The decade started off with "Whirlpool" 1950 with Richard Conte and Gene Tierney in a film noir , in which she is a kleptomaniac who is taken advantage of by a blackmailer.
"Cheaper by the Dozen" 1950 with Jeanne Crain and Clifton Webb as the efficiency expert and his twelve children. It was based on the true story of the Gilbreth family. It also costarred Myrna Loy.
Film noir "Night and the City" 1950 with Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. It is a powerful movie with Widmark as a hustler who sets up a fight that goes horribly wrong. Filmed in London.
"Panic in the Streets" 1951 with Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas as an officer of the U.S. Public Health Service and a police captain, respectively trying to stop an epidemic from spreading throughout the city. It is labeled a film noir but more of a drama.
"Where the Sidewalk Ends" with Dana Andrews as a police detective and Gene Tierney. Andrews and Tierney reteamed after Laura. Directed by Otto Preminger.
"No Way Out" 1950 with Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell and Sidney Poitier in a film noir that tackles the topic of racism. Poitier in his debut role plays a doctor tending to residents of a slum area. Widmark is the racist robber. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
The most famous movie for the studio in the 50's: "All About Eve" 1950 with Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Anne Baxter and George Sanders. The classic movie about stage actors. It also starred Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter and Marilyn Monroe at the beginning of her career. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
"On the Riviera" 1951 with Danny Kaye and Gene Tierney in a back stage musical comedy.
"David and Bathsheba" 1951 is loosely based on the story King David and his mistress with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward.
With "The Day the Earth Stood Still" 1951 the studio jumped into the Sci Fi popularity wave of the 1950's
"With a Song in My Heart" 1952 with Susan Hayward as the famous singer Jane Froman who entertained troops during WW2.
"Don't Bother to Knock" 1952 was one of Marilyn Monroe's early films. It also costarred Richard Widmark. Monroe played the role of an emotionally disturbed baby sitter.
The comedy "Monkey Business" 1952 with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers was quite funny. Grant is a chemist who inadvertently discovers an elixir to the fountain of the youth and he and his wife mistakenly take it. It also starred Marilyn Monroe.
"Niagara" 1952 was a film noir made in color. Marilyn Monroe is the femme fatale. She was given the starring role and billed first. It gave her star status.
"Titanic" 1953 starred Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck as a couple with marital problems, on board the ill fated vessel. During filming: "The filming of the disaster had a powerful effect on Barbara Stanwyck, who recalled: "The night we were making the scene of the dying ship in the outdoor tank at Twentieth, it was bitter cold. I was 47 feet up in the air in a lifeboat swinging on the davits. The water below was agitated into a heavy rolling mass and it was thick with other lifeboats full of women and children. I looked down and thought: If one of these ropes snaps now, it's goodbye for you. Then I looked up at the faces lined along the rail - those left behind to die with the ship. I thought of the men and women who had been through this thing in our time. We were re-creating an actual tragedy and I burst into tears. I shook with great racking sobs and couldn't stop." -Wikipedia
The film noir "Pickup on South Street" 1953 with Richard Widmark and Jean Peters. The lives of criminals and spies crisscross
The comedy musical "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" 1953 with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.
Jean Simmons and Richard Burton starred in"The Robe" 1953. It's notable for being the first film to be filmed in cinemascope invented by the president of 20th Century Fox- Spyros P. Skouras. "It marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection. The anamorphic lenses theoretically allowed the process to create an image of up to a 2.66:1 aspect ratio, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1.37:1 ratio."-Wikipedia
"How to Marry a Millionaire" 1953 with Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe. It was the second Fox film to be filmed in Cinemascope.
"River of No Return" 1953 with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum This was not the first meeting of Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. "Mitchum had worked at Lockheed Aircraft with Monroe's then first husband James Dougherty. The two had met on at least one occasion during the mid 1940's." Somewhere I had read that when she would prepare sandwiches for her husband, she would make some for Mitchum as well.
"Three Coins in a Fountain" 1954 was filmed on location when Hollywood was making many films in Italy. Starring Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara.
"Carmen Jones" 1954 with Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte leading an all Black cast of great actors. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger. At first he thought the studio wouldn't back him up but they did. He first cast Pearl Bailey, Harry Belafonte and Diahann Carroll. The lead was harder to cast: "Preminger was familiar with Dorothy Dandridge but felt she was incapable of exuding the sultry sex appeal the role of Carmen demanded, particularly after having seen Dandridge's performance as a demure schoolteacher opposite Belafonte in Bright Road (1953). Her agent's office was in the same building where Preminger's brother Ingo worked, and he asked Ingo to intercede on his client's behalf. At his first meeting with Dandridge, Preminger told her she was "lovely" and looked like a "model" or "a beautiful butterfly," but not Carmen, and suggested she audition for the role of Cindy Lou. Dandridge took the script and left, and when she returned she was dressed and behaved exactly as Preminger envisioned Carmen. The director was impressed enough to schedule a screen test for mid-May, after Dandridge completed a singing engagement in St. Louis."-Wikipedia
"The Seven Year Itch" 1955 starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. It is notable for Monroe standing over a subway grate and her dress billowing upward. It's an amusing movie in which a lonely husband imagines romantic situations with the neighbor from the floor above.
"Love is a Many Splendored Thing" 1955 is romantic drama starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden.
