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The 1950s The Cold War and Post-Classical Era The Era of Epic Films and the Threat of Television Part 3 Film History of the 1950s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 Film History by Decade Index | Pre-1920s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
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Films About Hollywood Itself and the Stage:
Nicholas Ray directed the brooding, biting film noirish story of a borderline, often-violent, hot-tempered Hollywood screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) suspected of murder in In a Lonely Place (1950). And George Cukor's widescreen A Star is Born (1954), the second version of this classic film, contrasted the rising Hollywood stardom of a singer/actress (Judy Garland in her own comeback from depression and drug abuse) and the decline of her washed-up alcoholic husband/mentor (James Mason). Robert Aldrich's The Big Knife (1955), a screen adaptation of Clifford Odets' 1949 stage play, presented a devastating look at Hollywood's ruthless search for fame and power in its tale of actor Charles "Charlie" Castle (Jack Palance), struggling with his personal life and estranged wife Marion (Ida Lupino). He was forced by his domineering, tyrannical, blackmailing studio boss Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) (and his slimy assistant Smiley Coy (Wendell Corey)) to renew a 7-year contract. The dark film noir ended with tortured Castle's extra-marital affair, the studio's silencing-murder of starlet Dixie Evans (Shelley Winters), and his own suicide (off-screen). Although not about Hollywood, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's literate satire about backstage intrigue, All About Eve (1950), with Marilyn Monroe in a bit role as an aspiring starlet, starred Bette Davis as aging theatre star Margo Channing. The film was noted for its witty, barb-infested script, and famous for Davis saying: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night", and Anne Baxter as the ambitious assistant title character. It was honored with a record 14 nominations (5 of which were acting nominations) and six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And Tony Curtis starred in two films about performers: magician Houdini (1953) opposite his real-life wife Janet Leigh as wife Bess Houdini, and director Carol Reed's Techni-colored Trapeze (1956) - about two acrobatic rivals (ex-real-life acrobat Burt Lancaster against aerialist Tony Curtis) in a competitive romantic love triangle with Gina Lollobrigida. Ingrid Bergman gave an Oscar-winning performance (it was her second Oscar) as the lost princess in Anastasia (1956), claiming to be the last survivor of the Russian royal family. The film represented a comeback for Bergman, who had been exiled from Hollywood after a scandalous, overblown affair with Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini. United Artists Corporation:
Marilyn Monroe: Sex Symbol and Movie Star She had her first screen test and signed her first studio contract with Twentieth Century Fox in mid-1946 for one year and appeared in bit roles (including the musical comedy The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948) and the juvenile delinquent melodrama Dangerous Years (1947)), and then in 1948 for six months with Columbia Pictures - where she experienced her first co-starring role as a showgirl in the low budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (1949). Eventually, Monroe returned to 20th Century Fox, signing a seven-year contract with the studio in 1950. She had two early memorable bit roles as the naive "niece" (mistress) of a corrupt lawyer in John Huston's superb crime-noir drama The Asphalt Jungle (1950) from MGM, and as an ambitious would-be Hollywood actress in Joseph Mankiewicz's acclaimed All About Eve (1950) from Fox. Her first lead role was in the Fox thriller Don't Bother to Knock (1952) as a mentally-unstable babysitter.
Director/co-writer Billy Wilder cast the blossoming blonde sex symbol of the 1950s in two excellent comedies: the slightly salacious The Seven Year Itch (1955) as a lust-fantasy object (known as The Girl) for Tom Ewell, and enduringly known for the billowing white skirt scene above a breezy subway grating (publicized as much more risque in press shots), and then as ditzy, busty ukelele-strumming singer Sugar Kane in the hilarious classic, screwball, gender-bending farce Some Like It Hot (1959) - one of the sharpest, best-casted films of all time with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as dress-wearing band members named Daphne and Josephine (and Monroe won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy).
