Events

• Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad) released

Top grossing films (U.S.)

(*) After theatrical re-issue(s)
source: http://www.boxofficereport.com/database/1961.shtml

Awards

Best Picture: West Side Story - Mirisch-B&P Enterprises, United Artists

Best Director: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins - West Side Story

Best Actor: Maximilian Schell - Judgment at Nuremberg

Best Actress: Sophia Loren - Two Women

Best Supporting Actor: George Chakiris - West Side Story

Best Supporting Actress: Rita Moreno - West Side Story

Best Foreign Language Film: Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel), directed by Ingmar Bergman, Sweden

Golden Globe Awards:

Drama:

Best Picture: The Guns of Navarone

Best Actor: Maximilian Schell - Judgement at Nuremberg

Best Actress: Geraldine Page - Summer and Smoke

Musical or comedy:

Best Picture (tie): A Majority of One

Best Picture (tie): West Side Story

Best Actor: Glenn Ford - Pocketful of Miracles

Best Actress: Rosalind Russell - A Majority of One

Other

Best Director: Stanley Kramer - Judgment at Nuremberg

Palme d'Or (Cannes Film Festival):

The Long Absence (Une aussi longue absence), directed by Henri Colpi, France

Viridiana, directed by Luis Buñuel, Spain

Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival):

Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad), directed by Alain Resnais, France

Golden Bear (Berlin Film Festival):

La Notte (The Night), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy

Films released in 1961

• The Absent-Minded Professor
• Atlantis, the Lost Continent
• Babes in Toyland
• Back Street
• Barabbas
• Blue Hawaii starring Elvis Presley (his biggest box-office success)
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Bridge to the Sun
• The Children's Hour, nominated for five Academy Awards
• The Comancheros
• Come September
• The Devil at 4 O'Clock, starring Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy, and Gregoire Aslan
• El Cid, starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren
• The Errand Boy, starring Jerry Lewis
• Fanny
• Flower Drum Song
• The Fruit Is Ripe (Les Filles sèment le vent)
• Gidget Goes Hawaiian
• Goodbye Again
• The Guns of Navarone
• Hoodlum Priest
• The Hustler
• Judgment at Nuremberg
• King of Kings
• Khovanshchina
• La dolce vita (U.S. release)
• La Notte Golden Bear winner
• The Ladies Man, starring Jerry Lewis
• The Last Sunset
• The Last Time I Saw Archie
• Last Year at Marienbad, Golden Lion winner
• The Long Absence (Une aussi longue absence) - Palme d'Or winner
• Lover Come Back
• A Majority of One
• The Mark
• The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in their last screen appereance
• Mothra
• One-Eyed Jacks
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians
• One, Two, Three', starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, and Arlene Francis
• The Outsider, a biography starring Tony Curtis as famous WWII marine, Ira Hayes
• The Parent Trap
• Paris Blues
• The Pit and the Pendulum with Vincent Price
• Pocketful of Miracles
• Il Posto
• Question 7
• A Raisin in the Sun
• Return to Peyton Place (film mentioned in article)
• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
• Sennin Buraku
• Scarlet Sails (Алые Паруса)
• Splendor in the Grass
• Summer and Smoke
• Teen Kanya
• Through a Glass Darkly - (Såsom i en spegel)
• Town Without Pity
• Two Rode Together, starring James Stewart and Richard Widmark
• Victim
• Viridiana - Palme d'Or winner
• West Side Story
• Wild in the Country starring Elvis Presley
• Two Women (U.S. release)
• Yojimbo

Short Film Series

• Looney Tunes (1930-1969)
• Terrytoons (1930-1964)
• Merrie Melodies (1931-1969)
• Bugs Bunny (1940-1962)
• Yosemite Sam (1945-1963)
• Speedy Gonzales (1953-1968)
• Goofy (1961)

Births

• January 5 - Suzy Amis, actress
• January 13 - Julia Louis-Dreyfus, actress
• February 11 - Carey Lowell, actress
• April 6 - Gene Eugene, actor, lead singer of Adam Again
• June 9 - Michael J. Fox, actor (in Back to the Future trilogy)
• July 15 - Forest Whitaker, actor
• July 18 - Elizabeth McGovern, actress
• October 31 - Peter Jackson, director
• November 19 - Meg Ryan, US actress

Deaths

• February 2 - Anna May Wong, 56, American actress
• February 17 - Nita Naldi, 63, American actress
• March 6 - George Formby, 56, British actor, entertainer
• March 12 - Belinda Lee, 25, British actress
• May 4 - Anita Stewart, 66, American actress
• May 13 - Gary Cooper, 60, American actor
• May 22 - Joan Davis, 53, American actress
• June 17 - Jeff Chandler, 42, American actor
• August 4 - Maurice Tourneur, 88, French film director
• August 27 - Gail Russell, 36, American actress
• August 30 - Charles Coburn, 84, American actor
• September 10 - Leo Carrillo, 81, American actor
• September 22 - Marion Davies, 64, American actress
• October 11 - Chico Marx, 74, American actor, member of the Marx Brothers
• October 18 - Tsuru Aoki, 69, Japanese-born American actress
• October 22 - Joseph Schenck, 82, Russian-born American pioneer motion picture executive
• November 15 - Elsie Ferguson, 78, American stage and film actress
• November 24 - Ruth Chatterton, 67, American actress