1949 Here I Come

In 1949 …

Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx made their final film appearance as a team in Love Happy.  The film debut of the comic duo of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was in My Friend Irma.  The pair would go on to make a total of  sixteen feature films together for Paramount until they broke up in 1956.  After a ten-year absence from the screen, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were reunited for their tenth and final film together in MGM’s The Barkleys of Broadway. Wile E. Coyote, the Roadrunner and Mr. Magoo made their cartoon debuts.

Ingrid Bergman became pregnant by her lover – Italian Neo-Realist film-maker Roberto Rossellini.  Both were married to others at the time. The child was delivered out-of-wedlock in February of 1950, three months before their marriage in May.    She was denounced by US Senators, religious leaders, and citizens’ groups.  Eventually, the couple had three children together (Renato or “Robin”, and twin daughters Isabella and Isotta).  Bergman was not vindicated until making a comeback in Anastasia, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar.

Judy Garland, suffering from serious personal and health issues (suicide attempts, a nervous breakdown, and heavy doses of prescription drugs) and failing to report to the set and often late, was suspended from the title role (of sharpshooter Annie Oakley) during the making of the MGM musical Annie Get Your Gun.  She was replaced by Betty Hutton.

Aside from the anxieties supplied by the Red Scare and Cold War, Americans enjoyed a relatively uneventful year. In a horrible portent of things to come, Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, killed 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey with a souvenir Luger to become America’s first single-episode mass murderer.

RCA perfected a system for broadcasting color television and the first Polaroid camera was sold.  Guard of Honor by James Gould  Cozzens won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.  Virgil Thomson’s score for Louisiana Story won the Music prize and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman won for Drama.  Frankie Laine had 14 weeks of back-to-back number one hits on the Billboard charts with “That Lucky Old Sun” and “Mule Train”.

The Allies continued the Berlin Airlift to deliver food and supplies to West Berlin to overcome a blockade initiated by the Soviet Union in 1948 so that West Germany could not communicate with its capital.   By May 12, 1949 the Soviet Union ended the blockade because it was clearly not successful in halting the Allies unification efforts in West Germany.  The Allies continued the airlift until September 30th, 1949 in order to stock up on supplies in West Berlin.

Communist leader Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China on October 1st, 1949 after the Nationalist leader Chang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan. The nationalists and communists had been in an on and off civil war for control of the country since the late 1920s.   Britain recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland.

************************************************************

I have previously reviewed the following 1949 movies on this site:  ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; and .  The list of films I will select from can be found here and here.

Montage of stills from the Oscar winners