Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

The History of American Cinema: 1947

October - December

10/10 -

Otto Preminger’s Forever Amber is released.   It will later have a prologue and epilogue added following accusations of immorality by Cardinal Spellman. [ADD]

20/10 -

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings into communism in Hollywood resume.   Charles Chaplin, Katherine Hepburn and Edward G Robinson are among actors condemned as left-wing sympathisers [ADD]

9/11 -

Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul, starring John Garfield as an up-and-coming young boxer, is released.   Lilli Palmer co-stars. [ADD]

11/11 -

Gregory Peck stars in Elia Kazan’s melodramatic expose of anti-semitism in American society in Gentlemen’s Agreement for 20^th Century-Fox.   Adapted from Laura Z Hobson’s best-seller by Moss Hart, the film also stars John Garfield and Dorothy McGuire. [ADD]

13/11 -

Jacques Tourneur’s noir thriller Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas is released. [ADD]

24/11 -

The Hollywood majors decide to dismiss any employees who refuse to co-operate with the HUAC, or whom they suspect of being communist sympathisers. [ADD]

24/11 -

Edward Dmytryk, the director of Crossfire, is dismissed by RKO on the encouragement of Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Producers, for harbouring communist sympathies.   Nine others are cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to co-operate with the HUAC hearings.   The nine – who, with Dmytryk, are dubbed the Hollywood Ten – are Adrian Scott, Herbert Biberman, John Howard Lawson, Lester Cole, Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Samuel Ornitz. [ADD]

25/11 -

Hollywood studio executives blacklist the Hollywood Ten, making it impossible for them to find employment under their real names. [ADD]

30/11 -

Ernst Lubitsch dies at the age of 55 after a long illness.   Otto Preminger takes over shooting That Lady in Ermine, on which Lubitsch had been working. [ADD]

3/12 -

An amendment to the Production Code bans all screenplays describing the life of notorious criminals unless they are seen to pay for their crimes.   Cinemas are provided with a list of previously-released films that are not to be shown. [ADD] 

Top Ten US Box-office Stars

1.      Bing Crosby

2.      Betty Grable

3.      Ingrid Bergman

4.      Gary Cooper

5.      Humphrey Bogart

6.      Bob Hope

7.      Clark Gable

8.      Gregory Peck

9.      Claudette Colbert

10.    Alan Ladd

Source: Quigley Poll

Other Key American Films of 1947

The Farmer’s Daughter (H. C. Potter) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1947