A list of American films released in 1950 .
Fred Astaire hosted the 23rd Academy Awards ceremony on March 29, 1951, held at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The winner of the Best Motion Picture category was Twentieth Century-Fox's All About Eve .
The other four nominated pictures were Born Yesterday , Father of the Bride , King Solomon's Mines and Sunset Boulevard .
All About Eve was nominated for 14 Oscars, beating the previous record of Gone with the Wind (13).
Newcomer Judy Holliday won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of showgirl mistress Billie Dawn in the film version of the play Born Yesterday , a role which she had originated on Broadway. Other Best Actress nominees for that year were Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve, Eleanor Parker for Caged and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard.
José Ferrer won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as the title character in the film version of the 1946 Broadway play, Cyrano de Bergerac, a role which he had played on Broadway. Other nominees that year were Louis Calhern for The Magnificent Yankee , William Holden for Sunset Boulevard, James Stewart for Harvey and Spencer Tracy for Father of the Bride.
The 8th Golden Globe Awards also honored the best films of 1950. That year's Golden Globes also marked the first time that the Best Actor and Actress categories were split into Musical or Comedy or Drama. However, Best Picture remained a single category until the 9th Golden Globe Awards, when it too was split into two categories. Ferrer won the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Motion Picture – Drama, for Cyrano de Bergerac, while Fred Astaire won Best Actor – Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Three Little Words. Swanson won Best Actress – Motion Picture – Drama for Sunset Boulevard, while Holliday won for Best Actress – Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Born Yesterday. Sunset Boulevard won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture.
1950 also saw the film debut of several future stars, such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Piper Laurie and Debbie Reynolds.
Title | Director | Cast | Genre | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
The Crime of Korea | War | Korean War propaganda | ||
The Hollywood Ten | John Berry | Documentary | ||
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo | Robert J. Flaherty | Fredric March | Documentary | Oscar winner |
Why Korea? | Edmund Reek | Joe King (narrator) | Documentary | Oscar winner |
With These Hands | Jack Arnold | Sam Levene | Documentary | |
Title | Director | Cast | Genre | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Atom Man vs. Superman | Spencer Gordon Bennet | Kirk Alyn, Lyle Talbot, Noel Neill | Serial | Columbia |
Cody of the Pony Express | Spencer Gordon Bennet | Jock O'Mahoney, Dickie Moore | Serial | |
Desperadoes of the West | Fred C. Brannon | Richard Powers, Judy Clark | Serial | |
Flying Disc Man from Mars | Fred C. Brannon | Walter Reed, Lois Collier | Adventure | Serial |
The Invisible Monster | Fred C. Brannon | Richard Webb, Aline Towne | Adventure | Republic Serial |
Pirates of the High Seas | Spencer Gordon Bennet, Thomas Carr | Buster Crabbe, Lois Hall | Serial | Universal |
Billy Wilder was an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He was born in Sucha Beskidzka, Poland, a town in Austria-Hungary at the time of his birth. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder, Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman Jr. It is named after a major street that runs through Hollywood.
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón was a Puerto Rican actor and director of stage, film and television. He was one of the most celebrated and esteemed Hispanic American actors—or, indeed, actors of any ethnicity—during his lifetime and after, with a career spanning nearly 60 years between 1935 and 1992. He achieved prominence for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the play of the same name, which earned him the inaugural Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1947. He reprised the role in a 1950 film version and won an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him both the first Hispanic and the first Puerto Rican–born actor to win an Academy Award.
William Franklin Holden was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973).
Gloria Josephine Mae Swanson was an American actress. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most famously for her 1950 turn in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, which also earned her a Golden Globe Award.
Judy Holliday was an American actress, comedian and singer.
Kevin Delaney Kline is an American actor. In a career spanning over five decades, he has become a prominent leading man across both stage and screen. His accolades include an Academy Award and three Tony Awards, along with nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2003, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Best Actor is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actors in a film, television series, television film or play.
Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. The play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of Cyrano de Bergerac's life.
Born Yesterday is a 1950 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor, based on the 1946 stage play of the same name by Garson Kanin. The screenplay was credited to Albert Mannheimer. According to Kanin's autobiography, Cukor did not like Mannheimer's work, believing it lacked much of the play's value, so he approached Kanin about adapting a screenplay from his own play. Because of legal entanglements, Kanin did not receive screen credit.
Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1950 American adventure comedy film based on the 1897 French Alexandrin verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. It uses poet Brian Hooker's 1923 English blank verse translation as the basis for its screenplay. The film was the first motion picture version in English of Rostand's play, though there were several earlier adaptations in different languages.
The 23rd Academy Awards were held on March 29, 1951, honoring the films of 1950. All About Eve received a record 14 nominations, besting the previous record of 13 set by Gone with the Wind in 1939. It won six Oscars, including Best Picture, and earned writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz his second consecutive Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards, the only time such a feat has been accomplished.
The 22nd Academy Awards were held on March 23, 1950, at the RKO Pantages Theatre, honoring the films in 1949. This was the final year in which all five Best Picture nominees were in Black & White, and the first year in which every film nominated for Best Picture won multiple Oscars.
Stage-to-film is a term used when describing a motion picture that has been adapted from a stage play. There have been stage-to-film adaptations since the beginning of motion pictures. Many of them have been nominated for, or have won, awards.
The 8th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film for 1950 films, were held on February 28, 1951, in the Ciro's nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip.
The 22nd National Board of Review Awards were announced on December 20, 1950.