The following is an overview of 1956 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Virginia Mayo was an American actress and dancer. She was in a series of popular comedy films with Danny Kaye and was Warner Bros.' biggest box-office draw in the late 1940s. She also co-starred in the 1946 Oscar-winning movie The Best Years of Our Lives.
Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, films, and television. He is best known for his role as greedy banker Milburn Drysdale in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies.
That's Dancing! is a 1985 American compilation film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that looked back at the history of dancing in film. Unlike the That's Entertainment! series, this film not only focuses specifically on MGM films, but also included films from other studios.
Michael O'Keefe is an American actor known for his roles as Danny Noonan in Caddyshack; Ben Meechum in The Great Santini, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; and Darryl Palmer in the Neil Simon movie The Slugger's Wife. He also appeared as Fred on the television sitcom Roseanne from 1993 to 1995.
AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars is the American Film Institute's list ranking the top 25 male and 25 female greatest screen legends of American film history and is the second list of the AFI 100 Years... series.
Invisible Agent is a 1942 American action and spy film directed by Edwin L. Marin with a screenplay written by Curt Siodmak. The invisible agent is played by Jon Hall, with Peter Lorre and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as members of the Axis, and Ilona Massey and Albert Basserman as Allied spies. The film is inspired by the 1897 H. G. Wells novel The Invisible Man.
Trilogy: Past Present Future is the fifty-fifth studio album by American singer Frank Sinatra, released in March 1980 through Reprise. The triple album included his last Top 40 hit: "Theme from New York, New York".
Michael Pate OAM was an Australian actor, writer, director, and producer, who also worked prolifically as a supporting actor in Hollywood films and American Television during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Story of Mankind is a 1957 American dark fantasy film, loosely based on the nonfiction book The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik Willem van Loon. The film was directed and coproduced by Irwin Allen and released by Warner Bros.
George Garfield Nader, Jr. was an American actor and writer. He appeared in a variety of films from 1950 to 1974, mainly action and adventure film roles. He won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor for the film Four Guns to the Border (1954).
King Richard and the Crusaders is a 1954 American historical drama based on Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman made by Warner Bros. The film stars Rex Harrison, Virginia Mayo, George Sanders and Laurence Harvey, with Robert Douglas, Michael Pate and Paula Raymond. It was directed by David Butler and produced by Henry Blanke from a screenplay by John Twist based on Sir Walter Scott's 1825 novel The Talisman. The music score was by Max Steiner and the cinematography by J. Peverell Marley. This was Warner Bros.' first essay into CinemaScope. King Richard and the Crusaders was listed in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.
Jamboree, known as Disc Jockey Jamboree in the United Kingdom, is a 1957 American rock and roll film directed by Roy Lockwood. Its story is about a boy and girl, Pete Porter and Honey Wynn, who become overnight sensations as a romantic singing duo who run into trouble when their squabbling managers, try to turn them into solo acts. Against this backdrop in cameo performances appear some of the biggest names of rock and roll in the 1950s lip-syncing to their recordings.
The Silver Chalice is a 1954 American historical epic drama film directed and produced by Victor Saville, based on Thomas B. Costain's 1952 novel of the same name. It was one of Saville's last films and marked the feature film debut of Paul Newman; despite being nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance, Newman later called it "the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s."
Of Time and the City is a 2008 British documentary collage film directed by Terence Davies. The film has Davies recalling his life growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s and 1960s, using newsreel and documentary footage supplemented by his own commentary voiceover and contemporaneous and classical music soundtracks.
Harold Lang was a RADA-trained British character actor of stage and screen. During the 1950s, in particular, played many sly or menacing roles in B-films. At one time he managed his own theatrical company. From 1960, Lang, a devotee of Stanislavski, also taught acting at Central School of Speech and Drama; and director John Schlesinger filmed his work in a documentary, The Class, for BBC TV's Monitor, in 1961. He died of a heart attack in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before he was due to give a lecture.
The European Amateur Team Championship is a European amateur team golf championship for men organised by the European Golf Association which was introduced in 1959.
The EGA Trophy was an annual amateur boys' under-21 team golf competition between Great Britain & Ireland and the Continent of Europe.
