Centennial 100: 1946-1956

Here’s part four of a Read/Watch/Listen bookmark series by the Heights Matchmakers, celebrating the Heights Libraries’ Centennial decade by decade!

Books:

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey “Kingfish” Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success. Generally considered the finest novel ever written on American politics, All the King’s Men is a literary classic.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)

1984 by George Orwell (1949)

The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac (1950)

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)

The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith (1952)

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym (1953)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov (1955)

Movies:

Good News (1947)

This second film version of the DeSylva/Brown/Henderson Broadway musical Good News may not be the best of the Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals, but it’s certainly one of the peppiest. The film is set at Tait college during the Roaring 20s. The wisp of a plot involves Tait football-star Peter Lawford, who will be ineligible to play in the Big Game if his grades don’t improve. June Allyson is the demure Tait coed who takes on the task of tutoring Lawford, while campus vamp Patricia Marshall takes action when she believes (rightly so) that she is losing Lawford to Allyson. The film is deftly stolen by comic relief Joan McCracken, who stops the show with her energetic rendition of “Pass That Peace Pipe”–which, like the famous Lawford/Allyson duet “The French Lesson,” was specially written for this 1948 version of Good News. Retained from the original score is the rousing “Varsity Drag.” Mel Torme, Tom Dugan and Donald McBride are among the familiar supporting-cast faces in this bubbly Technicolor musical, which was adapted for the screen by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Father of the Bride (1950)

All About Eve (1951)

Royal Wedding (1951)

Shane (1953)

Rear Window (1954)

Music:

Anthology by The Dells (1954-1991)

Ella and Louis by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (1956)

Elvis Presley: Elvis at Sun (1956-1960)

The Definitive Collection by Buddy Holly (1956-1958)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *