Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.
Irving Klaw (November 9, 1910 - September 3, 1966) was an American photographer and filmmaker.
Klaw is best known for operating a mail-order business selling photographs and film of attractive women (sometimes in bondage) from the 1940s to the 1960s. He was one of the first fetish photographers, and one of his models, Bettie Page, became the first[citation needed] famous bondage model.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York. His family business, which eventually became Movie Star News, began in 1939 when he and his sister Paula opened a struggling used bookstore at 209 East 14th Street in Manhattan.
After he discovered teenagers were frequently tearing out photos from his movie magazines, he started selling movie star stills and lobby photo cards. Customers could order by item number from catalogs of sample photos. These sold so well that he stopped selling books and moved the store from the basement to the street-level storefront and renamed it Irving Klaw Pin Ups.
Business thrived, and the self-named "Pin-Up King" moved to 212 East 14th Street and took on the name Movie Star News. Klaw also had a brisk international mail-order business selling cheesecake photos of movie stars.
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967) was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark Gable, in the epic American Civil War drama Gone with the Wind.
She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her then-husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her 30-year stage career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.
Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. However, ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. For much of her adult life Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, and her career suffered periods of inactivity. She also suffered recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. Leigh and Olivier divorced in 1960, and she worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis in 1967.
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
The time was 1955 a meal was 40 cents
A Cadillac was the car to drive and Ike was president
Revivals set whole towns ablaze while mom, the dad and kids
Were Holy Ghost electrified by wild evangelists
But nothing could compare
Or none took you quite as high
As being at the tent and hearing people testify
(they'd say)
I want to give honor unto God, bishops, pastors, elders, praise God I'm in my right mind too
I woke up determined to go 100% with Jesus 'cause 99 1/2 just won't do
I ask the saints please pray I'll be the one God's callin' for in these last and evil days
He's been better to me than I've been to myself and I give God all the praise!
Once all this had ended up to the microphone
Stepped the man of God himself, strong, alone and prone
With a furnace in his eyes and no time left to play
This human locomotive right there began to say
CHORUS
I believe in a God that sets the captives free
I believe in the blood that flows from Calvary
Does anyone love Jesus, does anyone hate sin?
Does anyone believe that Christ is coming back again?
But what God wants me to ask you, what He needs to know most
Are you saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost?
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
Oral Roberts, William Branham, Jack Coe and Billy Graham
Healed body, soul and spirit as they thundered 'cross the land
While Howdy Doody held the nation captive on TV
The power of God was on these men to set those captives free.
But nothing could compare
Or none took you quite as high
As being at the tent and hearing people testify
(and they'd say)
I want to give honor unto God, mothers, missionaries, saints, and all my friends
I thank the Lord I've been saved all day livin' free and separated from sin
I've got life, health, strength, wouldn't take nothin' for my journey pray the Lord keep me strong
Woke up with my mind stayed on Jesus and I've been praising Him all day long
Once all this had ended up to the microphone
Stepped the man of God himself, strong, alone and prone
With a furnace in his eyes, and no time left to play,
This human locomotive right there began to say
CHORUS
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
If it had not been for Jesus,
Where would I be?
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me.
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
Well, if it had not been for Jesus,
Where would I be?
I'm so glad that the Lord saved me
He saved me, He saved me, He saved me, He saved me
Well, if it had not been for Jesus,
Where would I be?
I saw your eyes and I didn't know what happened, but it stole my heart.
I buried myself underneath the stars.
Looking towards the open sky for a familiar face to answer my cry.
I couldn't move or breath, so I held on to everything.
And made it worse when it was ove,
Fifty five tears fell in silence.
This happened every time I saw you,
So i would walk away,
Hoping you wouldn't follow me.
But you did.
And I screamed with confusion,
and screamed with anger.
Until you held my hurting heart,
and the nights with violence move ever so fast
Because I see your face when my eyes close with the deepest pain.
I'll pray that you'll hold my,
and I'll pray that I can feel your arms around me,
And when fifty-five tears fall in silence