Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

The History of American Cinema: 1949

July - December

2/7 -

King Vidor’s adaptation of Ayn Rand’s bestselling 1943 novel The Fountainhead is released.   Gary Cooper stars as Howard Roark, a character based on Frank Lloyd Wright.   Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey provide support. [ADD]

6/8 -

Hollywood is scandalised by reports that Ingrid Bergman has been enjoying an extra-marital affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini while working for him on the film Stromboli, and is now carrying his baby. [ADD]

2/9 -

James Cagney makes a spectacular comeback in Raoul Walsh’s tough gangster movie White Heat.   Cagney dominates as mother-fixated hood Cody Jarrett, while Virginia Mayo, Margaret Wycherly, Edmond O’Brien and Steve Cochran also appear. [ADD]

17/9 -

Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote make their debut in the Tex Avery cartoon Fast and Furry-ous.   It will be three years before a second is made. [ADD]

28/9 -

George Marshall’s My Friend Irma, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’s first film together, is released. [ADD]

29/9 -

Mr Magoo, voiced by Jim Backus, makes his debut in UPA’s Ragtime Bear. [ADD]

26/10 -

They Live By Night, Nicholas Ray’s first directorial effort, is released.   The film stars Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. [ADD]

8/11 -

Broderick Crawford receives his breakthrough role in Robert Rossen’s adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, All the King’s Men.   Crawford plays Willie Loman, a character closely based on Huey Long, a man corrupted by the power he attains.   Mercedes McCambridge, John Ireland and Joanne Dru also feature. [ADD]

18/11 -

George Cukor's comedy Adam's Rib is released.   It stars Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Judy Holliday. [ADD]

22/11 -

Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust is released by MGM.   Juano Hernandez plays an elderly black man in the deep south who is falsely accused of murder and threatened with lynching. [ADD]

8/12 -

Gene Kelly’s On the Town is released.   Featuring choreography by Stanley Donen, the film follows the adventures of three sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin) on 24-hour leave in New York.   Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett and Ann Miller provide the love interest. [ADD]

9/12 -

Former chairman of the HUAC, Congressman J. Parnell Thomas is sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for embezzlement. [ADD]

21/12 -

Clark Gable marries Sylvia Hawkes, former wife of Lord Ashley, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Baron Stanley of Alderly after a whirlwind romance.   The wedding is witnessed by Gable's secretary and an MGM publicity man. [ADD]

– United Paramount Theatres splits from Paramount. [ADD]

– The number of traditional cinemas in the country falls by 15% over the past four years. [ADD]

Top Ten US Box-Office Stars of 1949

1.      Bob Hope

2.      Bing Crosby

3.      Abbott & Costello

4.      John Wayne

5.      Gary Cooper

6.      Cary Grant

7.      Betty Grable

8.      Esther Williams

9.      Humphrey Bogart

10.    Clark Gable

Source: Quigley Poll

Other Key American Films of 1949

The History of Cinema: 1949