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* Director/scriptwriter John Huston introduced a new kind of crime movie in May 1950's "The Asphalt Jungle," one which its criminals were presented with far more sympathy than in the past. Academy Awards voters appreciated Huston's unique approach to his examination of these robbers' backgrounds and in a way justified why they committed such illegal acts by nominating the film noir in four categories. The movie is also known for elevating actor Sterling Hayden's status, and giving young Marilyn Monroe a small yet impressionable early role.

* Huston rationalized his unique perspective of lawbreakers, saying, "My defense was that unless we understand the criminal there's no way of coping with him." Considered one of Hollywood's best heist films, "The Asphalt Jungle" follows thieves involved in a major jewelry robbery. Huston portrays these criminals as talented professionals, similar to those in the legal fields. Adapted from W. R. Burnett's 1949 novel of the same name, Huston and Ben Maddow's script opens with just-released convict Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffee), who immediately launches into a sure-fire one-million dollar heist of valuable jewelry. He employs lawyer-fixer Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to pay three professionals to carry out the robbery. First is safecracker Louie Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), a family man supporting his young wife and infant. Next is Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), an owner of a diner who's finically looking for additional money to prop up his business. The third is enforcer Dix Handley (Hayden), who has dreams of repurchasing his parents' foreclosed horse farm. Dix's girlfriend 'Doll' Conovan (Jean Hagan) shares in his passion of living on his farm.

* Marilyn Monroe ranked her brief scene with Emmerich and the police towards the end of "The Asphalt Jungle" as one of her best. She plays Angela Phinlay, the lawyer's mistress, and received the role on suspect circumstances. One rumor had it her agent and lover, Johnny Hyde, vice president of a Hollywood major talent agency, leaned on MGM talent director Lucille Carroll to stongarm Huston to give Monroe the part. Carroll and her husband owned a horse ranch which the director owed them $18,000 to board his horses. She threatened to sell his horses to settle the debt if Monroe didn't get the part. Huston claims he didn't decide on Monroe until she auditioned along with eight others for the role. He later said she was "one of the few actresses who could make an entrance by leaving the room." The head of 20th Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck said he felt the same, signing her to a contract where she appeared in the 1950 Oscar-winning Best Picture "All About Eve." * Huston had first met actor Sterling Hayden in Washington, D. C. in 1947 when both, as members of the Committee for the First Amendment, protested the Congressional hearings about Communist influence in Hollywood. Hayden was adopted by an Upper Montclair, New Jersey couple, and dropped out of high school to become a fisherman. As a charter boat captain he posed for a photo on the cover of a magazine, which prompted Paramount Pictures to sign him to a contract in 1941. Earning the Silver Star in World War Two for his bravery in the Balkans and in the Mediterranean while in the military, Hayden returned to film acting after the war, only to be investigated for his Communist ties when he fought with partisans against the Nazis during WW2. He said the FBI threatened to take custody of his kids and jail him if he didn't reveal the names of those he knew in Hollywood who had Marxist leanings. He eventually did, a move he deeply regretted. "I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing," Hayden wrote in his autobiography. Huston approached Hayden as the lead in "The Asphalt Jungle," saying, "I've admired you for a long time, Sterling. They don't know what to make of a guy like you in this business. I want you to do this part. The studio does not. They want a top name star. They say you mean nothing when it comes to box office draw. Fortunately, they're not making this picture. I am." After one particular emotional scene wrapped, Huston told the former fisherman, "The next time somebody says you can't act, tell them to call Huston." * The director, with Harold Rosson behind the camera, gave "The Asphalt Jungle" a gritty look, similar to Italian neorealism. Huston admitted he was influenced by Roberto Rossellini's 1945 "Rome: Open City" and Vittorio De Sica's 1948's "The Bicycle Thief," running counter to MGM's usual slick productions. Studio boss Louis B. Mayer bellowed after seeing the film, describing it as "trash. That Asphalt Pavement thing is full of nasty, ugly people doing nasty things. I wouldn't cross the street to see a picture like that." The groundbreaking film did make a small profit, with the Academy Awards nominating Huston for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Sam Jaffee for Best Supporting Actor, and Rosson for Best Black-and-White Cinematography. Directors Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann list it as one of their favorite movies. The crime thriller is one of '1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die." Stanley Kubrick's 1956 "The Killing," as well as 1960's "Ocean's Eleven" and its sequels are among the many heist films drawing inspiration from Huston's work. Three films based directly from "The Asphalt Jungle" have been subsequently produced: 1958's "The Badlanders" with Alan Ladd, 1963's "Cairo" with George Sanders, and 1972's "Cool Breeze."

