Architects of America designed the new “super” shopping centers.
Popular films
included:
From Here to Eternity starring Burt
Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Frank Sinatra
Stalog 17 starring
William Holden
Roman Holiday starring Audrey
Hepburn and
Gregory Peck.
Fiction of the year included James Baldwin’s Go tell It On The
Mountain, Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March,
Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Louis L’Amour’s Hondo,
J.D. Salinger’s Nine
Stories, Leon Uris’s Battle Cry and William S. Burroghs’s Junkie.
Popular songs included Perry Como with Mitchell Ayers’s Orchestra,
“Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes,” Teresa Brewer with Jack Pleis’s
Orchestra’s “’Till I Waltz Again With You,” Frankie Lane’s “I Believe,”
Pattie Page’s “The Doggie in the Window,” Nat “King” Cole with the
Nelson Riddle Orchestra’s “Pretend,” Percy Faith and His Orchestra’s
“The Song From Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart?),” Les Paul and Mary
Ford’s “Vaya Con Dios (May God Be With You),” the Ames Brothers with
Hugo Winhalter and His Orchestra’s “You, You, You,” and Frank
Chacksfield and His Orchestra’s “Ebb Tide.”
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot opened in Paris.
According to the National Music Council, 7.5% of the performances by
major symphony orchestras were American.
Doubleday Anchor Books was introduced.
The Robe by Henry Koster starring Richard Burton was the first film in
CinemaScope.
The Paris Review began publication by Lampoon editor George Plimpton.
Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was published.
Chevrolet introduced the two-seat Corvette sports car.
The Kellogg
Company introduced Sugar Smacks Cereal.
Sara Lee
Kitchens began mass-producing frozen cakes and pies.
Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay
became the first humans to reach the
summit of Mount Everest.
February 19: Picnic starring
Paul Newman opened at the Music Box Theater in New York.
March 16-April 11: William de
Kooning’s Paintings on the Theme of Woman was exhibited at the Sidney
Janis Gallery in New York City.
April 14: Air Training, an air force
publication reported one thousand UFO sightings in one year.
October: Broadway was showing Arthur
Miller’s The Crucible.
October 26: According to the
Songwriter’s Protective Association, coin-operated juke boxes grossed
$1 billion annually in America.