Films of the
year included:
African Queen starring Humphrey
Bogart and Katherine Hepbur
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 Marlon
Brando
Walt Disney’s Cinderella.
S&H
stamps are offered by a Denver grocery-store chain.
The first all-glass-and-steel apartment building, designed by Ludwig
Miews van der Rohe, was completed on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
The Lacoste shirt was exported to the United States for the first time
by Izod.
The second Levittown was built in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Fiction of the year included From Here to Eternity, Carson
McCullers’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, J.D. Salinger’s The
Catcher in the
Rye, William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness and Herman
Wouk’s The
Caine Mutiny.
Popular songs included Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz,” perry Como’s
“If,” The Wevers with Terry Gilkyson’s Choir and Vic Schoen’s
Orchestra, “On Top of Old Smoky,” Nat “King” Cole’s “Too Young,” Toney
Bennet’s “Because of
You,” and The Four Acres’, “Sin.”
Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart,” sung by Tony Bennett, is number one
on the pop music charts.
Gerber Products began using the flavor additive MSG (monosodium
glutamate) in its baby food.
Maureen Connolly became the youngest woman to win the U.S. Open in
tennis.
U.S. surgeon John Gibbon Jr. created the first heart-lung machine.
The Durham-Humphrey Amendment made presrciptions legal documents.
the Boogs Amendment to the Harrison Act increased the penalities for
drug crimes.
Summer: NBC televised a series of
concerts from the National Gallery of Art in Washington with artwork
discussed during intermission.
July 1: the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People held the largest unsegregated audience
since the Reconstruction.
Fall: William de Kooning’s excavation won
the one-thousand-dollar first prize at the sixtieth annual American
Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago.
The 25th anniversary issue of Art Digest was published and the 50th
anniversary issue of Art News was published.
November 5: the New Jersey Turnpike
opened.