History of Film FROM

1940  Nylons are introduced.  The Battle of Britain.  John Ford directs The Grapes of Wrath, based on Jon Steinbeck’s novel.  Animator Joy Batchelor founds Halas and Batchelor, Britain’s biggest animation house, with her husband John Halas.

1941  The Manhattan Project commences work on an atomic bomb.  The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters WWII.  Mount Rushmore is completed.  John Huston directs his first film, the crime classic The Maltese Falcon.

1942  Japanese Americans are held in internment camps in the U.S.  The T-shirt is introduced.  Actress Carole Lombard is killed in a plane crash.  The Battle of Midway.

1944*  D-Day; the Allies invade German-occupied France.  Ballpoint pens go on sale.  The De Havilland decision marks the end of the “endless” seven- year contract, in which studio tack on “suspension” periods to the length of a contract.  Otto Preminger directs the murder mystery Laura.

1945*  Hitler commits suicide; Germany surrenders.  The U.S. drops atomic bombs on Japan; WWII ends.  The microwave oven is invented.

1946*  The Cannes Film Festival debuts.  William Wyler directs the classic “coming home” film, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Jean Cocteau directs Beauty and the Beast in newly liberated France.

1947  The Polaroid camera is invented.  Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball’s color ban, signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenas its first wave of witness in an investigation of Communist infiltration in Hollywood.

1948*  Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.  The State of Israel is founded.  The Paramount decree requires the major movie studios to sell off their theater chains.

1949  George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-four.  The 45 RPM single record introduced.  The Road Runner and Wile E Coyote debuts in Fast and Furry-ous.

1950*  The Korean War Begins.  The first peanuts cartoon is published.  Joseph McCarthy conducts investigations into communist influence in the US Government.  Screenwriters John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo are sent to jail for contempt of Congress.

1951*  Color Television is introduced.  Winston Churchill is reelected Prime Minister of Great Britain.  Jackson Pollock’s “drip” painting shown.

1952  The polio vaccine is created.  Car seat belts introduced.  Bwana Devil, the first 3-D film, is released; the 3-D craze began.  The first Cinerama film is shown to the public.

1953*  DNA is discovered.  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the U.S. for espionage.  Ida Lupino directs the drama The Hitch-Hiker, her most successful film as director.  Yasujiro Ozu directs his masterly film of modern Japanese life, Tokyo Story.

1954*  The first hydrogen bomb is detonated.  The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education, on segregated schools.  Godzilla makes his screen debut.

1955*  James Dean is killed in a car crash. (on next slide)  Disneyland opens.  Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.  Blackboard Jungle uses Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” over the credits, the first use of rock ‘n’ roll in a Hollywood film.

James Dean February 8, 1931, September 30, 1955,

1956  Elvis Presley appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”  Grace Kelley marries Prince Rainer III of Monaco.  Videotape becomes a staple of television production.

1957  Dr. Seuss publishes The Cat in the Hat.  The U.S. surgeon general reports a link between smoking and lung cancer.  Ingmar Bergman directs his allegorical film about life and death, The Seventh Seal.

1958*  Hula hoops become popular.  Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo open within a month of each other.

1959  Fidel Castro becomes dictator of Cuba.  Alaska and Hawaii become the forty-ninth and fiftieth states.