After starting her own motion picture company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, in 1956, she appeared in two of the company's productions as a kind, but no-talent saloon singer floozie in Bus Stop (1956) (with another Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress) and in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) opposite Sir Laurence Olivier as an icy Eastern European monarch. She also starred in George Cukor's third musical Let's Make Love (1960) (Marilyn's 27th picture) with Yves Montand (with whom she had an affair during filming), and her last completed film was director John Huston's troubled production of The Misfits (1961) opposite aging star Clark Gable. One film was left unfinished, Fox's and director George Cukor's Something's Got To Give (1962), a remake of the Cary Grant film My Favorite Wife (1940) co-starring Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. [The film has since been reconstructed from existing film footage at 37 minutes. It includes her nighttime skinny-dipping scene in a backyard pool - it would have been the first nude scene in an American film by a major star. It was revamped and recasted with Doris Day and James Garner as Move Over, Darling (1963).] She died at age 36 on August 5, 1962 in her Los Angeles bedroom, presumably from a drug overdose, but circumstances surrounding her death have proved mysterious, with some claiming 'foul-play' due to alleged affairs with the Kennedys. Combat-War Films and Anti-Communist Films in the 50s: At the dawn of the decade, several dramatic World War II films made a comeback: Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Battleground (1949) an action film about American infantryman fighting during the Battle of the Bulge, and John Wayne as a tough, stereotypical Marine Sergeant in The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). The Desert Fox (1951) starred James Mason as German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ("The Desert Fox"), the famed tank commander in war-torn North Africa who was ultimately defeated by Montgomery. By the time the Korean War was over by mid-decade and the peaceful Cold War period continued, more combat and war-related films were box-office hits:
The fear of the Communists continued to appear on-screen, mostly in blatantly anti-Communist, propagandistic films that are mostly fascinating from a social-historical point of view: R. C. Springsteen's The Red Menace (1949), Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952), Jerry Hopper's The Atomic City (1952) - a thriller set in Los Alamos, and Lewis Allen's A Bullet for Joey (1955). At the end of the decade, the story of a young girl in hiding before being discovered with her family and sent to a concentration camp was filmed in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). The Musical Genre Reached New Heights in the 50s: This decade also witnessed the prodigious rise of colorful, escapist, lavish, classic musicals (mostly from MGM and its production genius Arthur Freed, and from directors Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli) that benefited from wide-screen exposure, including such films as:
Some of director Vincente Minnelli's best musicals were made in the 50s:
Although Fred Astaire had ended his dancing partnership with Ginger Rogers, he danced with other partners in The Band Wagon (1953) (with Cyd Charisse), in Daddy Long Legs (1955) (with Leslie Caron), in Funny Face (1957) (with Audrey Hepburn), and in Silk Stockings (1957) (again with Cyd Charisse). Adult Themes Explored: With television aimed at family audiences, the movies were freer to explore realistic adult themes and stronger or previously taboo subjects, such as in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) with veiled hints at homosexuality, or voyeurism in Rear Window (1954) (with James Stewart as a wheel-chair bound photographer). George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951) demonstrated the tragic struggle of class differences, as social-climbing Montgomery Clift was convicted of the murder of his pregnant, working-class girlfriend (Shelley Winters) while romancing rich socialite Elizabeth Taylor. Thought daring at the time of its release, Josh Logan's Picnic (1955) starred attractive drifter William Holden who arrived in a Kansas town and romanced Kim Novak at the start of Labor Day picnic celebrations. A Summer Place (1959), with Percy Faith's recognizable theme song, was infamous for its scene of Sandra Dee's mother dragging her to the doctor for a pregnancy test after a beach overnight with lover Troy Donahue.
Marlon Brando Revolutionized the Screen with Method Acting: Other films with adult-oriented content in the 50s included the stage-to-screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) set in New Orleans, with Oscar-nominated Marlon Brando (he had performed in the successful 1947 Broadway play) in a star-making, emotional role as dirty, sweaty and erotic T-shirt-wearing Stanley Kowalski. (Jessica Tandy, who had played fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois in the stage production, was replaced by Vivien Leigh - a perfect counterpart to Brando's animalistic, swaggering role.)
In his films of the early 50s, Brando brought a raw naturalistic realism to the screen - a new style termed Method Acting that he had acquired at the Actors Studio in New York, also exemplified in the acting of Montgomery Clift and James Dean in the era. (Although A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) was condemned by the Legion of Decency for its bold content, it pushed back the boundaries of the Production Code while hinting at homosexuality, nymphomania, and rape. Brando would forever be identified with the iconic tight T-shirt he wore in the film.) Brando's greatness as an actor in the early 50s was honored with four successive Best Actor nominations:
In the late 50s, Brando was also nominated a fifth time for his performance in Sayonara (1957), an early film with the theme of intermarriage between an Asian and American and the resulting prejudice, with Brando as a Korean War major romantically involved with a Japanese Kabuki dancer (Miiko Taka).
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