← Back to previous TIMELINE page – 1881 to 1933

1934

Top stars: Will Rogers, Clark Gable, Janet Gaynor. (21/117)

Songs released in 1934 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

The Very Thought of You, The Ray Noble Orchestra…
Moonglow – Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton 1936: original 1934 release by Ethyl Waters
NRA Blues
Cocktails for Two
Anything Goes, Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra
A Faded Coat of Blue, The Carter Family
June in January, Bing Crosby

Books Published in 1934 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Murder in Three Acts by Agatha Christie
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
The Thin Man by Dasheill Hammett

Top grossing films of 1934:

Viva Villa!
The Black Cat
Let’s Try Again
One Night of Love
It Happened One Night
Tarzan and His Mate
Little Miss Marker
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Richest Girl in the World
Treasure Island

JAN1934 To house the large amount of liquor he had bought in Europe, Billy Wilkerson leases La Boheme, a roadhouse at 8610 Sunset Boulevard that had been shut down for liquor and gambling violations since early 193. In September 1934, Wilkerson would open it as Cafe Trocadero. (p82/145)

JAN1934 The battle between MGM and the Hays office (in the person of Joseph Breen) rages over Queen Christina which MGM wins and Breen loses. (77/63)

05FEB1934 Joseph Breen officially replaces Dr. James Wingate as the head of the Studio Relations Committee which Breen has basically been running since 01DEC1933. (77/61)

22FEB1934 It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, opens at Radio City Music Hall. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

MAR1934 In 1934, the German-American Bund was already broadcasting and issuing broadsides against the Jews of Hollywood. In March, Mendel Silberberg (http://waldorfconference.com/silberberg.html) called a meeting of his friends at the Hillcrest Country Club. Mayer took the floor and said he wasn’t going to take the Bund lying down. What was needed was money and direction. This meeting resulted in the Community Relations Committee, a political organization of wealthy Los Angeles Jews monitored Nazi sympathizers and issued broadsides of their own. (P204/148)

16MAR1934 Accepting his Academy Award for Three Little Pigs, Walt Disney becomes the first winner to refer to the award as Oscar. (21/118) (44/34) The same ceremony marks the first time Columbia have a film among the nominees: Lady for a Day, directed by Frank Capra. (p88/141)

19APR1934 Fox Studios releases Stand Up and Cheer!, with five-year-old Shirley Temple in a relatively minor role. Shirley steals the film and Fox, which had been near bankruptcy, finds itself owning a goldmine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_in_film

SPRING 1934 In the four years since Irving Thalberg had coauthored the Production Code with Father Daniel Lord and Martin Quigley, the Studio Relation Committee had lost so many battles that the Code was more of an annoyance than a policy. In late 1933, Will Hays removed the Studio Relation Committee’s ineffectual director, James Wingate, and installed the militantly devout Catholic Joseph Breen, who promptly lost a dispute over a bedroom scene in Queen Christina. By the spring, however, Breen was a man on a mission, talking to producers in their own profane language, fighting over cuts, and winning the small victories. In early April he forced MGM to withdraw Tarzan and his Mate and cut a nude swimming sequence from the camera negative, which was a major victory. He was secretly working with Quigley and a group of Catholic bishops called the Episcopal Committee whose goal was to reconstitute the code. P249/147

MAY1934 Gilmore Stadium opens at Fairfax and Beverly Blvd. It is demolished in 1952, when the land is used to build CBS Television City.

05MAY1934 With Woman Haters, Columbia releases the first of the 105 Three Stooges shorts which run through to 1959. (21/119)

11-13MAY1934 A severe dust storm blows much of the topsoil of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado to the Atlantic. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

18MAY1934 Paramount releases Little Miss Marker, with Shirley Temple, on loan from Fox, in the title role. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_in_film

25MAY1934 The Thin Man is released by MGM. The film, shot in only 11 days, revolutionizes the comedy/mystery genre. http://pre-code.com/what-is-pre-code-hollywood/timeline-pre-code-hollywood-era/

MAY & JUN1934 Joe Breen’s scheme had worked. In late May, Philadelphia’s Dennis Cardinal Doherty, the same prelate who had banished The Callahans and the Murphys in 1927, ascended the pulpit and ordered his parishioners to boycott all movies under pain of mortal sin. Within the week box office receipts were down 40%. Within two weeks, the Stanley Theater chain had lost $350,000. “You can fire a canon down at the isle of any theater in Philadelphia without hitting anyone,” Breed gloated. By mid June, Hollywood had lost several million dollars. “Hollywood is in the most serious crisis of its history,” declared Edwin Schallert in the Los Angeles Times. Only a year after the banking emergency, studios did not have the reserves to continue production for more than three weeks. Hollywood had no choice but to capitulate. When the smoke cleared, there was an enforceable Production Code, the Studio Relations Committee had become the Production Code Administration [PCA], and Joseph Breen was its boss. P255/147

