On the homefront, the political air was full of accusations of communism, fueled by reports from the House Committee on Un-American Affairs. President Truman contests some of the findings, calling one a "red herring." But nearly two million federal employees are investigated, causing more than 500 to resign and nearly 100 to be dismissed.

The Red Scare reached national prominence with the accusations of Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member, against Alger Hiss, a former top State Department official. A young Richard Nixon helps to keep the accusations in the news, culminating in the discovery of the "Pumpkin Papers," microfiche hidden in Chamber's pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm.

On the foreign front, the Cold War heats up as the Soviet Union blockades Berlin, leading to the massive Berlin Airlift which keeps Berlin afloat until the Soviets relented.

MOVIES

On March 20, Gentleman's Agreement, a drama about anti-Semitism starring Gregory Peck, takes the Academy Award for Best Picture beating out The Bishop's Wife and Miracle on 34th Street. Other Academy Awards go to Ronald Colman for Best Actor in A Double Life, Loretta Young as Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter, Edmund Gwenn as Best Supporting Actor in Miracle on 34th Street and Celeste Holm for Best Supporting Actress in Gentleman's Agreement. Elia Kazan won Best Director for his work on Gentleman's Agreement.

Other prominent movies include Laurence Olivier's epic retelling of Hamlet and the combined father-son duo of John and Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

MUSIC

The airwaves were full with the sweet songs of such crooners as Frankie Laine and Mel Torme. Although teenage girl's new-found hysteria was directed to the "new" Frankie's tender tunes, their yearning for the "old" Frank Sinatra turns to nostalgia. "Poor Frankie," a Chicago girl tells Life magazine. "He's old now and has three kids."

The popular songs of the year include "Buttons and Bows," "Now is the Hour," "Nature Boy," "You Call Everybody Darling," "On Slow Boat to China," and "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

BOOKS

Pulitzer Prizes are awarded to James Michener's novel, Tales of the South Pacific, for fiction, Margaret Clapp for her biography Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow, Bernard De Voto for his historical work, Across the Wide Missouri. The Nobel Prize for Literature went to T.S. Eliot '10, well-known for his poetry collections, including The Waste Land (1922) and Ash Wednesday (1930).

Popular novels of the year focus on the still-current memory of World War II. Dwight D. Eisenhower, four years before he was elected President, retells his heroics in the war in Crusade in Europe.

Two first-time novelists burst onto the scene, as Norman K. Mailer '53 and Irwin Shaw establish themselves. Mailer writes perhaps one of the best fictional works on World War II in The Naked and The Dead and Shaw wrote The Young Lions.

TELEVISION

Although television had gained prominence on the American scene, it was slowly evolving from a pure curiosity to a media that could rival radio. Life magazine describes television's evolution as finally hitting the big time: