1959

Room At The Top
Neil Paterson

Pillow Talk
Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene
Stanley Shapiro & Maurice Richlin

1958

Gigi
Alan Jay Lerner

The Defiant Ones
Nedrick Young, Harold Jacob Smith
The Defiant Ones (1958) is a swift and exciting dramatic action film, known for its symbolic and memorable image of two escaped convicts, one white and one black.
White convict Johnny "Joker" Jackson (Tony Curtis), and black convict Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), handcuffed together, escape from a southern chain gang. The two Southern fugitives are forced to overcome their racial animosity and rely on each other to survive. They flee from Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel) and have to face up to tremendous difficulties, including the 29 inch long shackles that keep them together, hostile townspeople, a lynching mob, bloodhounds, a swamp, and their own mutual hatred, belligerence, and bigotry. As they struggle together, they begin to accept each other.
The final sequence is the most memorable. The two men pursue a freight train to escape. Cullen is able to get onto one of the moving cars, and locks hands with his white companion (a memorable image of black and white hands and arms locked together), but he cannot pull Jackson up onto the moving train. So he sacrifices his own freedom and falls back off the train onto the ground. In their final few moments of freedom, they share a cigarette, and Cullen sings the blues classic "Long Gone" as the sounds of bloodhounds on their trail closing in on them are heard in the distance.

1957

The Bridge On The River Kwai
Pierre Boulle [front], Michael Wilson & Carl Foreman (both blacklisted at the time, with no screen credit; awarded Oscars posthumously in 1984) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the memorable, epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama, was the first of director David Lean's major multi-million dollar, wide-screen super-spectaculars (his later epics included Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965)).

Designing Woman
George Wells

1956

Around The World In 80 Days
James Poe, John Farrow & S. J. Perelman

The Brave One
Dalton Trumbo (Robert Rich [alias])

The Red Balloon
Albert Lamorisse

1955

Marty
Paddy Chayefsky
Marty (1955) is the poignant, simple character study of a lonely, unmarried, lovelorn middle-aged son who still lives with his love-smothering mother. By film's end, he and another homely female wallflower are liberated - both are triumphant over their respective limitations. The film's screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky transformed his own original teleplay into a successful major motion picture - and the modest film remains one of the best examples of the cinematization of a television play. (The TV comedy-drama was originally presented on NBC-TV's "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse" series in May of 1953, with leads Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand, during a period now recognized as the "Golden Age of Television.") It was the only film based on a TV drama to ever win Best Picture.
As a feature film, it was one of the biggest 'sleepers' in Hollywood history, from the independent production company of Harold Hecht and actor Burt Lancaster. A modest, black and white film in an era of wide-screen color epics, its critical acclaim and box-office success were phenomenal. It was also the first American film to take the Golden Palm (Palme d'Or) at Cannes.

Love Me or Leave Me
Daniel Fuchs

Interrupted Melody
William Ludwig, Sonya Levien

1954

The Country Girl
George Seaton

Broken Lance
Philip Yordan

On The Waterfront
Budd Schulberg
On the Waterfront (1954) is a classic, award-winning, controversial film directed by Elia Kazan - a part drama and part gangster film. The authentic-looking, powerful film is concerned with the problems of trade unionism, corruption and racketeering. And it is set on New York's oppressive waterfront docks, where dock workers struggled for work, dignity, and to make ends meet under the control of hard-knuckled, mob-run labor unions that would force them to submit to daily 'shape-ups' by cruel hiring bosses.

1953

From Here To Eternity
Daniel Taradash
From Here to Eternity (1953) is the powerful, realistic story (and fierce indictment) of the lives of American military men (and their women) stationed in peacetime Hawaii (near Honolulu) in the summer and fall before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941 and the US entrance into WW II. The successful film, both critically and financially, soon became the second biggest hit of the year, behind The Robe (1953) (the first CinemaScope film) and ahead of Shane (1953).
One of the first remakes about the same topic was the ABC-TV mini-series titled Pearl (The Mini-Series) (1978) with superstars of the day Angie Dickinson and Dennis Weaver. It was also re-made as a glossy, 2-hour TV melodrama titled From Here to Eternity (1979) starring William Devane, Natalie Wood, Steve Railsback, Joe Pantolino, Peter Boyle and Kim Basinger, and directed by Buzz Kulik. This 1979 movie was also spun off as a soapy TV mini-series in 1980. And Michael Bay's recent Pearl Harbor (2001) provided a soap-operatic, sappy, and predictable love story triangle with an authentic and convincing re-creation of the historic attack.

