- Paris, 28 January:
 Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques is being shown in France and an air of mystery surrounds it. Nobody is allowed into theaters after the start of the picture, and there is a cautionary title at the end: "Don't be diabolical yourself. Don't spoil the ending for your friends by telling them what you've just seen. On their behalf -- Thank you!" With this chilling tale of murder, set in a gruesome school, Clouzot has lived up to his nickname as the "French Hitchcock." It tells of how two women (the director's wife Vera Clouzot and Simone Signoret) join forces to kill the sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse), who is the husband of one and the mistress of the other.
- New York, 31 January: Marilyn Monroe has announced the formation, with Milton Greene, of Marilyn Monroe Productions. The star also stated that she does not wish to renew her contract with Fox.
- Milan, 15 February: Dubbed "The Mona Lisa of the Twentieth Century," Gina Lolobrigida is posing for 27 painters in the lounge of a hotel.
- Hollywood, 23 February: Dorothy Dandridge is the first black actress to be nominated for an Oscar® in the Best Actress category -- for her sparkling performance as Carmen Jones. The other nominees are Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Jane Wyman.
 - New York, 20 March: Glenn Ford's brow is even more furrowed that usual in MGM's The Blackboard Jungle, adapted from a novel by Evan Hunter and directed by Richard Brooks. Ford plays Navy veteran Richard Dadier whose first teaching job pits him against a class of juvenile delinquents at a tough New York high school. His hep-talking class, led by knife-wielding Brando lookalike Vic Morrow, christen him "Daddy-O" while he battles to communicate with the younger generation. The film's best gimmick comes at the start when the soundtrack blasts out "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets. This movie has sparked a rock 'n' rool revolution.
- Hollywood, 30 March:
 Grace Kelly, known for her cool, blonde beauty, has won the Best Actress Oscar® this year in a role that cast her very much against type. In The Country Girl, she appears in dowdy cardigans, spectacles, and "plain" makeup as the lonely wife of an alcoholic singer (Bing Crosby), proving that she is more than just a pretty face. There could be no greater contrast between her and Marlon Brando, the Best Actor winner for his portrayal of the has-been boxer in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. Among the eight awards won by the latter film were Best Picture and Best Director.
- Mexico, 3 April: Luis Buñuel's black comedy, Ensayo de un Crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) with Ernesto Alonso and Miroslava Stern, has opened here.
- Hollywood, 4 April: Fox -- having decided, for reasons of prestige, that all films in CinemaScope must be in color -- has opposed the filming of Rebel Without a Cause in black and white by Warners. Director Nicholas Ray has been forced to interrupt shooting and begin again in Eastmancolor.
 - New York, 11 April: In its on-going efforts to win back movie audiences, Hollywood is not only turning to new techniques (3-D, CinemaScope, Todd-AO) and spectacles, but continues to turn out small-scale, serious, black-and-white movies as well, such as Marty, a Harold Hecht
Hecht-Burt Lancaster production adapted from a TV film by the playwright Paddy Chayefsky. Directed by delbert mann, a veteran of TV drama, Marty stars Ernest Borgnine as a plug-ugly Bronx pork butcher sadly resigned to bachelorhood and the aimless rituals of male cameraderie. Then he meets, woos and wins sweet but plain teacher Betsy Blair, telling her "Dogs like us, we're not such dogs as we think we are." Borgnine is a revelation in the role that was originally played on television by Rod Steiger. He is best known as the bulging-eyed Italian villain in movies like From Here to Eternity, where he played the sadistic stockade sergeant, and Bad Day at Black Rock. In Marty his naturalistic performance as a man unexpectedly stumbling on love has won universal praise. Because of Marty's success, it seems likely it will spawn a string of modestly budgeted TV-derived "clothesline" dramas that explore working-class life, scripted and directed by the talented young men who have cut their creative teeth on live television.
