48 Fun Facts About 1950s Movies

Which epic won a then-record eleven Academy Awards?

Ben-Hur lost only one of its 12 nominations, Best Adapted Screenplay, a loss blamed on the dispute over the writing credit.

Who co-directed and choreographed Singin' in the Rain with Stanley Donen?

Gene Kelly shot the rain-soaked title number while running a 103°F fever.

What transition in Hollywood history is Singin' in the Rain set during?

Silent films to talkies was the natural setting because many of its songs, by producer Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, had been written for films of that era.

Which future Easy Rider star debuted on film in a minor role in Rebel Without a Cause?

Dennis Hopper later clashed with director Henry Hathaway; in the most common telling, he did take after take rather than play a scene Hathaway's way.

Who plays the two musicians who disguise themselves as women in Some Like It Hot?

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon looked so ghoulish in drag during colour tests that Billy Wilder shot the whole film in black and white.

What is the famous final line of Some Like It Hot?

"Well, nobody's perfect!" came from co-writer I.A.L. Diamond while the ending was still unsettled, and it stuck.

In which Hitchcock film does the camera track back while zooming in, the shot now called the dolly zoom?

Vertigo uses the trick as Scottie looks down, so the drop seems to stretch away and the audience shares his fear of heights.

Which Marilyn Monroe film shows her white dress billowing up over a New York subway grate?

The Seven Year Itch first shot the scene at 1 a.m. on Lexington Avenue before crowds of fans, then reshot it on a Fox set.

Rear Window is shot almost entirely from where?

Inside one apartment: Paramount built the whole Greenwich Village courtyard and the flats around it as one enormous set on a single soundstage.

Who designed the opening title sequence of North by Northwest?

It was the first film to make extended use of kinetic typography in its credits.

Which crime novelist's 1950 book did Hitchcock adapt as Strangers on a Train?

Patricia Highsmith's novel got a Raymond Chandler script, but Hitchcock threw it out and had Czenzi Ormonde start again from page one.

Dial M for Murder was originally intended to be shown in what format?

By its 1954 release interest in 3D had faded, so most cinemas showed it flat.

Sunset Boulevard stars Gloria Swanson as which faded silent star?

Norma Desmond's loyal butler is played by Erich von Stroheim, who really had directed Gloria Swanson back in the silent era.

All About Eve earned four female acting nominations, yet which star won that year's Best Actress Oscar?

Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday, and Josephine Hull took Supporting Actress for Harvey, so all four All About Eve nominees went home empty-handed.

Which composer wrote his only original film score for On the Waterfront?

Leonard Bernstein's score was nominated but lost to The High and the Mighty, one of the few Oscars On the Waterfront missed while winning eight.

On the Waterfront deals with corruption among which workers?

Longshoremen's union rackets had been exposed in Malcolm Johnson's Pulitzer-winning New York Sun series, which inspired the film.

Who played Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire?

Marlon Brando was the only one of the film's four nominated stars to lose, while Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden all won Oscars.

What distinctive structural device does High Noon use?

The plot unfolds in real time, or nearly, and writer Carl Foreman, branded an uncooperative witness by HUAC, moved to Britain in 1952.

Which film did the American Film Institute name the greatest American Western in 2008?

The Searchers inspired Buddy Holly: John Wayne's line "That'll be the day" became the basis of Holly's song of that name.

Which director won a record fourth Best Director Oscar for The Quiet Man?

John Ford won none of his four directing Oscars for a Western: the others were for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley.

Seven Samurai's farmers hire the samurai to defend against whom?

Bandits coming back after the harvest threaten the village, and Hollywood later remade the story as The Magnificent Seven in 1960.

Rashomon's story comes from which author's short stories "In a Grove" and "Rashōmon"?

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's stories became a film its own studio doubted, yet Rashomon won the top prize at Venice and opened Western markets to Japanese cinema.

In The Seventh Seal, what game does the knight play against Death?

Chess against Death grew from the medieval church paintings of Death that Ingmar Bergman had never forgotten seeing as a boy.

Which star won his only Oscar as riverboat captain Charlie Allnut in The African Queen?

Humphrey Bogart said he lived on baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch, and he and John Huston were nearly the only ones to escape dysentery.

Which blacklisted screenwriter's Roman Holiday Oscar went to his front, Ian McLellan Hunter?

