy” by Billie Holiday, “I’m So
Lonesome I could
Cry” by Hank Williams, “Sittin’ By The Window” by Vic Damone, “Smokey
Mountain Boogie” by Tennessee Ernie Ford and “Some Enchanted Evening”
by Ezio Pinza.
CIA’s Radio
Free Europe began broadcasting in Eastern Europe.
Eames designed one of his prefabricated houses in Pacific Palisades,
California.
January 22: Billie Holiday was
arrested for possession of opium.
February Bills were introduced to the New York state legislature
to allow apartment buildings to place antennas on their roofs.
February 10: Arthur
Miller’s Death
of a Salesman, directed by Elia
Kazan, opened on Broadway.
April 25: Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea
was published by New Directions Press.
April 30: ABC announced “the
television development of the year” in which “The Lone Ranger” was
signed for 52 weekly 1/2 hours at $750,000.
June 27: “Captain Video” premiered
on the DuMont network.
July: Congress passed President
Truman’s public-housing bill which called for the construction of
810,000 units of low-rent housing.
October 10: The first regularly
scheduled network television show could now be viewed in both color or
monochrome
with the aid of a color adapter.
December: “Howdy Doody”
merchandising reached $11 million dollars for the year.