Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

The History of American Cinema: 1961

July - December

19/7 -

TWA introduces in-flight movies in the first-class section of flights from New York to Los Angeles. [ADD] 

2/8 -

Astor Films negotiate the US and Canadian distribution rights for Roger Vadim’s Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960.   The film, which stars Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe, was banned for export by the French authorities because it presented contemporary France in an unfavourable light. [ADD]

25/9 -

Robert Rossen’s tough drama The Hustler is released.   Set amongst the smoky atmosphere of rundown pool halls, the film features blistering performances from Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott and Pier Angeli. [ADD]

Sept -

NBC begins its Saturday Night at the Movies series with 31 post-1950 Fox movie titles. [ADD]

3/10 -

The MPAA announce a relaxing of its Production Code to permit the portrayal of homosexuality and lesbianism provided such depictions are discreet and tasteful.   This clears the way for the release of Otto Preminger’s Advise and Consent and William Wyler’s The Children’s Hour.  [ADD]

5/10 -

Blake Edward’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is released.   Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly a ‘good-time girl’ who bewitches all-American George Peppard from the apartment upstairs. [ADD]

10/10 -

Warren Beatty is heralded as the new James Dean after his debut appearance in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass opposite Natalie Wood.   Beatty, the younger brother of Shirley Maclaine, receives the unusually high sum for a debutant of $200,000. [ADD]

13/10 -

Director Zoltan Korda, brother of producer-director Alexander Korda and production designer Vincent Korda, dies in Beverly Hills at the age of 66 after a long illness. [ADD]

18/10 -

Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story is brought to the screen by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins.   Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood play the star-crossed lovers in this updating of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.   Rita Moreno and George Chakiris also star. [ADD]

23/10 -

My Fair Lady, Broadway’s most successful musical ever, is sold to Warner Bros for $5 million plus 47 ½ % of the movie’s gross box-office receipts over $20 million. [ADD]

14/12 -

Anthony Mann’s epic historical saga El Cid is released.   The film, which stars Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Raf Vallone and Genevieve Page, features 7,000 extras and 35 sailing ships. [ADD]

15/12 -

Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three is released.   James Cagney gives a typically manic performance as C. R. MacNamara, a Coke executive in Berlin.   Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Red Buttons and Hubert Von Meyerinck support Cagney in what will be his last screen performance for two decades. [ADD]

– The broadcast of the 1953 CinemaScope production How to Marry a Millionaire on NBC raises the issue of how best to show widescreen films on TV. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 1961

Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer) [ADD]

King of Kings (Nicholas Ray) [ADD]

Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1961