AWARDS 1955

1955
*Marty starring Ernest Borgnine won picture and actor. I saw this movie with my parents at the Avalon Theater and thought it was sad. PLOT:
slice-of-life drama is a heartwarming story about Marty Pilletti a lonely Bronx butcher. Marty is a burly but gentle man, easing into middle age without much hope for romance or a career. He lives at home with his mother a kind but life-smothering woman, and a small circle of dead-end friends. Marty has no self-confidence and feels he's dumpy and unattractive. While it takes some doing, Marty's friends finally convince him to go to a local dance with them and try to pick up girls. At the dance he meets a plain-looking schoolteacher named Clara (whose life appears to mirror his own). He asks Clara to dance and soon they are dating. But to Marty's surprise and frustration, his friends put her down and his mother is hostile to her. Swayed by his friends and his mother, he doesn't call Clara back. But sitting alone at home watching television one night, Marty decides he has had enough, and defying his enclosed little world, he picks up the phone and gives Clara a call. As Marty shouts to his friends, "You don't like her. My mother don't like her. She's a dog. And I'm a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night ... You don't like her? That's too bad.

Other movies at the 1955 Academy Awards included

The Rose Tattoo. An Italian-American neighborhood in Louisiana is disturbed when truck driver Rosario Delle Rose is killed by police while smuggling. His buxom widow Serafina miscarries, then over a period of years draws more and more into herself, trying to force her lovely teenage daughter Rosa to do likewise. On one eventful day, Rose finally breaks away; Serafina learns of Rosario's affair with another woman; and a new carefree, handsome Italian truck driver enters her life... played by Burt Lancaster.

Another movie which plays often is Picnic, starring Kim Novak and William Holden. Holden, a former college foot ball start drifts into a Kansas town near Labor Day. He does odd jobs for food and of course, falls in love with Kim Novak. At the time of the shooting, Holden was 37, twice Novak's age.

Starring, Frank Sinatra, the Man With The Golden Arm, is a gritty 1955 black and white film adaptation, uniquely portrayed heroin as a serious literary topic as it rejected the standard "dope fiend" approach of the time. It was the first of its kind to tackle the marginalized issue of illicit drug use. Kim Novak plays his girl friend.

1955 included numerous westerns, Ma and Pa Kettle movies, Fred Astaire continues to dance and Esther Williams is swimming.

Cary Grant plays in To Catch a Thief and James Dean is A Rebel Without A Cause.

Musicals include, Oklahoma with Gordon MacRae and Guys and Dolls with Marlon Brando.

How many movies? 385

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