Fredric March was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated stars of the 1930s and 1940s. As a performer he was known for his versatility. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two Tony Awards as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and three Emmy Awards.
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
The following is an overview of 1956 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Isaiah Edwin Leopold, better known as Ed Wynn, was an American actor and comedian. He began his career in vaudeville in 1903 and was known for his Perfect Fool comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor, which continued into the 1960s. His variety show (1949–1950), The Ed Wynn Show, won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award.
Maria Luisa Pierangeli, known professionally as Marisa Pavan, was an Italian actress who first became known as the twin sister of film star Pier Angeli before achieving success in her screen career. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the 1955 film The Rose Tattoo.
Dean Carroll Jones was an American actor. He was best known for his roles as Agent Zeke Kelso in That Darn Cat! (1965), Jim Douglas in the Herbie franchise (1969–1997), and Dr. Herman Varnick in Beethoven (1992). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance as Albert Dooley in The Million Dollar Duck (1971). In 1995, he was inducted as a Disney Legend for his film work.
Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His expressive face was his stock-in-trade; and though he rarely carried the lead role, he had prominent billing in most of his film and television roles.
Charles Van Dell Johnson was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II.
The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 American science fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is based on the 1943 short story "A Situation of Gravity" by Samuel W. Taylor. The title character was based in part on Hubert Alyea, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Princeton University, who was known as "Dr. Boom" for his explosive demonstrations. The film stars Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard, alongside Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, and Edward Andrews. The plot follows Brainard as he invents a substance that defies gravity, which he later exploits through various means.
Moby Dick is a 1956 American color adventure film directed and produced by John Huston, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ray Bradbury. A film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the film stars Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Leo Genn and follows the exploits of Captain Ahab in pursuing and killing a gigantic sperm whale with whom he has a personal vendetta.
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He also produced more than half of the films he wrote scripts for and directed eight of those movies. In 1940 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Grapes of Wrath and in 1956, he was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Some of his other notable films include Tobacco Road (1941), The Moon Is Down (1943), Casanova Brown (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Mudlark (1950), The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951), My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). As a playwright he wrote the books for several Broadway musicals, including the musical revue Shoot the Works (1931), Arthur Schwartz's Park Avenue (1946), Bob Merrill's Henry, Sweet Henry (1967), and Jule Styne's Darling of the Day (1968). He also wrote the 1943 Broadway play The World's Full of Girls.
Sloan Wilson was an American writer.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II is a novel by writer Sloan Wilson. A sequel to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), it was published in 1984, nearly thirty years after its original.
The Man in the Funny Suit is a television drama, originally broadcast on 15 April 1960 on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, detailing the agony endured by actor Keenan Wynn while helping his co-star, father and comedian Ed Wynn, play a serious role in the original television production of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight, which had aired in 1956 on Playhouse 90.
Son of Flubber is a 1963 American science fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is the sequel to The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and the first sequel to a Disney film. Fred MacMurray reprises his role from the previous film as Ned Brainard, a scientist who has perfected a high-bouncing substance, Flubber, that can levitate an automobile and cause athletes to bounce into the sky. In addition to MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Ed Wynn, Elliott Reid, and Tommy Kirk also co-star, reprising their roles from the previous film.
Night People is a 1954 American thriller film directed, produced and co-written by Nunnally Johnson and starring Gregory Peck, Broderick Crawford, Anita Björk and Buddy Ebsen. The story was co-written by Jed Harris, the theatrical producer.
Ethan Gregory Peck is an American actor. He is the grandson of actor Gregory Peck and his first wife Greta Kukkonen. In 2019, he played a young Spock in Star Trek: Discovery, a role he has reprised for the television series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022–present).
The Cockeyed Miracle is a 1946 American fantasy film directed by S. Sylvan Simon and starring Frank Morgan, Keenan Wynn, and Cecil Kellaway. The film was based on the play But Not Goodbye by George Seaton. The film is about a ghost who, with the help of his father, stops his best friend from leaving his family penniless.
The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Norman Tokar, with a screenplay by Louis Pelletier and starring Dean Jones, Diane Baker, Ellen Janov, Kurt Russell, Lurene Tuttle and Fred Clark in his final film role. It is based on the 1965 book The Year of the Horse by Eric Hatch. The film's title is a humorous reference to the titular horse's color and the title of the 1955 Sloan Wilson novel about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business. The main characters, Tom and Betsy Rath, are a young middle-class couple that share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture, while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but for different reasons.