JUN1934 Major polio outbreak in Los Angeles. Ida Lupino develops minor case. (21/119) Nearly 2500 polio cases are treated from May through November of that year at Los Angeles County General Hospital alone. http://www.cloudnet.com/~edrbsass/poliotimeline.htm

09JUN1934 Donald Duck makes his debut, in Wise Little Hen. (21/119)

13JUN1934 An amendment to the Production Code establishes the Production Code Administration, and requires all films to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_in_filmm (77/67)

01JUL1934 The decision that came out of Washington in Sept 1933 was essentially Hays’ self-censorship proposal. Agreed to by all the major studios, it was put into strict effect as of July 1^st, 1934. None other than Joseph Breen was named head of the Production Code Administration (PCA) to which all scripts were submitted for clearance before production began, and all finished films were submitted to a final seal of approval. Any film denied an official MMPDA seal would be, under the agreement, also denied a release. (10/141) (21/119) (28/43) Breen formally takes office on 15JUL1934 (77/7 & 67) The “Studio Relations Committee” is replaced by “Production Administration Code”. (77/69) THE PRE-CODE ERA ENDS

Summer 1934 More than 1,250,000 Californians are on relief, and 70% of them are in southern California. (p223/130)

14JUL1934 Babe Ruth hits 700th home run.http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

22JUL1934 John Dillinger is cornered and shot to death by the FBI outside a movie theater in Chicago. (71/125)(94/339)

JUL1934 Earl Gilmore opens the Farmers Market at Fairfax and 3rd to help Depression era farmers sell their produce at 18 different booths.

15AUG1934 At another meeting of the (studio) publicity directors with the Western editors of fan magazines, it was decided to cut down the then list of approx 300 fan-mag writers to a list of approx 50. This “white list” was to be made up, as the Hollywood Reporter stated, “of writers who are established and who are noted for their honest and clean writing…The white list will be the only one with which the studios will do business.” (22/81)

03AUG1934 The Girl from Missouri is released. Jean Harlow’s first post-Code enforcement film sees her in the typical role of a gold digger, but instead of sleeping her way to the top, she uses her virtue as a bargaining chip. Harlow’s films would continue to become more sanctimonious as she left her Blonde Bombshell phase of her career behind her. http://pre-code.com/what-is-pre-code-hollywood/timeline-pre-code-hollywood-era/

11AUG1934 The US government opens a maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Previously used only for American military criminals, the first federal prisoners arrive today. From the time it opened to 1937 there was no talking by prisoners allowed. https://timelines.ws/states/CAL1923_1961.HTML

29AUG1934 Joseph Breen appears on four NBC radio programs outlining the PCA (Production Administration Code) plan. 77/71)

21SEP1934 The Belle of the Nineties is released. Mae West’s first post-Production Code Enforcement is notably toned down from her previous movies, including an utterly ridiculous finale that absolves everyone of sin in the last reel and includes a very convenient (and very unconvincing) marriage for Ms. West’s character, Ruby. West’s career would continue in Hollywood through the late 30s, but she never recaptured her former levels of success. The battle over censoring this film would prove Breen’s authority as the head of the PCA and cement him as the head of the Hollywood censorship apparatus for the next two decades. http://pre-code.com/what-is-pre-code-hollywood/timeline-pre-code-hollywood-era/

1934 By 1934, MGM houses 4000 employees, 61 stars and featured players, 17 directors and 51 writers. (119/27)

1934 The Hays Code, named after Will Hays, the former US Postmaster General and instituted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc (originally established in 1922) gains its real teeth. (2/33) An amendment to the Production Code established the Production Code Administration (PCA), which required all films to acquire a certificate of approval before release, or face a penalty of $25,000. The members of the MPPDA agreed not to release or distribute any film that didn’t carry the seal. The MPPDA appointed Joseph Breen as the director of the PCA to enforce the Production Code. John Ford’s The World Moves On was the first film to receive a production seal granted by the Hays Office under its new guidelines. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s.html

1934 By 1934 the Screen Writers Guild felt itself strong enough to force the issue of representing writers, and when the producers still thumbed their noses, the writers decided to reply by boycotting the much-publicized annual Academy Awards banquet. (29/210)

15JUL1934 Warner Bros becomes the first studio to shut down its Berlin distribution offices in response to Nazi anti-Jewish policies. (21/120) http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s.html

JUL1934 Farmer’s Market opens. (14/178)

20JUL1934 RKO’s Of Human Bondage opens and after more than 20 film roles, Bette Davis earns her first major critical acclaim in the role of Mildred Rogers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bette_Davis

08SEP1934 Busby Berkley kills three people when his car crashes into theirs. He is charged with second degree murder. (21/124)
On his way home from a party thrown by William Koenig to celebrate the completion of In Caliente (1935), Busby hit two vehicles, killing three people in the second car: William von Brieson, his mother, and sister-in-law. Tried for murder, Berkeley, represented by Jerry Giesler, was acquitted in a third trial after the previous two ended in hung juries. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000923/bio