- Paris, 13 April:
 American director Jules Dassin, having left the US after being targeted by the HUAC in 1950, has chosen to make his home in France, where he has directed an extremely effective thriller called Rifìfì (Du rifìfì chez les hommes). Originally assigned to the director Jean-Pierre Melville, the film concentrates on a bold burglary carried out by four likeable gangsters, who then get themselves killed in a gun battle with a rival gang. If the subject seems to lack originality, the quality of the screenplay by Auguste Le Breton (adapted from his novel), René Wheeler and Dassin combined with the skills of the director, make Rifìfì a model of the genre. The sleazy Montmartre underworld is depicted in impeccable detail, peopled by convincingly portrayed criminals. The cast is headed by Jean Servais, Carl Mohner, Robert Manuel, Magali Noël and Dassin himself (under the pseudonym of Perlo Vita). The highlight of the picture is the meticulously enacted and suspenseful 22-minute jewel robbery sequence played in total silence. It is five years since Dassin's last film, Night and the City, which he made in England. It is encouraging that the qualities of Rifìfì demonstrate that the director, who made his reputation in America in the late 40s with films noirs like The Naked City, is able to adapt his style to other countries and conditions.
- Paris, 20 April: The premises of the Cinémathèque Française in Avenue de Messine have been closed.
- Hollywood, 21 April: Samuel Goldwyn acquired the old United Artists studio today with a bid of $1.92 million, outbidding his former partner, Mary Pickford, by $20,000. The sale by public auction was ordered by Judge Paul Nourse last January due to a conflict of interest between the producer and Miss Pickford. No outside bids were made at today's sale.
 - Paris, 27 April: For Jean Renoir's first French film in 15 years, French Cancan, he has chosen to go back to his roots in Montmartre, the world of his childhood and his famous painter father. Based on the life of Ziedler, the man who founded the Moulin Rouge, the film brilliantly re-creates the colorful world of La Belle époque, ending with the cancan, when the screen explodes with exuberant dancing. Jean Gabin, who last worked with Renoir in La Bête humaine before the war, gives a remarkably shaded performance, passionate and tender, as the impresario. The haunting theme song was written by Georges Van Parys, with the lyrics by Jean Renoir himself.
- Los Angeles, 18 May:
 Mickey Spillane's swaggering, brutal private eye Mike Hammer has been brilliantly brought to the big screen in Kiss Me Deadly, directed by Robert Aldrich. Ralph Meeker portrays Hammer as a swaying, strutting fascist thug in a stunning portrait of self-sufficient brutality. Lurking on the borderline between roughneck thriller and science fiction film noir, Kiss Me Deadly sends Hammer lurching in pursuit of the "great whatsit," a nuclear Pandora's box that is fatally opened at the picture's pulsating climax. By combining elements of ancient myth with the paranoia abroad in today's nuclear age, Aldrich's version of Spillane packs a deadly punch.
 - London, 29 May: British director David Lean's latest film Summertime (a.k.a. Summer Madness in the UK) has opened here. Lean, increasingly associated with huge epics of enormous impact, has regressed, at least in subject matter, to the small-scale intimacy of plot which marked his early career, notably with Brief Encounter. However, his sense of visual beauty, captured in color, has not deserted him -- indeed, Venice, the setting of the film, with its glorious buildings and canals lovingly photographed on location, is in danger of distracting attention from the story of a middle-aged spinster on holiday who encounters a married Italian antique dealer (Rossano Brazzi). They fall in love, she ends the affair on moral grounds, and she goes home with her memories. Slight, tender, and unbearably poignant, the film draws a magnificent performance from Katharine Hepburn, playing opposite the accurately cast Italian actor Rossano Brazzi.
- New York, 30 May: The giant poster of Marilyn Monroe with her skirts billowing has been removed from the facade of Loew's State Theater under pressure from the League of Decency. The poster, which had only been up for five days, was to promote her latest film, Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch.
- Moscow, 31 May: The American movie Marty, directed by Delbert Mann, the love story of a Bronx butcher, received a rave notice in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda. The picture was the recipient of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival earlier this month.
