Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

USA

1956

6/1 -

Prince Rainier and actress Grace Kelly announce their engagement while in New York.  [MORE] [ADD]

27/1 -

Norman Panama and Melvin Frank’s The Court Jester, starring Danny Kaye and Glynis Johns, is released.   Kaye memorably has to remember the phrase, "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true."  [MORE] [ADD]

Jan -

Columbia announces a deal to rent its pre-1948 films to television.  [MORE] [ADD]

4/2 -

For the first time, Hollywood studios are closed on a Saturday as a result of union demands for a five-day working week.  [MORE] [ADD]

6/2 -

Henri Chrétien, the French inventor of Hypergonar, the forerunner of CinemaScope, dies in Washington.  [MORE] [ADD]

8/2 -

Don Siegel’s Communist infiltration allegory, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is released.   Kevin McCarthy stars as the small-town doctor who discovers his neighbours are being replaced by aliens as they sleep.   Dana Wynters also stars.  [MORE] [ADD]

13/3 -

John Ford’s The Searchers, starring John Wayne in possibly his best performance as Ethan Edwards on a stubborn search for his niece (Natalie Wood) snatched by Indians, is released.  [MORE] [ADD]

Mar -

Warner Bros. sells its pre-1948 films to television for $21 million.  [MORE] [ADD]

12/4 -

Filming of Bus Stop is halted after Marilyn Monroe is hospitalised for "exhaustion due to overwork, and acute bronchitis."  [MORE] [ADD]

10/5 -

Harry and Albert Warner sell their shares in Warner Bros. studios to an investment group headed by the First National Bank of Boston.   Their brother Jack remains the largest individual shareholder.  [MORE] [ADD]

13/5 -

Montgomery Clift suffers severe facial injuries in a car crash after leaving a party at the home of Elizabeth Taylor.  [MORE] [ADD]

1/6 -

Alfred Hitchcock’s remake of his own 1934 British thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much is released.   The action is shifted from Switzerland to Morocco, and stars James Stewart and Doris Day.  [MORE] [ADD]

6/6 -

29-year-old Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing is released as support to Robert Mitchum in Foreign Intrigue.   The tough heist movie, based on a novel by Lionel White, stars Sterling Hayden, Jay C. Flippen, Elisha Cook Jr., Ted de Corsia, Timothy Carey, Vince Edwards and Marie Windsor.  [MORE] [ADD]

29/6 -

Rodger and Hammerstein’s Broadway hit The King and I is brought to the screen by 20^th Century-Fox, with bald-headed Yul Brynner repeating his stage role as the King of Siam.   Deborah Kerr replaces Gertrude Lawrence as the British governess hired to teach his many children.  [MORE] [ADD]

3/8 -

Robert Wise’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman as middleweight world champion Rocky Graziano, is released by MGM.  [MORE] [ADD]

21/8 -

King Vidor’s three-and-a-half-hour epic War and Peace is released.   Shot on location in Italy, the film cost $6 million to produce and stars a multi-national cast.  Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn star, with Vittorio Gassman, John Mills, Mel Ferrer and Anita Ekberg in support.  [MORE] [ADD]

17/9 -

Vincente Minelli’s Lust for Life, starring Kirk Douglas as the angst-ridden artist Vincent Van Gogh, is released.   Shot on location in Europe, the film also stars Anthony Quinn as Van Gogh’s friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin.  [MORE] [ADD]

5/10 -

Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments is released.   Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson and Yvonne De Carlo star.  [MORE] [ADD]

17/10 -

Following a troubled shoot that faltered several times due to its producer, former carnival barker Mike Todd running out of money, Around the World in 80 Days is released.   David Niven stars as Phileas Fogg in the adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel, with Mexican actor Cantinflas playing his sidekick, and Robert Newton the pursuing Inspector Fix.   Among the numerous guest stars are Ronald Colman, Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Buster Keaton, Bea Lillie, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton, John Gielgud, George Raft, Fernandel, Shirley Maclaine and Juliette Greco.   Michael Anderson replaced John Farrow as director after the former was fired by Todd.  [MORE] [ADD]

15/11 -

Elvis Presley makes his film debut in Love Me Tender.  [MORE] [ADD]

23/11 -

Paul Mansfield serves a writ on his wife, Jayne Mansfield, accusing her of being an unfit mother for living with her lover and posing nude for Playboy magazine.  [MORE] [ADD]

25/11 -

William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion is released by Allied Artists without a screenwriting credit for Michael Wilson.   Wilson refused to testify before the HUAC in 1951, and so the studio invokes a clause in the Screen Writers Guild’s contract denying credits to a writer for just such a reason.  [MORE] [ADD]

Nov -

20^th Century-Fox sells its pre-1948 films for TV distribution for $30 million.   Together with Warners’ and Columbia’s films, this makes a total of 2,700 pre-1948 films released for TV screening.  [MORE] [ADD]

13/12 -

– The release of Anatole Litvak’s Anastasia marks the return to Hollywood of Ingrid Bergman following her exile from the world’s moviemaking capital because of her affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini.  [MORE] [ADD]

18/12 -

The National League of Decency are joined by the Roman Catholic Church in condemning Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll, claiming it "dwells almost without variation or relief upon carnal suggestiveness."   Karl Malden stars as an aging cotton mill owner who takes Carroll Baker as his child bride only to see her seduced by Sicilian labourer Eli Wallach.  [MORE] [ADD]

– The MPAA Production Code is revised to such a degree that only venereal disease and sexual perversion are considered taboo subjects.     [MORE] [ADD]

– Laurence Olivier’s Richard III is the first UK film to be broadcast on American television at the same time as its theatrical release.   [MORE] [ADD]