17SEP1934 The Trocadero opened Billy Wilkerson (owner of the Hollywood Reporter) at 8610 Sunset. Fire guts it in 1936. Closes 1946 (2/33) (21/119) A Myron Selznick star-studded party was held a couple of days before this. (40/100) In it’s first 24 months, Cafe Trocadero grossed $3.8 million, making it the most successful nightclub in Depression-era America. (p89/145)

05OCT1934 Radio program Hollywood Hotel commences on the air with Dick Powell as emcee and Louella Parsons as interviewer. (21/120) http://www.otrsite.com/logs/logh1022.htm

14OCT1934 The popular and long-running dramatic radio series Lux Radio Theater premieres on the Blue Network. (80/176) It adapted first Broadway stage works, and then (especially) films to hour-long live radio presentations. It quickly became the most popular dramatic anthology series on radio, running more than twenty years. (NBC Blue Network (1934-1935); CBS (1935-1954); NBC (1954-1955)) broadcast from the Lux Radio Playhouse located at 1615 North Vine Street in Hollywood, one block south of the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine. The theater was later renamed The Huntington Hartford Theater, The Doolittle Theater, and is now the Ricardo Montalban Theater. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux_Radio_Theater

OCT1934 William Randolph Hearst dissolves its agreement with, and starts to release its Metrotone newsreels through MGM from then until 1967. Hearst was a controversial figure for several years. In November 1936, in reaction to protests and moviegoers’ booing of the Hearst newsreel when it began showing causing theaters to edit out references to Hearst, the name of the newsreel was officially changed to News of the Day by Hearst. The Hearst Metrotone News name continued to appear on the copyright notice at the end of the newsreel.

12NOV1934 The musical Babes in Toyland debuts, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as comic relief. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_in_film

21NOV1934 Anything Goes opens at the Alvin Theater in NYC and becomes the musical hit of the season. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1934/1934fr.html

LATE 1934 Marion Davies becomes pregnant by Hearst. She refused to have an abortion. 145/96 says that she did have the baby who went on to become Patricia Lake, married to Arthur Lake (of “Dagwood” fame) and who, along with Arthur, is buried in the same crypt at Hollywood Forever and who, upon Marion’s death received half of Marion’s $20 million estate.

11DEC1934 Fox releases Bright Eyes, starring their hot new property, Shirley Temple. Shirley sings “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, and wins the first Academy Award ever given to a child, for her endearing portrayal of Shirley Blake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_in_film

25DEC1934 Santa Anita Park racetrack opens. http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01g.htm

1923 Due to disagreements with Paramount in the distribution of the Cosmopolitan Pictures in block booking venues, Hearst left Paramount to have his films released by other studios. Starting in 1923, they were distributed or co-produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer until 1934 when a disagreement with Louis B. Mayer over the film Marie Antoinette led Cosmopolitan to go to Warner Bros.

1934 The Frolic Room opens on Hollywood Boulevard next to the Pantages Theater.

1934 Charles Darrow claims he invented the game Monopoly

1934 By the close of 1934, after 4 long years of lean harvests, box office revenues had surged upwards. (77/77)

1934 Catholic Legion of Decency changes its name to the National Legion of Decency. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Legion_of_Decency

1934 Joseph Begun invents the first tape recorder for broadcasting – first magnetic recording.

1934 Benny Goodman – “King of Swing” – organizes one of the first swing bands which, during its ten year existence, brings great popularity to jazz dance music. (23/322)

1934 The Frolic Room (at 6249 Hollywood Blvd, next to the Pantages Theatre) began serving as a private speakeasy lounge originally called Freddy’s, then opened to the public in 1934, as Bob’s Frolic Room.

1934 The lake in Westlake Park (later renamed MacArthur Park) is extended to south of Wilshire Blvd.

1934 Muzak founded. http://www.cinetext.net/timeline/1930.htm

1934 Los Angeles’ first drive-in movie opens at the corner of Pico and Westwood. (41/11)

1934 By 1934, Walter Winchell is the nation’s more popular columnist and also has a radio show. (16/178)

1934 To make way for the new Union Station, the City’s old Chinatown adjacent to the Plaza is condemned. 3,000 Chinese are forced to move.

1934 Hitler becomes Führer when chancellorship and presidency are united. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1934.html

1934 Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker ambushed by lawmen in Louisiana. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1934.html

1934 Dust storms ruin about 100 million acres and damage another 200 million acres of cropland in Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma (“Dust Bowl”). http://www.infoplease.com/year/1934.html

1934 Censorship of motion pictures is begun by the Catholic Legion of Decency. (23/323)

1935

Top stars: Shirley Temple, Will Rogers, Clark Gable. (21/121)

Songs released in 1935 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1935/1935fr.html

Lulu’s Back in Town, Dick Powell
The Music Goes ‘Round, Riley-Farley & The Onyx Club Boys
Cheek to Cheek
Here Comes Cookie
On the Isle of Capri
It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie
A Little Bit Independent, Fats Waller
Puttin’ on Your Top Hat
Lullaby of Broadway
All of Me, Louis Armstrong
Sweet Lilani
Park Avenue Fantasy
Lost My Man Blues, Billie Holiday
Unemployment Stomp, Big Bill Broonzy
Red Sails in the Sunset, Guy Lombardo

