Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960), known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later movies included Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time. He was nicknamed 'The King of Hollywood.'
Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. In the mid-1930s, Gable was often named the top male movie star, and second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell (June 21, 1921 - February 28, 2011) was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s.
Russell moved from the Midwest to California, where she had her first film role in 1943 with The Outlaw. In 1947, Russell delved into music before returning to films. After starring in multiple films in the 1950s, Russell again returned to music while completing several other films in the 1960s. She starred in more than 20 films throughout her career.
Russell married three times and adopted three children and, in 1955, founded the World Adoption International Fund. For her achievements in film, she received several accolades including having her hand and foot prints immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Born in Bemidji, Russell was the eldest child and only daughter of the five children of Roy William Russell (January 5, 1890 – July 18, 1937) and Geraldine Jacobi (January 2, 1891 – December 26, 1986). Her brothers are Thomas (born 1924), Kenneth (born 1925), Jamie (born 1927) and Wallace (born 1929).
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.
Sirk was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, Germany to Danish parents. He was raised in Denmark, but later moved to Germany as a teenager. He spread his education over three universities. He started his career in 1922 in the theatre of the Weimar Republic, including the direction of an early production of The Threepenny Opera. He joined UFA (Universum Film AG) in 1934, but left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and Jewish wife. On arrival in the United States, he soon changed his German name. By 1942 he was in Hollywood, directing the stridently anti-Nazi Hitler's Madman.
He made his name with a series of lush, colorful melodramas for Universal-International Pictures from 1952 to 1958: Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), and Imitation of Life (1959). But it was at the pinnacle of his high-profile accomplishments as Universal's most successful director that he left the United States and filmmaking. He died in Lugano, Switzerland nearly thirty years later, with only a brief and obscure return behind the camera in Germany in the 1970s.
Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large number of radio, television, and live-performance fans (and critics) as "champagne music".
In 1996, Welk was ranked #43 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. He was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana (Schwahn) Welk, ethnic Germans who emigrated to America in 1892 from Selz, Kutschurgan District, in the German-speaking area north of Odessa (now Odessa, Ukraine, but then in southwestern Russia).
The family lived on a homestead that today is a tourist attraction. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year under an upturned wagon covered in sod.[citation needed]
Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 (equivalent to $4,641 as of 2012). He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. Any money he made elsewhere during that time, doing farmwork or performing, would go to his family.
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