By 1950 television sales were growing at an astronomical rate, from 172,000 sets sold in 1948 to 5 million a year at the beginning of the new decade. To capitalize on this new phenomenon, Hollywood produced its first satire on television programming in May 1950's "Champagne for Caesar." This farce on television was prescience on several levels, beginning with actor Ronald Colman, wrapping up a three-decade film career with his final lead role before transitioning to TV. Television personality Art Linkletter appears in his first of only two films (other than playing himself) before he became a household name with his long-running TV broadcast 'People Are Funny.' This late screwball comedy saw Vincent Price in a rare humorous performance as the owner of a soap company who stands to lose his business because a smart contestant is running the table on his sponsored TV quiz show. The most popular programs in the early days of television were boxing and wrestling matches, Milton Berle's 'Texaco Star Theater,' and quiz shows. Long-running contests such as 'What's My Line?' 'Beat the Clock' and 'Truth or Consequences' began airing on TV in 1950. "Champagne for Caesar" centers around voracious reader Beauregard Bottomley,(Colman), whose knowledge of everything is truly astonishing. He disdains the game shows on TV, which he believes caters to the lowest levels of society. One scene of historical interest was when Bottomley and his sister Gwenn (Barbara Britton) go out for the evening. They gather with others on a city sidewalk in front of an appliance store watching TV through the window. The broadcast is 'Masquerade for Money,' hosted by Happy Hogan (Linkletter), whose sponsor is Milady Soap, owned by Burnbridge Waters (Vincent Price). At the time of the movie's production only 20 percent of the households had TVs. Those without televisions would either be invited to homes owning one, or gather outside appliance stores where a television broadcast could be seen with the sound heard over a speaker. Unemployed Bottomley seeks revenge against the Milady Soap Company after its owner, Burnbridge Waters, rejects him during a job interview. Bottomley goes on Happy Hogan's show with the intentions of bankrupting Waters' business since there's no limit as to how much he can win. After seeing Bottomley win repeatedly, amounting to $40 million in double-or-nothing bets, Waters schemes to get the smarty pants to lose just once. "Vincent Price is laugh out loud funny in this film, a real revelation," said film reviewer Russell Brodie, "we wait for the hero (Broomley) to answer the final question to get his revenge on the evil (and loopy) executive, and it really works." "Champagne for Caesar" was Coleman's next film after 1948's "A Double Life," which saw him win his only Best Actor Oscar. After playing Beauregard Bottomley, Colman had a cameo in 1956's "Around the World in 80 Days," an Academy Awards Best picture, followed by his last movie 1957's "The Story of Mankind" with Vincent Price. Art Linkletter, 37, was born in Saskatchewan, Canadian and raised in San Diego, California. He was the adopted son of husband-wife evangelical preachers. First as a teacher then a radio announcer in the mid-1930s, Linkletter began his 1942 radio show 'People Are Funny,' which served as a prototype for his wildly popular television program, premiering in 1954. He and his wife Lois Foerster hold the record for the longest Hollywood marriage, 74 years, marrying in 1935, and lasting until his death in May 2010 at age 97. Comedian Phyllis Diller said at the time of his death, "In a couple of months Art Linkletter would have been 98 years old, a full life of fun and goodness, an orphan who made it to the top. What a guy." Barbara Britton as Bottomley's sister Gwenn was later a spokesperson for Revlon products, a position that saw her appearing on the quiz show 'The 64,000 Question.' Ironically the contest was the center of one of the biggest scandals in television history when it as revealed some of the contestants were fed the answers. And Mel Blanc, who voiced a number of Looney Tune cartoon characters, was credited as the voice of Bottomleys' pet parrot Caesar, whose background explains the title of the movie. "Champagne For Caesar" was ahead of its time, which audiences didn't fully appreciate when first released. But as film historian Laura Loyes observed, "the satire that seemed baffling half a century ago now seems right on the mark in a more cynical age."

Late in his career director John Ford mentioned two movies that were his personal favorites. One was the Western April 1950 "Wagon Master." The director said the film about the trek of a Mormon caravan to establish a new homeland in southeastern Utah across the untamed West "came closest to being what I wanted to achieve." This was the fifth of eight movies his film company Argosy Pictures produced, and was one of six pictures he made within a three-year span-between 1948 and 1950. Five were Westerns, a genre he excelled at. Ford loved filming in the West, specifically in the states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, where "Wagon Master" was filmed outside of Moab. He said of making Westerns, it "gives me a chance to get away from the smog, to get away from L. A., to get away from people who would like to tell me how to make pictures. You're working with nice people - cowboys, stuntmen, that kind of person. It's a great life, just like a paid vacation. I love to make westerns. If I had my choice, that's all I would make." The idea of directing "Wagon Master" originated from Ford's son Patrick, who gave his father a description of the book he read about the Boers' trek across southern Africa to establish farms. John decided to incorporate the theme of group of people traveling through unfriendly territory to the United States by basing his film on the Mormons' 1879 'Hole in the Rock Trail Expedition." That journey saw the pioneers shave off hundreds of miles by diverting from the more established trails to a more rugged new one to get to the fertile San Juan River Valley. The original screenplay, written by his son Patrick and scriptwriter Frank Nugent, was changed drastically by Ford, who told the two after filming wrapped, "I liked your script, boys. In fact, I actually shot a few pages of it." To cut costs of the modestly budgeted "Wagon Master," Ford relied on his stock company of actors, avoiding any escalating salaries. The highest was Ward Bond, paid $20,000 as the wagon leader of the group of Mormons carrying loads of grain to plant crops in the winter. Accompany him were stunt rider-turned-actor Ben Johnson and young actor Harry Carey, Jr. As a pair of horse traders. Joanne Dru plays Denver, a cooche dancer of a traveling medicine show stranded in the desert. The wagon train rescues them, and in a provocative bathing scene Denver throws water out of the wagon while taking a bath, splashing Travis Blue (Johnson). His horse, an actual bucking bronco, went berserk, tossing Johnson off. Trainers immediately ran to his aid, ruining the shot. Ford gave Johnson the bad news he had to retake the scene, which he did, lasting even longer on the bucking horse than the first one. Members of Clegg gang, headed by actor Charles Kemper, and with James Arness, later star of TV's 'Gunsmoke, are the villains in "Wagon Train." Ford introduced the Cleggs by showing them robbing a bank before the movie's opening credits, unique during its time in film. Film critic Linda Rasmussen summed up the Western: "This wonderful film emphasizes the virtues of solidarity, sacrifice and tolerance, and shows John Ford at his most masterful, in total control of the production from the casting to the bit players to the grandeur and scope of the visual composition." Years later, teenager Stephen Spielberg had the opportunity to talk to Ford in his studio office. The veteran director gave the future filmmaker some advice: "When you can come to the conclusion that putting the horizon on the bottom of the frame or the top of the frame is a lot better than putting the horizon in the middle of the frame, then you may someday make a good picture-maker." No better example of this is seen in the "Wagon Master," where Ford masterly situates his wagon train in varying positions to the horizon in relation to the plot's events. Writer Paul Simpson observed the multiple secondary stories in "Wagon Master." "By dwelling on the community seeking a brave new world, they could weave many sub-plots, including a crowd-pleasing romance. Directors could always chuck in a set piece - an Indian attack, a river crossing that almost goes wrong, baddies trying to hitch a ride west - if things got dull." The 1950s/1960's NBC-TV 'Wagon Train' was inspired by "Wagon Master," starring Ward Bond in the first three seasons. After the actor's death in 1960, John McIntire took his place. Over a dozen of Ford's movie actors appeared in the TV series, including Joanne Dru for one episode in its inaugural season. Ford himself directed one program, 'The Colter Craven Story.' Ford's other personal favorite of his besides "Wagon Master" was 1953's "The Sun Shines Bright," another Western.