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The History of American Cinema: 1946

January - September

4/1 -

Heckle and Jeckle make their film debut in the Terrytoons cartoon The Talking Magpies. [ADD]

15/3 -

Rita Hayworth plays the vampish title role opposite Glenn Ford in Charles Vidor’s Gilda.   George Macready makes up the third side of a twisted love triangle set in a South American casino that looks suspiciously like a Columbia sound stage.   The role rockets Hayworth to stardom. [ADD]

23/4 -

At her 18^th birthday party, Shirley Temple burns a red school tunic in front of 100 guests to symbolically commemorate the passing of her childhood. [ADD]

2/5 -

Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice is released.   This noir version of James M. Cain’s novel, which had already been filmed by the French (Le Dernier tournant, 1939) and Italians (Ossessione, 1942), stars John Garfield as the drifter and Lana Turner as the café owner’s wife. [ADD]

16/7 -

20-year-old model Norma Jean Baker signs for 20^th Century-Fox on a salary of $75 per week.   She is given the screen name of Marilyn Monroe. [ADD]

24/7 -

Lewis Milestone’s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers introduces Kirk Douglas to the screen as the weak husband of Barbara Stanwyck in Robert Rossen’s screenplay.   The film also features Van Heflin. [ADD]

24/7 -

MGM release Courage of Lassie, directed by Fred M. Wilcox, in which the heroic collie is shell-shocked by its experiences in the war.   Child actress Elizabeth Taylor is on hand to offer solace to the traumatised pooch. [ADD]

27/7 -

Rita Hayworth’s image graces the side of the atomic bomb tested on the Pacific atoll of Bikini. [ADD]

15/8 -

Alfred Hitchcock’s espionage thriller, Notorious, is released by RKO.   It stars Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.   Grant and Bergman share a long teasing clinch that pushes the boundaries of the Production Code edict that requires screen kisses to last no longer than 30 seconds, by one of the actors inserting an occasional word before resuming their clinch which, in total, lasts two-and-a-half minutes. [ADD]

23/8 -

Humphrey Bogart plays tough private eye Philip Marlowe in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep for Warner Bros.   In a convoluted plot scripted by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, Bogart plays opposite his new wife, Lauren Bacall. [ADD]

28/8 -

Former acrobat Burt Lancaster cuts an imposing figure in his screen debut opposite Ava Gardner in Robert Siodmak’s searing noir thriller The Killers. [ADD]

31/8 -

Foghorn Leghorn, I say, Foghorn Leghorn, makes his debut in the Warner Bros. cartoon Walky Talky Hawky. [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1946