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.