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MOVIES

Pressure from Television

As television became an increasingly popular entertainment medium throughout the 1950s, the movie industry did everything within its power to pull people away from the box in the living room and into the theaters. Bigger became the byword for the movies. Wide-screen techniques such as CinemaScope and Vista Vision were used to add a panoramic effect to spectacles, swashbucklers, musicals, and otherwise splashy movies with big-name stars, big casts, big sets, and big budgets. Although hard-hitting social dramas on both small and large scales had an impact, they were overshadowed at the box office by the melodramatic woman's picture. Science-fiction and horror movies proved more commercially viable than ever, and some were filmed in the short-lived 3-D process.

Spectacle

Historical epics with huge casts were a mainstay of the 1950s. Many of them drew on the Bible: The Robe (1953) was the first movie filmed in the CinemaScope process. David and Bathsheba (1951) and Solomon and Sheba (1959) were big grossers during their respective years of release. Ben-Hur (1959), the most expensive movie up to that time, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Quo Vadis? (1951), set during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, was one of the largest-scale productions of the decade.

More Spectacle

Lavishly produced costume pictures featuring swashbucklers also flourished. Ivanhoe (1952), Scaramouche (1952), and Beau Brummel (1954) were among the most popular of them. Cecil B. DeMille, the master of cinema spectacle since the 1920s, not only produced and directed The Ten Commandments (1956) but also the circus spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. At the beginning of the 1950s Gone With the Wind (1939) was the top-grossing movie of all time, and it remained so throughout the decade. The Greatest Show on Earth became the second-top-grossing movie of all time but was replaced in that spot by The Ten Commandments and then Ben-Hur.

Drama

Social commentary persisted in film dramas during the 1950s. It had begun to take root in such post-World War II movies of the 1940s as The Lost Weekend (1945), concerning alcoholism, and The Snake Pit (1948), dealing with mental illness. In the 1950s many movies approached the subjects of teenagers' delinquency, angst, and love, the most famous being Rebel Without a Cause (1955), which explores all three. The Blackboard Jungle (1955), about troubled high-school youths in New York City, was one of the first movies with a rock 'n' roll score. The Wild One (1954) starred Marlon Brando as a motorcycle-gang leader.

Giant.

The epic-proportioned Giant (1956), one of the most famous movies of the 1950s, features three of the decade's biggest stars: Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean. Giant is filled with many memorable scenes, but one in particular has become a classic of social commentary. When the American Indian daughterin-law of Hudson's character is refused service in a Texas diner, he starts a brawl with the manager. The two slam into a jukebox, and a recording of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" begins blaring while the fight continues.

Award Winners

Some small-scale, black-and-white dramas, such as Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955), about a Bronx butcher, and his The Catered Affair (1956), about a Bronx housewife planning her daughters wedding, did well commercially and gained much critical praise. Marty won three Academy Awards, including one for best picture. Some large-scale, black-and-white dramas enthralled both moviegoers and critics. All About Eve (1950), written and directed by Herman Mankiewicz, offers some of the wittiest dialogue ever written for the screen; it garnered six Academy Awards. From Here to Eternity (1953), concerning servicemen and their loves in Hawaii before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, received eight Academy Awards. On the Waterfront (1954), a gritty portrayal of New York City labor unions, also won eight Academy Awards, including a bestactor Oscar for Brando.

Censorship

Censorship of movies began to lighten by the end of the decade. The romantic comedy The Moon Is Blue (1953) was banned in many cities for its use of the word "virgin". However, in A Summer Place (1959) Sandra Dee is dragged to a doctor by her mother to make sure Dee's virginity is intact after a night on the beach with Troy Donahue.

The Woman's Picture

In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), which features allusions to and scenes from An Affair to Remember (1957), Tom Hanks's character refers to the latter movie as a "chick's picture." In the 1950s such a movie was known as a woman's picture. The melodramatic movie love story reached a pinnacle during the 1950s, rescuing the careers of such 1940s favorites as Lana Turner, Jane Wyman, and June Allyson, who was the top female star of the mid 1950s. Allyson teamed with James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and Strategic Air Command (1955). Wyman paired with Hudson for Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955). Turner followed Peyton Place (1957) with the hugely successful Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy remake of the 1934 movie based on Fannie Hurst's tear-jerking story about an interracial friendship between two women. In the mid 1980s viewers of cable television's superstation Turner Broadcasting Service selected the 1959 Imitation of Life as their favorite movie.

Star Actresses

Marilyn Monroe, Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and Grace Kelly became popular movie stars of the 1950s because they appealed to a vast audience of women who looked to them as trendsetters. Kelly's movie career spanned the years from 1950 to 1956, when she left Hollywood to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco. She starred in such Alfred Hitchcock-directed classics as Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), and Rear Window (1954), which was rereleased theatrically in 1983.

Musicals

A slew of Broadway musicals made it to the big screen during the 1950s. Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951; the third film version of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Call Me Madam (1953), Brigadoon (1954), Oklahoma! (1955), The King and I (1956), and South Pacific (1958) were enormously popular. Monroe and Jane Russell were marvelous in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), also adapted from a Broadway musical. Monroe donned a strapless hot-pink gown with a huge bow for the popular "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number.

M-G-M Musicals

M-G-M produced a new round of its highly popular musicals, including Singin in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). The studio's Gigi (1958)—Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's adaptation of a story by Colette—won nine Academy Awards. Judy Garland, the queen of the M-G-M musical in the 1940s, teamed with James Mason for the 1954 CinemaScope musical remake of the 1937 drama A Star Is Born, The star-studded premiere party was broadcast live on national television. Time magazine (25 October 1954) hailed the movie as "just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history." It was rereleased theatrically in 1983 with restored footage cut soon after the premiere.

Science Fiction and Horror

Although many grade-Z science-fiction and horror movies were released during the 1950s, some superior efforts in these genres were produced. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), Forbidden Planet (1956), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) are among the stellar examples of the decade's science-fiction movies.

Invaders

Youth-oriented horror movies such as The Blob (1958), starring Steve McQueen, and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), starring Michael Landon, have become cult, if not critical, favorites. Horror blends with science fiction in a host of atomic-age movies in which insects and arachnids take on gargantuan proportions after a nuclear nudge. Them! (1954), about giant ants, and Tarantula (1955) are undoubtedly the best of the lot. The Fly (1958), another insect-oriented science-fiction/horror movie, features Vincent Price in one of his best efforts. Price also appeared in the 3-D horror classic House of Wax (1953). // Came from Outer Space (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) were also filmed in this process, which was soon abandoned because of the nuisance of wearing the special glasses required to view it.

Sex and Technology

As the battle between movies and television raged on into the 1960s, developments in film technology continued, resulting in seventy-millimeter film stock for wide-screen projection. However, movies turned increasingly to controversial subjects, violence, and sex and nudity in order to lure patrons into the theaters. Gone were the days when a film would be banned because one of its characters uttered the word "virgin."