- New York, 6 June:
 Director Billy Wilder and screenwriter George Axelrod turn their mordant humor on the subject of sex in The Seven Year Itch. Tom Ewell is the New Yorker indulging in Walter Mittyish fantasies one long hot summer while his wife is away. They are stimulated by the arrival of curvaceous blonde neighbor Marilyn Monroe, a devastating ingenue with more physical assets than brains, who likes to keep her panties in the fridge and who can recognize classical music because "there isn't a vocal." Monroe oozes unconscious sexiness. At one point she straddles a subway grating as the uprush of air from a passing train billows her white dress while Ewell gawps lewdly. The stunt was originally shot at 52nd and Lexington Avenue in New York, but it failed to carry the remarkable erotic charge that Wilder later achieved, in one take, in the studio. The director has referred to Monroe's appeal on the screen as "flesh impact."
- Colorado, 15 June: On location in the Rockies for Tribute to a Bad Man, Spencer Tracy complained of the altitude and is refusing to continue work. MGM has retaliated by threatening to replace him with James Cagney.
- Los Angeles, 17 June: Representatives from the MPAA testifying before the Senate Committee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency said that films remained well behind other forms of the media in a general trend towards relaxed moral standards. In their opinion, books, plays and daily newspapers are filled with a far greater degree of licentiousness, sex and violence.
- Hollywood, 24 June: The director of the Advertising Code has cautioned the heads of studio publicity and advertising departments to ease off sex and violence in exploiting movies.
- Kuwait City, 18 July: The first movie theater in the city opens its doors today.
- Anaheim, 18 July:
 "Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, dreams and struggles that made America." These words greet the visitor to a unique new city, born out of the desire of a man to make his dreams come true -- Walt Disney. The five million visitors that are expected annually will get the impression that they are traveling through a cartoon universe. They can fly with Peter Pan, shake the hands of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, go through the mirror into Wonderland, or enter the castle of Sleeping Beauty. A half-hour from downtown Los Angeles, Disneyland was constructed on 150 acres of orange groves. Yesterday, a televised inauguration was held in the presence of 30,000 privileged people.
- New York, 18 July: A little over a hear after acquiring total control over RKO, Howard Hughes has sold the studio and its entire backlog of old movies to General Teleradio (a subsidiary of the giant General Tire and Rubber Co.) for $25 million. As the owner of a number of TV stations, this company, headed by Tom O'Neil, has been especially interested in acquiring the rights to old movies. O'Neil is also hoping to keep RKO going as an active film production entity. Since Hughes appears to have demonstrated little interest in making films during the seven years when he ran the studio -- indeed, it is difficult to understand why he bought it -- it remains to be seen whether a new management team can breathe fresh life into the struggling outfit. Unfortunately, the general outlook is not good since movie attendance is declining and even the top studios are making only minimal profits.
- Paris, 1 August: Sally Marlow, Gina Lolobrigida's stunt double for filming Trapeze had a fall during a scene on the flying trapeze. She broke her nose.
- Guyancourt, 3 September: At the airport in the Yvelines here, Lindbergh's historic and triumphant arrival in France is being re-created for Billy Wilder's film The Spirit of St. Louis, with James Stewart in the role of the famous aviator.
- Venice, 9 September:
 Rather like last year, when the jury of the Venice Festival could not decide on a best actress winner, this year they could not choose between Curt Jurgens in Les Héros sont fatigués and Kenneth More in The Deep Blue Sea for best actor. A compromise was reached, allowing them to share the trophy. The jury was also split on the Silver Lion, giving it to no fewer than four films. Fortunately, there was unanimity when it came to presenting the Golden Lion to Carl Dreyer's Ordet. Based on a play by Kai Munk, the film is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism. The tale of a miraculous resurrection brought about by love could easily have been pious and sentimental, but Dreyer makes it an enriching experience.
 - New York, 29 September: Charles Laughton's first film as a director, The Night of the Hunter, is a remarkable parable about good and evil set in rural America. Evil comes unforgettably in the form of Robert Mitchum's psychopathic preacher, with Love and Hate tatooed on his hands, who marries and murders rich widows. Good comes triumphantly in the form of Lillian Gish, who rescues the two children of Mitchum's latest victim from his rabid clutches. Drawing on elements as diverse as Expressionism, American primitive paintings and the rural drama of D. W. Griffith, Laughton fashions a film of haunting beauty that moves effortlessly between the nightmarish and the lyrical.
