Popular
movies included
Anatomy of a Murder starring James
Stewart and Lee Remick
Ben Hur starring Charlton
Heston
The Diary of
Anne Frank
starring Millie Perkins and Joseph Schilkraut.
Fiction included William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, William
Faulkner’s the Mansion, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of
Hill House
and Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus.
Popular songs included Platters’ “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Lloyd
Price’s “Stagger Lee,” Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” Fleetwoods’ “Come
Softly to Me,” Dave “Baby” Cortez, “The Happy Organ,” Wilbert
Harrison’s “Kansas City,”
and Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife.”
The Ford Falcon was introduced.
January 9: “Rawhide”
premiered on CBS.
February 3: Buddy
Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson AKA “The Big Bopper” were
killed in a plane crash near Clear lake, Iowa.
March 11: Lorraine Hansberry’s play
A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier, opened at the Ethel
Barrymore Theater in New York.
April 3: S. Wayne Reitz, University
of Florida President, announced that fourteen employees were fired for
homosexual activities.
May 5: Judge Jennie Loitman Barron
of the Massachusetts Superior Court was named Mother of the Year by the
American Mothers Committee.
May 19: The U.S. Public Roads Bureau
reported that 1 of every 2.5 Americans had a registered vehicle.
July 21: the U.S. Postal Service ban
on Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence was lifted by Judge
Frederick van Pelt Bryan.
September 12: “Bonanza”
became the first show to be broadcast in color for NBC.
October 2: “The Twilight
Zone” premiered on CBS.
October 21: The
Guggenheim museum opened.
November 15: The Clutter family of
Holcomb, Kansas were found murdered in their homes, inspiring Truman
Capote to write In Cold Blood (1965).
November 16: The Sound of Music
by Rodgers and Hammerstein opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New
York.