According to the Los Angeles Times:
- Red Sanders decided to stay on as football coach at UCLA instead of pursuing the football coach/athletic director job at Texas A&M, a job recently vacated by Paul (Bear) Bryant. (Sanders would have a heart attack and die before the start of the 1958 football season anyway.)
- A father of three killed himself in front of his wife after losing his job on Christmas Eve.
- Silent-screen star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas. The Times gave her age as 60; according to IMDB, she was actually 62.