On the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair, we look back at that year’s popular books, music, movies and TV shows. This week’s list in our catalog: what we were watching in 1962.
Lawrence of Arabia was the top-grossing film that year (winning seven Oscars), with the star-studded D-Day epic The Longest Day hot on its heels. Westerns were still doing well, both as 
traditional shoot-em-ups like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but also as the moving modern Western Lonely Are the Brave, adapted from Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy, which was one of Kirk Douglas’ personal favorites, and one of ours too. Another scarily good dramatic performance that year was Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of alcoholic Joe Clay in Days of Wine and Roses; mostly known as a comic actor, this film gave us his tragic side. On a lighter note, as with the billboard charts Elvis Presley also dominated at the box office, and that year as he was here in Seattle filming It Happened at the World’s Fair, fans had three movies to choose from: Girls! Girls! Girls!, Follow that Dream and Kid Galahad.
Among the arty set, French New Wave cinema was at its height, 
with Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live) and François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. The most cosmopolitan film buffs might have noticed director Roman Polanski’s taut debut thriller Knife in the Water, or thrilled to Toshiro Mifune’s return as the wandering ronin of Yojimbo in Akira Kurasawa’s Sanjuro. But you didn’t have to be a finger-popping beatnik to enjoy Euro-cinema, as middle America followed sexily forthright librarian Prudence (played by “bright young star” Suzanne Pleshette) as she fled her hidebound profession on a Rome Adventure with Troy Donahue. (That’s your cue to swoon, ladies.)
1962 was also a great year for some great schlocky Drive-In fare, being the year that bellied forth Herk Harvey’s unforgettably 
wierd organ-haunted cult classic, Carnival of Souls (the film’s trailer portends: “Carnival of Souls arouses such emotion that the management has been forced to state, positively no refunds!”), as well as Eegah! (trailer), a truly baffling Surf Rock Horror Movie starring Richard Kiel (best known as Bond villain “Jaws”) as a caveman gone berserk. Campy shockers were not just for drive-ins; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford was the fourth highest grossing picture of 1962, spawning a spate of imitators, and helping explain what lured Olivia de Havilland into being a Lady in a Cage a couple of years later. Check out the rest of our list in the library catalog, where you’ll find many of the films’ original trailers: just select the “Videos” tab.
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