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The History of American Cinema: 1955

January - August

31/1 -

Marilyn Monroe forms Marilyn Monroe Productions with Milton Greene and announces that she doesn’t intend to renew her contract with 20^th Century-Fox. [MORE]

23/2 -

Dorothy Dandridge becomes the first black actress to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Carmen Jones.   The other nominees are Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Jane Wyman. [ADD}

25/3 -

Richard Brooks’ adaptation of Evan Hunter’s novel The Blackboard Jungle is released by MGM.   Glenn Ford plays a new teacher faced with a class of juvenile delinquents led by Vic Morrow at a New York high school.   The soundtrack features Bill Haley and the Comets singing Rock Around the Clock. [ADD}

4/4 -

Director Nicholas Ray is forced to re-shoot scenes for his forthcoming Warner Bros. film Rebel Without a Cause in Eastmancolor, because 20^th Century-Fox insist that all films using their CinemaScope format must be in colour. [ADD}

10/4 -

Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is released.   It makes a star of James Dean in his first starring role.   Julie Harris, Raymond Massey and Burl Ives also star. [ADD}

11/4 -

Delbert Mann’s big screen adaptation of the TV play Marty is released.   Paddy Chayefsky, who also wrote the play, writes the screen adaptation, and Ernest Borgnine plays the title role (played by Rod Steiger on TV), a shy and ugly Bronx butcher who falls for teacher Betsy Blair. [ADD}

21/4 -

Samuel Goldwyn acquires the old United Artists studio for $1.92 million, outbidding his former partner Mary Pickford by $20,000.   Judge Paul Nourse ordered the public auction to resolve a dispute between Goldwyn and Miss Pickford. [ADD}

18/5 -

Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, starring Ralph Meeker as the thuggish private eye Mickey Spillane, is released.    The hard-boiled B-film creates an iconic image in the form of the battered case with the mysterious glowing contents. [ADD}

30/5 -

Pressure from the League of Decency forces the giant poster of Marilyn Monroe in a billowing white dress to be removed from the façade of Loew’s State Theater in New York after just five days.   The poster was erected to promote Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. [ADD}

3/6 -

Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch is released.   Tom Ewell stars as a husband harbouring fantasies about his beautiful neighbour (Marilyn Monroe) while his wife is away during a summer heat wave in New York. [ADD}

15/6 -

MGM threaten to remove Spencer Tracy from his starring role in Tribute to a Bad Man and replace him with James Cagney after the actor refuses to work because of the altitude on location in the Rockies. [ADD}

17/6 -

A Senate Committee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency is informed by representatives of the MPAA that films trail behind books, plays and newspapers with regard to lax moral standards. [ADD}

22/6 -

Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, the first animated feature in CinemaScope, is released. [ADD}

24/6 -

The director of the Advertising Code warns studios to tone down the use of sex and violence in exploiting films. [ADD}

13/7 -

Joseph Pevney’s Foxfire, starring Jeff Chandler and Jane Russell, is the last Hollywood film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor. [ADD}

18/7 -

Disneyland opens in Anaheim, a half-hour drive from Los Angeles.   Built on 150 acres of orange groves, a televised inauguration in front of 30,000 people is held.   The theme park expects to attract 5,000,000 visitors per year. [ADD}

18/7 -

Howard Hughes completes the sale of RKO and its entire catalogue of films to General Teleradio (a subsidiary of General Tire and Rubber Co.) for $25 million.   Headed by Tom O’Neil, the company owns a number of TV stations, and hopes to continue film production at the studio.   It sells the library to C&C Cola – who then offer 740 films free to TV stations in return for spots on advert breaks – for $15 million [ADD}

Summer -

The Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEAA) boycotts Spain after failing to agree terms for a film import quota. [ADD}

The History of Cinema: 1955