Books released in 1935 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1935/1935fr.html

Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara
Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe
The Last Puritan by George Santayana
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Top grossing films of 1935

Top Hat
The Miracle Rider
Anna Karenina
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Westward Ho
Bride of Frankenstein
The Informer
Dangerous
A Night at the Opera
Mutiny on the Bounty

10JAN1935 Fairbanks and Pickford divorce. (6/71)

16JAN1935 (Kate) Ma Baker killed with a machine gun in her hands) by the FBI in Lake Weir, FL (71/130)

01FEB1935 First March Of Time newsreel shown in NY, produced by RKO until 1942, then 20th Century Fox until 1951. (21/122)

27FEB1935 It Happened One Night shocks the industry. Not only because it grabbed all 5 major categories, but it was produced by Columbia, a small studio. It had been assumed that all Academy members voted for the studio they were affiliated with. The win propelled Columbia into the big leagues. (44/71)

MAR1935 Photoplay starts a Garbo versus Dietrich war, calling Garbo the Silent Swede whose throne was threatened by the “lush Teuton with slumberous eyes”. (59/91)

14MAR1935 Shirley Temple, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

22MAR1935 Orson Welles makes his radio debut on CBS’ March of Time. (71/111)

13APR1935 In 1935, Westmore formed a partnership with four of his brothers to build, own, and operate the House of Westmore beauty salon at 6638 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The salon became a world-famous meeting and mingling place for movie stars, housewives, and tourists. The rise of television and the resulting changes in movie industry practices, as well as the decline of the neighborhood, led to a loss of business and prestige and the salon’s eventual demise. It closed in 1965, but the building still stands today. (47/229) (p104/120) http://www.flickr.com/photos/1000photosofnewyorkcity/113600050/in/set-72057594083888984/

20APR1935 Your Hit Parade begins on NBC as a 60-minute show with 15 songs played in a random format. Initially, the songs are more important than the singers, so a stable of vocalists go uncredited and are paid only $100 per show. In 1936-37 the program is carried on both NBC and CBS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Hit_Parade

22APR1935 Flash Gordon, the science fiction radio program starring Gale Gordon, debuts. The series ended on October 26, 1935 with Flash and Dale’s marriage. The next week, The Adventures of Jungle Jim picked up in that Saturday timeslot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_gordon#Radio_serials

14MAY1935 Griffith Observatory – Built from money stipulated in Griffith J. Griffith’s 1919 will, the Observatory was built between 1933 and 1935 and dedicated on 14MAY1935. http://www.griffithobs.org/obshist.html

MAY1935 Loretta Young calls Clark Gable to her home at 10935 Sunset and tells him that she is pregnant with his child. On 06NOV1935 she delivers a healthy baby girl. (150-153/96)

MAY1935 King George V and Queen Mary celebrate their 25^th Jubilee. (105)

SUMMER1935 The L. A. Times moves into its new building at the corner of 1^st Street and Spring. Will Rogers was the MC for the half-hour radio show. (91/125)

01JUN1935 The greatest hitter in the history of baseball, Babe Ruth, retires from Major League Baseball. He is among the charter class of players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1939. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1930.html

01UN1935 Twentieth Century Fox’s Under the Pampas Moon premieres, marking the movie debut of “Rita Cansino” who is later picked up by Columbia, given a makeover and renamed Rita Hayworth.

JUL1935 Purity Seal adopted. (28/76)

15AUG1935 Will Rogers, who the previous year was voted the Top Money Making Star dies in a plane crash in Alaska. (5/42)

25AUG1935 William Boyd appears in his first of 66 films as Hopalong Cassidy in Hop-Along Cassidy.

31AUG1935 “Communism in Studios” blares the front-page headline of the Hollywood Reporter, the first assault from the periodical that will later lead the campaign to uncover moviemaking subversives. (21/123)

SEP1935 The Hays Office warns producers and screenwriters away from “bum”, ”lousy”, ”chippie” (prostitute), ”floozy” and “goose”. And there will be no more Bronx cheers (blowing raspberries). (21/123)

05SEP1935 Gene Autry appears in his first film for the newly formed Republic Pictures – Tumbling Tumbleweeds, named after his second million-selling record.

08SEP1935 Returning home from a party, a drunken Busby Berkeley crossed the median on the PCH just north of Sunset and slammed into two cars, killing three members of a family in one car and seriously injuring the two people in the other. Berkeley called Whitey Hendry at MGM who in turn called Jerry Giesler. Two hung juries and three trials later, Berkeley was acquitted and MGM paid $100,000 to settle civil suits. (162/96)

15SEP1935 Cinegrill at the Roosevelt Hotel opens

27SEP1935 13yo Judy Garland signs her first contract with MGM. (21/125)

mid-1930s Mayer steps up plans to import Jewish writers from Austria, Hungary and Romania, in part to enhance the qualities of his productions, in part to give them sanctuary from the Nazi menace. (19/284)

mid-1930s During the filming of Camille, George Cukor was arrested for propositioning a young man on the street. It took all of Mayer’s and Thalberg’s powerful connections though District Attorney Buron Fitts to spring Cukor from prison and put him back on the set. (19/285)

Fall 1935 The Cinegrill opens at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Blvd.

