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The History of American Cinema: 1951

January - June

2/1 -

The first public test of phonevision, a pay-per-view service, takes place in Chicago.   300 families are offered three films a day at a cost of $1 per film.   The first film offered is the musical April Showers, starring Jack Carson and Ann Sothern. [ADD]

7/1 -

Picketing begins outside the Paris Cinema in Manhattan where Roberto Rossellini’s L’Amore is showing after Cardinal Francis Spellman, head of the New York Roman Catholic diocese, declares it 'a blot upon the escutcheon of the Empire State [New York] that no means of appeal to the Board of Regents is available to the people for the correcting of the mistake made by its motion picture division'. [ADD]

9/2 -

Greta Garbo becomes an American citizen 26 years after becoming a resident. [MORE] [ADD]

16/2 -

New York's Board of Regents withdraws the licence granted to Rossellini’s L’Amore on the grounds that it is sacrilegious. [MORE]

21/2 -

David Lean’s version of Oliver Twist (1948) is awarded a Production Code seal of approval after extensive cuts are made by Eagle Lion Classics due to its "anti-Semitic" aspects. [ADD]

Feb -

The more stable cellulose acetate replaces cellulose nitrate as the base for professional film stocks. [ADD] 

21/3 -

Larry Parks, the star of two Jolson biopics, admits to the HUAC in Washington that he was a member of the Communist Party from 1941 to 1945. [ADD]

27/3 -

The Production Code is amended to include a number of new stipulations: there must be no reference in movies to venereal disease, abortion or drugs, and suicide must not be shown in a favourable light or used by a character to escape the penalty of the law. [ADD]

29/3 -

The 23rd Annual Academy Awards are held at the RKO Pantages Theater in Hollywood. [MORE]

16/4 -

Richard Thorpe’s The Great Caruso starring Mario Lanza is released.   The biopic bears little relation to the opera singer’s life, but features the musical talents of Blanche Thebom, Teresa Celli and Giuseppe Valdengo.   Ann Blyth co-stars as Caruso’s wife. [ADD]

25/4 -

After serving a 6-month prison sentence in 1950 and being effectively blacklisted by Hollywood studios, director Edward Dmytryk appears before the HUAC in Washington as a friendly witness. [ADD]

30/4 -

Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland file for divorce after six years of marriage. [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1951