Film rights to Don't Go Near the Water, by William Brinkley, reportedly sold for four hundred thousand dollars in summer 1956 despite bad reviews of the novel.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck, poet Leonard Bacon, and composer Douglas Moore were named members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters on 30 November 1951.

In 1950 New American Library claimed that God's Little Acre, by Erskine Caldwell, was the all-time bestselling twenty-five-cent paperback, having sold 5 million copies. New American Library reported that it had sold 18 million copies of Caldwell's books.

On 2 January 1958 soprano Maria Callas walked out during an opening-night performance at the Opera House in Rome, nearly prompting a riot; eleven months later Rudolf Bing fired her from the Metropolitan Opera when she refused to perform as contracted.

Singer Sammy Davis, Jr., lost the sight in his left eye in an auto accident on...