06NOV1935 Fox Films merges with 20^th Century Pictures, Darryl F. Zanuck becomes studio head. (25/110) https://centurycitycc.com/fox-studios-historical-timeline/

19NOV1935 Louella Parsons announces that Clark Gable and Ria Langham are divorcing. Howard Strickling made them wait to make the announcement until after the premiere of Clark Gable and Loretta Young’s picture ‘Call Of The Wild’ (during which Gable and Young had an affair that resulted in a child) and the 06NOV birth of the child. (153/96)

26NOV1935 Max Factor Hollywood Makeup Studio opens at 1666 North Highland Ave. (14/162) (25/13) http://www.flickr.com/photos/sminor/2266451265/

DEC1935 Hitler confiscates all movie theaters own by people of Jewish origin. (28/80)

19DEC1935 Warner Bros.’ Captain Blood premieres and makes an instant star of Errol Flynn. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026174/

(FEB?)1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly,” a radio comedy starring Jim and Marian Jordan, debuts on the Blue Network, ending in 1959 making it one of the longest-running comedies in the history of classic radio in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibber_McGee_and_Molly

LATE 1935 Eddie Mannix finally gets his hands on the original negative of the porn film made by a young Joan Crawford. Having been aware of it since they signed Crawford in 1925, they also spent the intervening years buying up several dozen copies. (161/96)

1935 Wagner Act guarantees labor’s right to collective bargaining. (47/341)

1935 Paramount Publix goes bankrupt; reorganized as Paramount Pictures under Adolph Zukor. http://www.cinetext.net/timeline/1935.htm

1935 David O. Selznick leaves his vice-president/producer job at MGM to set up Selznick Intl Studios at 9336 West Washington Blvd. Out of which he produces GWTW. Selznick International Pictures was a Hollywood motion picture studio. It was founded in 1935 by producer David O. Selznick and investor John Hay Whitney after Selznick left MGM and leased a section of the RKO Pictures lot in Culver City, California. The studio itself had been built for Pathé Pictures in 1919. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selznick_International_Pictures (and later used by Thomas Ince)

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/selznick-studio_lot.htm

1935 The Mack Sennett studios in Studio City become Republic Studios and later CBS Studio Center. http://www.studiocitychamber.com/aboutstudiocity.php

1935 Pathé Studios in Culver City become Selznick International (13/14) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selznick_International_Pictures

…which used to be the old Thomas Ince Studios, and was down the street from MGM. (47/11)

1935 20th Century-Fox purchases a 97.17-acre portion of a Golf Course in West Los Angeles at the border of what is now Beverly Hills. The property extended from Pico Boulevard to the future Olympic Boulevard, and is now the eastern half of Century City. https://centurycitycc.com/fox-studios-historical-timeline/

Mid 1930s Seamstresses at MGM in mid-30s earned $16 a week, a fair wage for the time. (??/9)

Mid-1930s Monopolistic Nationwide was a cash cow and operated legally. Bookmaking was the illegal part of the quotient and was not part of Moe Annenberg’s business. By the mid-1930s, Nationwide supplied information from each of the 29 racetracks in the US and into Canada, Mexico and Cuba. It boasted more than 15,000 subscribers, in 223 citie and town in 39 states and was one of the biggest customers of AT+T and Western Union . . . Seeking ownership and complete control, Bugsy Siegel set up a competing wire named Trans-America in partnership with the Chicago outfit and based it in Phoenix. (115/p63 & p64)

1935 Judy Garland’s big break takes place at the Cal Neva Lodge. MGM executives and song writers are staying there and hear Judy with her sisters. They later tell them that they want her to come sing for them again at the studio. She does and supposedly that’s when Louis B. Mayer first hears her, sometime in mid 1935 when she had just turned 13.

1935 L. A. Times building built. (Architect: Gordon B. Kaufman

1935 Hearst moves Cosmopolitan Pictures from MGM to Warner Bros. (55/337)

1935 Sylvia Scarlett is the first movie condemned by the Legion of Decency. (36/127)

1935 Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture – Henry A. Wallace – persuades the Treasury to put the great pyramid on the new dollar bill. (260/105)

1935 England’s ‘Penguin Books’ start publishing paperbacks books with 10 reprint titles.

1935 Pan Am begins its transpacific service: SFO to Manila. (23/325)

1935 Alcoholics Anonymous is first organized in NY. (23/325)

1935 Wallace Carothers and DuPont Labs invents nylon (polymer 6.6.) http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa122299a.htm

30SEP1935 (Hoover) Boulder Dam is completed on the Colorado River, providing electric power to the Southwest. Power from Boulder Dam, under construction since 1931, reaches Los Angeles in 1936. The City commemorates the event with a nighttime celebration, illuminated by electric light.
President Franklin Roosevelt dedicates Boulder Dam. http://www.lasvegassun.com/history/timeline/

1935 Dudley Nichols, winner of the Best Writing, Screenplay Oscar for The Informer (1935) refused to accept his award because of the antagonism between several industry guilds and the academy over union matters. This marked the first time an Academy Award had been declined. Academy records show that Dudley was in possession of an Oscar statuette by 1949.