Roman Holiday
Dalton Trumbo (Ian McLellan Hunter [alias])
Roman Holiday (1953) is a delightful, captivating fairy-tale romance shot entirely on location in Rome, and produced and directed by one of Hollywood's most skillful, distinguished, professional and eminent directors - William Wyler.
The film's bittersweet story is a charming romantic-comedy, a kind of Cinderella tale in reverse (with an April-October romance). A runaway princess (Hepburn) rebels against her royal obligations and escapes the insulated confines of her royal prison to find a 'Prince Charming' commoner - an American reporter (Peck) covering the royal tour in Rome. The story was reportedly based on the real-life Italian adventures of British Princess Margaret.

Titanic
Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch & Richard Breen

1952

The Bad and the Beautiful
Charles Schnee
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is director Vincente Minnelli's (and producer John Houseman's) quintessential movie about Hollywood and moviemaking. MGM's popular hit, with David Raskin's soundtrack and Robert Surtees' great B/W cinematography, was an entertaining, noirish melodrama. It tells the steamy story of the ruthless eighteen-year rise and fall of a tyrannical, manipulative Hollywood movie tycoon - told in flashback and from multiple perspectives (from the point of view of a director, actress, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer).

The Greatest Show On Earth
Frederic M. Frank, Theodore St. John, Frank Cavett

The Lavender Hill Mob
T. E. B. Clarke

1951

A Place In The Sun
Michael Wilson & Harry Brown
A Place in the Sun (1951) is a powerful social drama and romance from director/producer George Stevens. The black and white film plays on the audience's emotions, by involving and drawing them into complicity with the tragic resolution. Methodically, the film is stylistically dark, almost with film-noirish qualities, yet it has some of the most romantic and passionate sequences ever filmed - between the radiant debutante, 18 year-old Elizabeth Taylor (in her first adult role) and 29 year-old Montgomery Clift, who stars as a laboring wage slave...

Seven Days To Noon
Paul Dehn & James Bernard

An American In Paris
Alan Jay Lerner

1950

All About Eve
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
All About Eve (1950), is a realistic, dramatic depiction of show business and backstage life of Broadway and the New York theater. The devastating debunking of stage and theatrical characters was based on the short story and radio play The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr. A cinematic masterpiece and one of the all-time classic films, this award winner has flawless acting, directing, an intelligent script and believable characters. The film is driven by Mankiewicz' witty, cynical and bitchy screenplay. Thematically, it provides an insightful diatribe against crafty, aspiring, glib, autonomous female thespians who seek success and ambition at any cost without regard to scruples or feelings. The acclaimed film also comments on the fear of aging and loss of power/fame.

Panic In The Streets
Edna Anhalt & Edward Anhalt

Sunset Boulevard
Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder & D. M. Marshman, Jr.
Sunset Boulevard (1950) is a classic black comedy/drama, and perhaps the most acclaimed, but darkest film-noir story about "behind the scenes" Hollywood, self-deceit, spiritual and spatial emptiness, and the price of fame, greed, narcissism, and ambition. The mood of the film is immediately established by the posthumous narrator - a dead man floating face-down in a swimming pool.
With caustic, bitter wit in a story that blends both fact and fiction and dream and reality, co-writer/director Billy Wilder realistically exposes the corruptive, devastating influences of the new Hollywood and the studio system by showing the decline of old Hollywood legends many years after the coming of sound. The screenplay was based on the story A Can of Beans by Wilder and Brackett - this was the last collaborative film effort of Brackett and Wilder who had worked together on many films since 1938.
This classic, tragic film was highly-regarded at its time, honored with eleven Academy Award nominations and the recipient of three Oscars: Best Story and Screenplay (co-authored by Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr., and Billy Wilder), Best Black and White Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Franz Waxman). The eight unsuccessful nominations were for Best Picture, Best Actor (William Holden), Best Actress (Gloria Swanson, who lost to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday), Best Supporting Actor (Erich von Stroheim), Best Supporting Actress (Nancy Olson), Best Director, Best B/W Cinematography (John Seitz), and Best Film Editing.