1961 in film

Events

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

Top grossing films

North America

1. The Guns of Navarone
2. Exodus
3. The Parent Trap
4. The Absent-Minded Professor
5. The Alamo
6. Swiss Family Robinson
7. Come September
8. The World of Suzie Wong
9. Gone with the Wind reissue, to commemorate the American Civil War centennial
10. 101 Dalmatians
11. La Dolce Vita

Academy Awards

• Best Picture: West Side Story – Mirisch-B&P Enterprises, United Artists
• Best Actor: Maximilian Schell – Judgment at Nuremberg
• Best Actress: Sophia Loren – Two Women

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
• October 31 – Peter Jackson, director
• November 19 – Meg Ryan,US actress

Deaths

• February 11 – Eduard R Verkade, Dutch actor/director
• August 4 – Maurice Tourneur, French film director
• October 11 – Chico Marx, member of the Marx Brothers
• October 22 – Joseph Schenck, pioneer motion picture executive
• November 15 – Elsie Ferguson, American stage and film actress

Other movies released

• Ballad of a Soldier
• Blue Hawaii starring Elvis Presley (his biggest box-office success)
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• El Cid, starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren
• Fanny
• Flower Drum Song
• The Hustler
• Judgment at Nuremberg
• La Notte Golden Bear winner
• The Last Time I Saw Archie
• Last Year at Marienbad, Golden Lion winner
• Never on Sunday
• North to Alaska
• Pit and the Pendulum with Vincent Price
• Posto, Il
• Return to Peyton Place
• Splendor in the Grass
• Such a Long Absence Palme d'Or winner
• Teen Kanya
• Two Rode Together, starring James Stewart and Richard Widmark
• Two Women
• Viridiana Palme d'Or winner
• West Side Story
• Where the Boys Are
• King of Kings