- Los Angeles, 1 October:
 James Dean was killed yesterday in a car accident while driving his silver Porsche 550 Spider to Salinas to participate in their autumn racing event. It happened at 5:58 p.m. at the intersection of Highway 41 and Route 466. He left Hollywood in the early afternoon and was stopped by police at 3 p.m. for excess speeding. Nevertheless, he continued to step on the gas, with the sun in his eyes. A car in front, driven by a student, had refused to let Dean, who was traveling at 115 miles per hour, overtake it. The 24-year-old actor was found with his neck broken. His mechanic, Ralph Wütherich, is in serious condition. A few days ago Dean had completed shooting on Giant with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, under the direction of George Stevens. Ironically, the star had recently made a short public service announcement for highway safety, declaring, "Drive carefully... It's perhaps my life that you will save."
Born on 8 February 1931 in a small town in Indiana, Dean was the son of a dental technician. His mother had a passion for poetry and gave him the middle name of Byron. After graduating from Fairmont High, where he became interested in art and literature, he went to California where he enrolled in James Whitmore's drama classes at UCLA. In order to purchase a new Triumph, he did some TV commercials, and managed to get himself bit parts in three movies. In 1952, Dean went to New York, where he was able to watch some classes at the Actors' Studio, but after an audition he felt like "a rabbit being vivisected." He then got a part in a play called See the Jaguar, which ran for only six performances, but he was noticed by producer Billy Rose who cast him in André Gide's The Immoralist. This led to a screen test at Warners followed by a seven-year contract. It was Elia Kazan who asked Dean to play Caleb Trask in East of Eden, which made him an overnight sensation when it opened last February. With his animated shoulders, tortured postures, extravagant gestures, studied hesitancy and untamed animal sensitivity, he painted a perfect portrait of a disturbed and complex adolescent with whom young audiences could identify. His death has made people even more impatient to see his second starring vehicle, Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause, which will be released at the end of this month. His next movie was to have been Somebody Up There Likes Me with Pier Angeli, the girl he had wanted to marry. In the 24 hours since his death, James Dean has already entered Hollywood legend.
- Paris, 20 October: According to a report in France-Soir, the picture so far this fall with the best weekly receipts in France is Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, directed by Richard Fleischer.
- New York, 4 November:
 Producer Samuel Goldwyn paid a reported $1 million for the movie rights to Frank Loesser's great Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, handed the direction to Joseph L. Mankiewicz (his first musical) and then spent another $4.5 million on the production. The result? A 158-minute romp as gambler Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando) sets about winning a bet that he can persuade buttoned-up Salvation Army lass Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) into a date; and Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) tries to keep his crap game afloat and his fiancée of 14 years running, Miss Adelaide (a brilliant Vivian Blaine), at bay. Brando croons with a pleasingly husky voice, but is clearly not destined for a vocalist's career, but Sinatra is in peak form. Michael Kidd's choreography is spectacular and the score, despite a couple of the original songs being replaced, retains its exuberant fizz.
- New York, 7 November: The British picture, The Constant Husband, starring Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall, was transmitted by the NBC television network last night. This was the first time ever that a feature-length film has premiered on TV in the US before reaching the theaters.
- Los Angeles, 9 November: Rock Hudson has married Phyllis Gates, his agent's secretary.
- Paris, 29 November: At the Boulogne Studios, Mich`le Morgan is filming the beheading sequence in Marie Antoinette under Jean Delannoy's direction.
 - New York, 12 December: Because the MPAA has refused to give a Seal of Approval to Otto Preminger's new project, The Man With the Golden Arm, United Artists has resigned from the MPAA and submitted the film to local state censors, most of whom have been willing to grant a certificate. Producer-director Preminger has again taken on the censors after The Moon Is Blue controversy two years ago, and won. The Man With the Golden Arm is Hollywood's first attempt to tackle the subject of drug addiction, and does so realistically and responsibly. Audiences watching Frank Sinatra go "cold turkey" after he becomes seriously hooked on narcotics can be in no doubt as to the movie's attitude toward the problem.
