Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History

Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History

1950s

Herein is a detailed timeline of the key film milestones, important turning points, and significant historical dates or events (organized by decade) that have had a significant influence on the world body of cinema and shaped its development. For more detailed accounts of many items, also see this site's extensive narratives on Film History by Decade, Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects, and a comprehensive History of the Academy Awards.

Index to Timeline of Greatest Film Milestones and Turning Points

(by decade)

Pre-1900s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

1950s - Part 1

Year	Event and Significance
1950	Hollywood began to develop ways to counteract free television's gains by the increasing use of color, and by introducing wide-screen films (i.e., CinemaScope, Techniscope, Cinerama, VistaVision, etc.) and gimmicks (i.e., 3-D viewing with cardboard glasses, Smell-O-Vision, etc.).
Early 1950s	Film theater attendance drastically declined due to the rise of television.
1950	John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo were imprisoned and the eight remaining members of the Hollywood Ten were convicted of contempt of Congress.
1950	Japanese director Akira Kurosawa released Rashomon.
1950	Studio control of stars further eroded when James Stewart signed a precedent-setting independent (or free-lance) contract to share in the box-office profits of the Anthony Mann western Winchester '73, and for the film version of the stage comedy Harvey. In fact, for all his Universal Studios films (including Bend of the River (1952), and The Far Country (1954)), Stewart took no salary in exchange for a large cut of the profits -- a very lucrative deal. As a result, he earned increasingly high salaries, became a pioneer of the percentage deal (a performer accepted a reduced or non-existent salary in exchange for a percentage of the box office profits), and was the industry's top box-office star by mid-decade. For Winchester '73 alone, Stewart earned $600,000.
1950	The career of former silent star Gloria Swanson (nominated and lost for Best Actress) was revitalized with the release of Billy Wilder's black comedy Sunset Boulevard. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three - for Story and Screenplay, B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Score. Swanson was nominated for Best Actress (and lost). Wilder's film was controversial for its unflinching look at the Hollywood studio system and its politics, and for its casting of former and current Hollywood legends as themselves to add a touch of reality (Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston) or a close facsimile (Erich von Stroheim).
1950	The melodramatic, sordid underbelly of theater show biz with dozens of quotable lines, producer Darryl F. Zanuck's All About Eve, earned a then-unmatched record of 14 Academy Award nominations and won six, including Best Picture (Zanuck), Best Director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), and Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders). Although widely considered to be Bette Davis' best film role as the petulant, angry aging diva Margo Channing -- who uttered one of the most famous lines in film history ("Fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night!") -- she, along with co-star Anne Baxter in the title role of Eve Harrington cancelled each other out and lost Best Actress honors to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. Thelma Ritter and Celeste Holm were also nominated in supporting roles, giving All About Eve a record four female acting nominations.
1950	James Dean participated in a Pepsi-Cola commercial - his first acting job (paying $30) that launched his career.
1951	Legendary film critic and theorist Andre Bazin established the influential and distinguished Cahiers du Cinéma (literally 'cinema notebooks'), arguably the most influential film magazine in film history. Future filmmakers and critics, such as Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette contributed to the publication, advocating the auteur theory and proposing the use of more individualistic styles. Their ideas and writing gave rise to the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) by the end of the decade, and brought respectability to the idea of film as a legitimate field of study.
1951	The Motion Pictures Production Code specifically prohibited films dealing with abortion or narcotics.
1951	HUAC opened a second round of hearings in Hollywood to investigate communism in the film industry, leading to the blacklisting of 212 individuals actively working in Hollywood at this time.
1951	Indebted United Artists was sold to a syndicate headed by two New York entertainment lawyers, Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin.
1951	Marking the decline of the old Hollywood studio system, this was the first year in which the Best Picture Oscar was given to the film's producers rather than to the studio that released the film.
1951	To combat the threat of television, the Cohn brothers (of Columbia Pictures) founded a television production company subsidiary named Screen Gems.
1951	Christian Nyby's The Thing, (ghost-directed by Howard Hawks), one of the earliest examples of an alien invader film, featured filmdom's first space monster.
1951	One of the most thoughtful science-fiction films ever made, Robert E. Wise's allegorical The Day the Earth Stood Still, was released, featuring the most famous phrase in sci-fi history -- "Gort, Klaatu barada niktu" -- as well as stunning, state-of-the-art visual effects and a Bernard Herrmann score. The classic cult film was also the first of many 50's Cold War-inspired science-fiction films, and featured the first modern robot, the silver giant Gort.
1951	MGM's lavish, big-budget, Technicolor historical epic Quo Vadis was released, starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and Peter Ustinov. It was filmed on location in Italy with a cast of thousands, in the pre-Cinemascope era. According to sources, it set the record for the number of costumes used (32,000) in a single film. This film also marked Sophia Loren's film debut -- in a bit part as a slave.
1951	A Streetcar Named Desire was the first film ever to win three Acting Oscars. Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter succeeded and were presented with awards, although Marlon Brando lost in the Best Actor category to Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen.
1951	Disney's Alice in Wonderland failed at the box-office, offsetting its profits from the previous year's successful full-length animation Cinderella (1950).