1935 Sepulveda Pass opened, linking Valley to coast. http://www.studiocityresidents.org/history.php

1935 Mascot Pictures, Consolidated Film Industries and Monogram Pictures joined with several independent producers to form Republic Pictures Corporation and takes over what used to be the Mack Sennett Studios near the corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon. http://www.studiocityresidents.org/history.php

1935 The Griffith Observatory and Planetarium is dedicated on a hilltop overlooking Los Angeles. (14/2)

1935 Pan Pacific Auditorium built (2/37)

1935 The new Los Angeles Times building is completed. In 1910 a union-member bombing killed 21 nonunion pressman and linotype operators at the LA Times. https://timelines.ws/states/CAL1923_1961.HTML

1935 S.H. Kress Dept Store is built at 6606 Hollywood Boulevard, later becomes Fredrick of Hollywood’s. http://www.historicla.com/hollywood/hollywood.html

1935 Eastman-Kodak develops Kodachrome color film. http://www.cinetext.net/timeline/1935.htm

1935 First canned beer made.

1935 Until 1960, one of the most famous melodramas ever written, The Drunkard, was performed at 600 North Vermont Boulevard at the Theater Mart, which later became the Los Angeles Press Club when the theatre closed. (6/122)

1935 The Bureau of Investigation, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, is renamed the FBI. (23/206)

1935 The Social Security system is adopted and fully implemented in 1942. (56/139)

1935 Roosevelt announces his plan to create a federal income tax, which Hearst declares to be Communism. (16/174)

1935 Aircraft-detecting radar is pioneered by Robert Watson-Watt in England. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1935.htm

1935 Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas outlaws gambling and closes the popular Agua Caliente resort and casino. However, the equally popular (with Hollywoodites) Agua Caliente Racetrack continue to operate for many years. (p110/145)

1935-1936 The movie industry pulls out of the Depression in 1935-36, first-run and prestige productions are more profitable than ever. Weekly movie attendance is back up to 80 million in 1935. (p177/129)

1936

Top stars: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Astaire & Rogers. (21/127)

Top grossing films of 1936

Camille
San Francisco
Rose Marie
Man of the Frontier
Come and Get It
The Story of Louis Pasteur
Anthony Adverse
The Great Ziegfeld
Go West, Young Man
Romeo and Juliet

Songs released in 1936 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1936/1936fr.html

And the Music Goes Round and Round, Edward Farley and Michael Riley…
Goodnight Irene, Leadbelly
Come On In My kitchen, Robert Johnson
Mulatica, Johnny Rodriquez
It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie, Fats Waller
Ridin’ that New River Train, Delmore Brothers
Pennies from Heaven, Bing Crosby..
Right or Wrong I’ll Always Love You
You (Gee but You’re Wonderful)
Just the Way You Look Tonight, Fred Astaire
The Southern Cannonball, Jimmie Rogers

Books released in 1936 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1936/1936fr.html

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
The Big Money, John Dos Passos
Drums Along the Mowhawk, Walter D. Edmonds
Eyeless in Gaza, Aldous Huxley
In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
The Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer
My Life in Spats, P. G. Wodehouse

Films Released in 1936

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur
My Man Godfrey, William Powell, Carole Lombard
Dodsworth, Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton
The Story of Louis Pasteur, Paul Muni, Josephine Hutchinson
The Oregon Trail, Johnny Mack Brown, Margaret Mason
The Petrified Forest, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis
Reefer Madness
Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin
Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers
Anthony Adverse, Frederick March, Olivia de Havilland
The Great Ziegfield, Wiliam Powell, Myrna Loy

JAN1936 The Hollywood Reporter’s Billy Wilkerson sets up offices at 154 Wardour Street in London’s West End and launches the London Reporter. It is not a success, however, and the final edition is printed on 29JUL1936. (p122/145

JAN1936 The Green Hornet radio show debuts. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1936/1936fr.html

01JAN1936 Route 66 was extended to Santa Monica. (Not to the Santa Monica pier, but to the corner of Lincoln and Olympic Blvds. in Santa Monica.)