Dalton Trumbo did it again with The Brave One, whose Oscar went to a made-up writer, Robert Rich, so he could not collect that one either.

Which Frenchman received the screenplay Oscar for The Bridge on the River Kwai, a script he never wrote?

Pierre Boulle wrote the novel, but the real screenwriters, blacklisted Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, received their Oscars only posthumously, in 1984.

From Here to Eternity follows Army soldiers stationed in which US territory in 1941?

Hawaii was the setting, and to win the Army's cooperation the film toned down the novel, making its sadistic stockade sergeant seem atypical.

Which Best Picture winner also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, a double later matched by Parasite?

Marty began as an hour-long TV play by Paddy Chayefsky starring Rod Steiger, and the modest big-screen version went on to win Best Picture.

Which 1958 musical won every one of the nine Oscars it was nominated for?

Gigi swept all nine without a single acting nomination, not even for its stars Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier.

Which 1956 film saves its animated title sequence for the very end?

Around the World in 80 Days won Best Picture, though it was the first film Mike Todd had ever produced.

Who plays Rameses opposite Charlton Heston's Moses in The Ten Commandments?

Yul Brynner got the part after Cecil B. DeMille saw him on Broadway in The King and I and went backstage to offer it.

Which 1954 film was the first released in Paramount's VistaVision widescreen process?

The process used twice the surface area of standard 35mm film.

Who is the mysterious clown who never removes his makeup in The Greatest Show on Earth?

James Stewart's clown is secretly a doctor on the run from the law, which is why he never takes off his makeup.

In the 1950 film Harvey, what kind of animal is Elwood Dowd's invisible friend?

A rabbit over six feet tall: Josephine Hull, who played Elwood's sister on Broadway, kept the role on film and won an Oscar.

Which Bill Haley & His Comets song is heard in the school drama Blackboard Jungle?

Rock Around the Clock stirred up trouble: at one London screening, teenage Teddy Boys tore up cinema seats and danced in the aisles.

What is the name of Lee Marvin's rival motorcycle gang in The Wild One?

The Beetles and their rivals come from a story inspired by a 1947 motorcycle rally that got out of hand in Hollister, California.

Who made his feature directing debut with 12 Angry Men?

Sidney Lumet, trained in live television, shot the whole film in under three weeks on a low budget.

Which real lawyer who faced down McCarthy played the judge in Anatomy of a Murder?

Joseph N. Welch was the Army's lawyer who, at the 1954 hearings, asked McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency?"

In which real London court is Witness for the Prosecution set?

The Old Bailey case turns on a triple twist: the prosecution's star witness was secretly working to free the man she testified against.

Why was Paths of Glory kept out of French cinemas for many years?

Its negative depiction of the French military kept the film unseen in France for years, and Kubrick had shot it at a studio near Munich.

Who plays the murderous preacher Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter?

Robert Mitchum starred in a film that failed with audiences and critics, and Charles Laughton took it so hard he never directed again.

Who starred as a disfigured sculptor in the 1953 horror film House of Wax?

Vincent Price had barely worked in horror before House of Wax, and the role turned him into a lifelong horror star.

The 1954 film Them!, the first of the big-bug monster movies, is about which huge creatures?

Ants mutated by radiation from the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico, and the hunt for their nest ends in the storm drains of Los Angeles.

Which 1954 monster film was shaped by a US hydrogen bomb test that irradiated a Japanese fishing crew?

Godzilla was made months after the Lucky Dragon No. 5 came home with a contaminated catch, setting off a panic in Japan about eating fish.

Which future star had his first leading role in The Blob?

Steve McQueen was paid just $3,000, yet Paramount bought the low-budget film for $300,000, handing its makers an instant profit.

Forbidden Planet is often considered a loose adaptation of which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest's island becomes a far-off planet, and Louis and Bebe Barron scored the film with electronically generated sounds instead of instruments.

What was Disney's 1950 Cinderella credited with doing for the studio?

Saving it from near-bankruptcy mattered: by 1947 Disney was over $4 million in debt after wartime losses and costly flops such as Pinocchio and Fantasia.

Which Disney animated feature was filmed in the widescreen Super Technirama 70 process?

Sleeping Beauty was Walt Disney's most expensive animated feature to date, yet it was not a box-office success on its first release.