- London, 20 December: Laurence Olivier presents his new adaptation of Shakespeare's work Richard III. He is the film's producer, director and star with Claire Bloom as Lady Anne.
- Los Angeles, 21 December:
 Susan Hayward is no stranger to the bottle. In 1947, in Smash Up - The Story of a Woman, she played a torch singer who gives up her husband and family for the booze. Reportedly, she researched the role by attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and even going on a binge herself. She hit the bottle again, although rather more romantically, in the 1949 My Foolish Heart. The experience must have helped Hayward when she approached the part of alcoholic chanteuse Lillian Roth in her latest picture, another all-stops-out weepie called I'll Cry Tomorrow. Hayward, who played crippled singer Jane Froman three years back in With a Song in My Heart, is able to be a lush and a suffering entertainer in her new film.
 - Paris, 22 December: Max Ophüls' new film Lola Montès represents the apogee of his work. The Franco-German co-production, which cost nearly 650 million francs, stars Martine Carol, astonishing in the sympathetic title role of the tragic heroine. The story begins with Lola locked in a golden cage as a circus attraction, and proceeds in a series of multiple flashbacks. The ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) tells of the celebrated courtesan's love affairs with King Leopold I (Anton Walbrook), Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and a young student (Oskar Werner). But the originality of the film's structure has furiously divided the critics and disconcerted the public. As a result, the producers intend to cut the 140-minute color film and redo the editing with the object of putting the narrative into a strict chronological order. This would be a great shame, because changes might diminish the impact of the film, which treats the space of the CinemaScope screen (utilizing masking and other devices) in a breathtaking manner, while the crane shots and camera movements (plus a 360° revolve) have the virtuosity of a Liszt sonata.
- Paris, 23 December: Robert Hossein has married the young actress Marina Vlady. She is the 17-year-old sister of well-known actress Odile Versois.
- Hollywood, 27 December:
 The ongoing love-hate relationship between Columbia boss Harry Cohn and the studio's star discovery, Rita Hayworth, appears finally to have reached an acrimonious climax. Cohn and Columbia Pictures have initiated a court action against the actress for having refused to appear in the biblical epic Joseph and His Brethren, which was being planned for her and for which she received a substantial advance payment that she has not returned. Apparently the studio has invested much time and effort (as well as money) in the Joseph project, the first production to involve former MGM boss Louis B. Mayer as an indpendent producer, with elaborate costumes and sets having been designed, Lee J. Cobb signed to play Potiphar, and Clifford Odets employed as scriptwriter. In addition, the studio lent $50,000 to Dick Haymes, Rita's former husband and partner in her own producing company, who also hoped to star in the movie. Hayworth will not be in court to contest the case. Her divorce from Haymes, her fourth husband, was in fact granted two weeks ago, and she has recently left the US for Europe with her two young daughters. It looks as if the star's reign as queen of the Columbia lot has now ended, and a sexy, blonde, 22-year-old newcomer named Kim Novak is being groomed by Cohn to take her place.
 - New York, 31 December: With her latest picture, The Seven Year Itch, established as one of this year's biggest hits, Fox has wisely decided to offer a new, improved contract to its biggest asset, Marilyn Monroe. Not only will she be paid $100,000 per film and a percentage of the profits, but she will also have script and director approval, along with the choice of subjects. In turn, Monroe has agreed to star in four films for the company during the next four years, but she is free to appear in other, outside productions as well. A film version of William Inge's play, Bus Stop, will be her first under the new terms.
- Hollywood, 31 December: According to the Motion Picture Herald's annual referendum among movie theater staff, the most popular star at the box office is James Stewart. His films this year are The Far Country, The Man from Laramie and Strategic Air Command, all three directed by Anthony Mann.
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18 January - Lynwood, CA,