02JAN1936 Bing Crosby takes over as MC on The Kraft Music Hall radio show (which had been on the air since 26JUN1933 under several names, including ‘The Kraft Program’ and ‘Kraft Musical Revue’. Crosby is host until May 9, 1946. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Music_Hall

06JAN1936 First Porky Pig animated cartoon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_in_film

JAN1936 Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford’s divorce becomes final. (p250/13)

11JAN1936 After suffering a complete nervous collapse in DEC1935, John Gilbert dies in his Tower Drive hacienda. He was found by friend Marlene Dietrich passed out drunk, swallowed his tongue and dying a pool of his own vomit. Dietrich called her doctor (and Howard Strickling) but it was too late to revive him. (163/96)

13JAN1936 Transcontinental speed record – Jan 13, 1936 – Howard Hughes in Jacqueline Cochran’s Northrop Gamma 2G, modified with a 850hp Wright Cyclone, from Burbank CA to Newark NJ in 9h:27m at an average speed of 259 mph, earning the Harmon Trophy. Then he then went on to set intercity records for New York to Miami and Chicago to Los Angeles in his rental. http://aerofiles.com/chrono.html, 78/96

11FEB1936 to 11JUN1936 – Mary Pickford’s short-lived radio show “Parties at Pickfair” airs on CBS. There is an initial attempt to do a remote from Pickfair, but the musicians leave cigarette burns on the white piano, so from then on it is broadcast from the studio. (15/188)

15FEB1936 First Republic serial, Darkest Africa, released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_in_film

12MAR1936 Al Jolson, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

18MAR1936 Universal Films releases the initial installment of their latest science fiction serial: FLASH GORDON http://www.geocities.com/cheeksilver/mgmjsa1.htm

Early 1936 Kay Brown sends Selznick “Gone With The Wind” pre-publication synopsis. (See also 21/30 and 145, http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/chronpop/836) 47/163: Selznick didn’t have time to read it so he passed the copy on to his Hollywood story editor, Val Lewton, and an aspiring young writer named Ring Lardner Jnr who was working for Selznick at the time. Both of them argued that the novel should not be made into a movie, calling it reactionary. But Lardner’s future wife also read the book and joined Kay Brown in recommending ‘Gone with the Wind’ to Selznick, who was prevailed upon to read a long synopsis.

08APR1936 Bing Crosby, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

26APR1936 Joseph Breen is found in interesting company for a worthy cause, co sponsoring an anti-Nazi banquet given at the swank Victor Hugo Café for Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein, a blue-blood exile from Hitler’s Germany. A leading Catholic intellectual and a fearless opponent of Hitler, Prince Lowenstein had brought together an unlikely mesh of Jews, Catholic and Popular Front. At $100 a plate, a phalanx of Irish Catholics (besides Breen actors Pat O’Brien and James Cagney, screenwriter Marc Connolly, director John Ford, Fax producer Winifred Sheehan, and serving as honorary chairman, Bishop Cantwell) joined hands with Jewish producers Irving Thalberg, Jack Warner, David O. Selznick, and BP Shulberg. The organizers of the soiree were the agnostic wits Dorothy Parker and Donald Ogden Stewart. A hot ticket for premature antifascists, the dinner was a roaring success. (77/206)

APR1936 Bruno Richard Hauptmann executed for kidnapping and killing Lindbergh baby in 1932. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1936/1936fr.html

APR1936 Carl Laemmle loses control of Universal Pictures to the American financier and sportsman, John Cheever Cowdin. (VF)

30APR1936 J. Edgar Hoover makes his first public arrest in New Orleans when he personally arrested Alvin “Creepy” Karpis – Public Enemy #1. (Not that that is the way it actually happened in real life.) (192/99)

MAY 1936 Louis B. Mayer did not read scripts or scenarios, much less books, so when some story had to be officially considered, it was acted out for him by a kind of minnesinger named Kate Corbaley, who was paid to tell him stories just as his mother had done years earlier in New Brunswick. One afternoon in MAY of 1936, Miss Corbaley told LBM of a new story about a tempestuous southern belle named Scarlett O’Hara and LBM sagely nodded his million dollar a year head and said, “Let’s ask Irving”. (42/16)

MAY1936 Jean Harlow tells Howard Strickling that she is pregnant with William Powell’s baby; he arranges an abortion for her at the Good Shepherd Hospital. (163/96)

MAY1936 Garbo returns to the U.S. from a seven month visit to Sweden. Production soon begins on her latest film, Camille. http://hiwaay.net/~oliver/timeline4.htm

02MAY1936 Deadline set for writers to declare if they supported the Screen Writers Guild or Screen Playwrights (supported by the studios). (55/331)

15MAY1936 Movie stars are paying the new Californian state income tax for the first time and marking their forms “Paid Under Protest” at the suggestion of the studios. (21/130)

15MAY1936 The weekly train, the City of Los Angeles makes its first run between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was the Union Pacific’s direct competition to the more well-known Super Chief. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Los_Angeles
May 12, 1936 – The Santa Fe Railroad inaugurates the all-Pullman Super Chief passenger train service between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1930.html

30MAY1935 Babe Ruth plays his final game and then retires with 714 home runs, 5,973 bases, and a .342 batting average. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth

01JUN1936 Cecil B DeMille takes over directorship of the hour-long Lux Radio Theater on CBS, causing the ratings to skyrocket. His forced departure in 1944 was due to a union dispute. (6/27) (21/128)