1952	To avoid losing the battle with television, Hollywood counterattacked with 3-D films. The first feature-length 3-D sound film released was Bwana Devil, inspiring a flood of other quickly and cheaply made, but sometimes successful, 3-D features. [The first feature-length 3-D film was The Power of Love (1922).]
1952	A travelogue of the world's vacation spots, with a thrilling roller-coaster ride was shown in This Is Cinerama - it premiered as the first Cinerama film. Paramount's wrap-around, big-screen Cinerama was the first real widescreen feature film format. It was a break-through technique that required three cameras, three projectors, interlocking, semi-curved (at 146 degrees) screens, and four-track stereo sound.
1952	Universal International was sold to Decca Records.
1952	Although generally considered the greatest screen musical of all time, Singin' in the Rain had only two Oscar nominations (without a win) -- Best Score and Best Supporting Actress (Jean Hagen).
1952	The first film to win a Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture (comedy or musical) - a newly-created category - was An American in Paris (1951), in the 1952 awards ceremony.
1953	In further warfare against television and rival 3-D movies, Hollywood developed wide-screen processes, such as 20th Century Fox's anamorphic CinemaScope, first seen in Henry Koster's Biblical sword-and-sandal epic The Robe.
1953	Otto Preminger's The Moon Is Blue, used the then-forbidden word "virgin" - this deliberately violated the Motion Picture Production Code and led to picket lines. It was the first studio-produced film from Hollywood that was released without an approved code seal from the Production Code Administration - deliberately as a test case. It proved to be a major hit film (grossing $6 million) despite its lack of a seal of approval.
1953	The Academy Awards were televised for the first time - (on March 19, 1953), on black and white NBC-TV.
1953	Following the lead of James Stewart a few year earlier, seven-year contracts with actors were replaced by single-picture or multi-picture contracts.
1953	Director George Stevens' mythic western Shane was released - it was the second film of his "American trilogy," positioned between A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956). It was nominated for five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor - Brandon de Wilde, Best Supporting Actor - Jack Palance, Best Director, and Best Screenplay). It won the Oscar for Best Color Cinematography.
1953	Buena Vista Distribution Company was formed to act as Disney's film distributor.
1953	The first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor, Melody, was premiered.
1953	Two classic, alien-invasion science-fiction films reflected Cold War tensions, the Red Scare and paranoid anxiety - typical of many 50s decade films: William Cameron Menzies' Invaders from Mars, and Jack Arnold's It Came From Outer Space -- also made in 3-D. The best of these films arrived a few years later: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
1953	The provocative film, From Here to Eternity (1953), was based on James Jones' hefty, 859-page smoldering 1951 novel of the same name. Its sprawling and complex story-line about Army life with its bold and explicit script (with strong language, violence and raw sexual content) was at first considered unsuitable (and unfilmable) for the screen. The ground-breaking film's subjects (ill-suited for television) included prostitution, adultery, military injustice, corruption and violence, alcohol abuse, and murder.
1954	Federico Fellini released La Strada.
1954	Paramount Studio's first VistaVision widescreen production was director Michael Curtiz' hit film White Christmas, an Irving Berlin musical.
1954	The adult-themed Animal Farm (1954), an allegorical tale based on George Orwell's 1945 satirical political novel, was the first animated color feature film made in England.
1954	Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first African-American ever nominated, for her role in Carmen Jones. (Ironically, in 2000, Halle Berry - the first African-American actress to ever win the Best Actress Oscar for Monster's Ball (2001), won the Emmy and the Golden Globes awards playing the title role in the critically-acclaimed HBO television movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999).)
1954	Graphic design genius Saul Bass began his legendary career (spanning over 40 years until his last film Casino (1995)) as title designer for Carmen Jones, and later gained his first major recognition for his work for The Man With the Golden Arm (1955). His revolutionary work broke tradition by using jagged lines and bold designs to redefine title credits and poster images. He was best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick - and later with Martin Scorsese.
1954	On the Waterfront nearly swept the Academy Awards with eight wins, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best Supporting Actress (Eva Maria Saint), and Best Director (Elia Kazan).
1954	Japan gave birth to the long-running series of Godzilla monster films with Ishiro Honda's Gojira.
1954	Akira Kurosawa's epic tale Seven Samurai reinvented the western film genre. (It was remade by John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven (1960).)
1954	Dragnet from Warner Bros. was the first theatrical film based on the then-popular B/W TV show. Its star Jack Webb (as Sgt. Joe Friday) turned it into a feature (color) film, and served as the director.
1954	The American Releasing Company was founded by James H. Nicholson and Hollywood lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff -- the precursor of American International Pictures (AIP) in 1956, noted for its low-budget exploitation films and drive-in movies for the profitable teenage market. Their first film was writer/producer Roger Corman's The Fast and the Furious (1954) starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. The horror films of Bert Gordon, Roger Corman's series of adapted Edgar Allan Poe horror films with Vincent Price, biker and drug-related films in the 60s, the 'beach party' films of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, the teenage monster film cycle (i.e., I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)), and the earliest films of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich (and many others) were AIP productions. Emphasis on these sensationalist sub-genres (beach party films, kung fu films, biker films, juvenile delinquency pictures, monster and horror films, women-in-prison films, etc.) would be imitated by countless other independent production companies and film-makers.