"Oklahoma" 1955 starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones in her debut role. She also starred in the stage version. "Rodgers and Hammerstein personally oversaw the film to prevent the studio from making changes of the kind that were then typical of stage-to-film musical adaptations—such as putting in new songs by different composers. They also maintained artistic control over the film versions of several of their other stage musicals."-Wikipedia
"Carousel" 1956 Starring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae. It was directed by Henry King. "Like the original stage production, the film contains what many critics consider some of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most beautiful songs, and one of the most serious storyline found in their musicals.
Frank Sinatra was originally cast in the role of Billy Bigelow He had even recorded the songs beforehand but he walked of the set. Two reasons are given one was that Ava Gardner demanded he accompany her n her latest film project "The Barefoot Contessa" and the second was he thought the movie was going to be shot twice.-once in regular Cinemascope then in Cinemascope 55 and he didn't want to film it twice. In the end the filmmakers found a way to film a scene once and then transfer it. However: "on February 14, 1958, Shirley Jones guested on the Frank Sinatra Show and was able to perform "If I Loved You" with him. This performance gives a taste of what could have been if Sinatra had not quit the film, and can be seen on the DVD Sinatra – The Classic Duets. The songs that Sinatra recorded for the original soundtrack were never released to the general public due to contractual issues. "Soliloquy", the song that the character Billy Bigelow sings when he learns that his wife is expecting a child, was one of Sinatra's favorites. He recorded it in the 1940s for Columbia, tried it at Capitol in the 1950s, and recorded it again in the 1960s for Reprise. At one point, Judy Garland was announced to star in the film opposite Sinatra before Jones was brought on board in her place."-Wikipedia
"The King and I" 1956 with Yul Brynner who played the role of the king on Broadway and Deborah Kerr. Brynner won the tony and the Oscar for this role. He also advocated for the casting of Ker. He had seen her work on stage and was impressed. Marni Nixon provided the voice for Kerr. : "Marni Nixon was hired on a six-week contract, and she was to be at the studio every day that Deborah Kerr rehearsed a scene with a song in it. Nixon would actually stand next to Kerr and walk through the whole scene - both of them singing - and Nixon would be looking closely at Kerr's facial expressions to try to imitate her speech pattern in the songs."-IMDB
"Bus Stop" 1956 with Marilyn Monroe
"The Girl Can't Help It" 1956 with Jayne Mansfield. The story about a mobster who wants his girlfriend to be a singing star. The problem is she can't sing. The movie's feature of early rock and roll stars was a great influence on a lot of future musicians including John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
"Anastasia" 1956 with Ingrid Bergman in the role of Anastasia - the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia — the youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, who is rumored to have survived the execution of her family.
"Heaven Knows Mr. Allison" 1957 with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum. Set in the south Pacific at the end of WW2, it was actually filmed on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.
"Desk Set" 1957 was a first for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in several ways: the first non-MGM film the two starred in together, their first color film, and their first CinemaScope film."
"An Affair to Remember" 1957 with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. It is a remake of the 1939 Leo McCarey movie "Love Affair" with Irene Dune and Charles Boyer. It's a good remake. "Kerr and Grant improvised many of their scenes throughout filming, and a number of lines that made it to the final cut of the film came from the actors' improvisation."
"The Three Faces of Eve" 1957 Interesting note on the production of this movie: "According to the DVD commentary by Aubrey Solomon, "When the real Eve signed the contract for the movie, the studio had her sign three separate contracts under each of her personalities, so that they would be covered from any possible legal action. In fact, when she signed the contract, they actually had her go into the personalities, and the signatures were all different on the contracts." -IMDB
"Payton Place" 1957 based on the novel of the same name, is the story of a small, seemingly. peaceful town and all its secrets, scandals, homicide, suicide and moral hypocrisy. The cast included: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Diane Varsi, Lee Phillips, Arthur Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Russ Tamblyn, Betty Filed, Terry Moore, Leon Ames and Lorne Greene.
The third version of their staged musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein chose: "South Pacific" 1957 "The film, directed by Joshua Logan, stars Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr and Ray Walston in the leading roles with Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary, the part that she had played in the original stage production. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound. Hanalei Bay, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, served as the filming location."-Wikipedia
"The Long Hot Summer" 1958 It was the first teaming of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. "Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward channeled their off-screen chemistry into their characters and worked beautifully together. "They seemed to have such a total understanding of each other," said co-star Angela Lansbury in a 2001 interview, "that they were able to work in scenes where they were at each other's throats or falling under each other's spell." " IMDB
"The Inn of Sixth Happiness" 1958 with Ingrid Bergman as Gladys Aylward- a missionary who did work in China helping children, and "shepherded more than 100 children over the mountains to safety at the height of the Sino-Japanese war."-IMDB
"The Diary of Anne Frank" 1959 Millie Perkins was cast as Anne Frank. It also costarred Shelley Winters who won the Oscar for Best Supporting actress and Joseph Schildkraut. Winters donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Fox had approval from Anne's father to film the story. He was the only survivor of the family.
"The Best of Everything" 1959 starring Hope Lange, Suzy Parker and Diane Baker. It also costarred Joan Crawford. It is a romantic drama about the loves of three single young women working in a New York publishing house. The decade finished with this all women cast and their love stories.
Those were some of the films 20th Century Fox studios produced during the 1950's-the good ones, bad ones- the most recognizable ones. In between these films there were many, not as well known today. The studio made about 355 movies in that decade.
