1952 Hit Parade

The Golden Arches of McDonald’s was designed.

Melamine, a lightweight plastic, was introduced.

Four-inch stiletto heels were introduced.

Popular movies included
   
High Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly
   
The Greatest Show on Earth starring Betty Hutton and Charlton Heston
   
Viva Zapata starring Marlon Brando
   
The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara
    Come Back,
Little Sheba starring Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster.

Fiction of the year included Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Shelby Foote’s Shiloh, Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano and E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.

Popular songs included Pee wee King with Redd Stewart’s “Slow Poke,” Johnnie Ray’s “Cry,” Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune,” Georgia Gibbs’s “Kiss of Fire,” Johnny Ray’s “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” Vera Lynn’s “Auf Wiedereh’n, Sweetheart,” The Mill Brothers’ “The Glow Worm,” and Joni James’s “Why Don’t You Believe Me?”

Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette was published.

The first Holiday Inn motel opened in Memphis, Tennessee.

G.D. Laboratories in Chicago developed a contraceptive pill for women.

January:  American Bandstand with host Dick Clark Debuted on ABC television.

April 7:  An episode of “I Love Lucy” set a record of viewership in over 10,000,000 homes

July:  The House Judiciary Committee recommended amending the U.S. copyright law in order to pay royalties for jukebox play.

July 17:  The U.S. Air Force reported sixty UFO sightings in two weeks.

November 26:  Bwana Devil, the first 3-D movie, premiered.

December:  Art critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term action painting in relation to the works of abstract expressionists.

December 30:  According to the Tuskegee Institute, this was the first in seventy-one years which no lynches were reported.