SUMMER 1936 The Screen Writers Guild was determined to fight this attempt to reduce it to nothing more than a powerless company union. With a new slate of officers, a huge membership drive was begun… Among the writers who responded to this call in the summer of 1936 were new members Morrie Ryskind, Dasheill Hammett, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Theodore Dreiser, Alice Duer Miller, John Collier, Guy Endore, Lillian Hellman, Mortimer Offner, Laura Perelman and Gottfriend Reinhardt. (72/51)

The (Screen Writers Guild) meetings were held at the homes of writers Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Samson Raphaelson, Dudley Nichols, Lester Cole, Mary McCall Jr, Ernest Pascal, Wells Root, Donald Ogden Stewart, Dashiell Hammett, John Howard Lawson, Sheridon Gibney, Oliver Garrett, Sam Ornitz, Nathanael West and others. The secrecy made the meetings seem extraordinarily similar to meetings of the Communist Party during that period. (72/96)

30JUN1936 Gone With The Wind hits the bookstores http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/ogh/Gone_With_The_Wind

JUL1936 Gone With The Wind published by MacMillan. (also 23/326)

JUL1936 Selznick changed his mind after his story editor Kay Brown and business partner John Hay Whitney urged him to buy the film rights to Gone With The Wind. In July 1936—a month after it was published—Selznick bought the rights for $50,000.

SUMMER 1936 Billy Wilkerson moves the Hollywood Reporter to new offices he’s built at 6715 Sunset Boulevard. At the same time, he also opens a barber shop and haberdashery called Sunset House, which only lasts for three months. (p123/145)

06JUL1936 David O. Selznick wires Kay Brown, “If you can close ‘Gone With The Wind’ for 50,000 dollars do so.” Kay Brown does so. http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/ogh/Gone_With_The_Wind

11JUL1936 Howard Hughes and friends leave Trader Vic’s in his Duesenberg. At the corner of Third and Lorraine he struck and killed 59 years old Gabe Meyer. Although subsequently found not guilty of anything, Hughes pays Meyer’s family $10,000 to help them “in their time of need.” (164/96)

MID 1936 Gossip columnist Sheila Graham starts to make a name for herself. (45/295)

JUL1936 Tampax, Inc. founded in New Brunswick, NJ produces first commercial tampon. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1936/1936fr.html

MID JUL 1936 Military insurrection is launched against the Republican Government of Spain. (105/351)

JUL1936 RCA-NBC commences experimental TV transmissions from the Empire State Building. (21/130)

22JUL1936 MGM announces that it would bow out of Germany if the other two major studios, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox would do the same. The other two studios said no. (VF)

23JUL1936 The Hollywood League Against Nazism (later the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League) is formed. (21/130)

For more information, see 41/259

The Anti-Nazi League was formed by Dorothy Parker and Oscar Hammerstein…the chairman of the League was Donald Ogden Stewart, and the secretary Alan Campbell. Besides Hammerstein and Parker, the League’s sponsors included Eddie Cantor, actresses Florence Eldridge and Gloria Stuart, Rupert Hughes, Richard Left, Ernst Lubitsch, Fredric March, Edwin Justus Mayer and Judge Isaac Pacht. “Dottie Parker and I arrived at the politically conscious stage of our lives at about the same time,” Donald Ogden Stewart recalled. (72/83) For larger membership list, see: http://www.nndb.com/org/977/000353915/

28JUL1936 Mary Astor’s diary, written in lavender, detailing her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman, becomes an issue in her child custody suit. Newspapers will reprint the sensational material, including some that Astor maintains is faked. (21/130)

Summer 1936 A drive gets underway to recruit new members for the Screen Writers Guild, the union that had been formed 4 years earlier but had encountered violent opposition from the studios, who refused to accord it the recognition or bargaining power. Many writers considered unions beneath the professional dignity of so-called artists. (26/257) But it disbands in the summer of 1936 (26/276) but in June 1938 the National Labor Relations Board rules that writers qualify as workers under the Wagner Act. A certification election held that same month allowed them to chose either the Screen Writers Guild or the more conservative Screen Playwrights as their representative. The SWG won by a vote of four to one. (26/277)

01AUG1936 August 1, 1936 – The Summer Olympics Games open in Berlin, Germany under the watchful eye of German leader Adolph Hitler, whose policies of Arian supremacy had already begun to take shape. The star of the games was Jesse Owens, a black American, who won four gold at the Berlin 1936 Games. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1930.html

AUG1936 Nationwide, theater box office receipts have skyrocketed more than 25% over the previous year. (28/88)

14SEP1936 At 10.15am Irving Thalberg dies of pneumonia at 37yo (2/69) (19/288) (34/238) (165/96)

17SEP1936 In respect for Thalberg’s funeral (at the synagogue B’nai B’rith on Wilshire Boulevard), MGM closes for the day, the only time in its history. Every studio in Hollywood pauses for silence as a tribute of respect. (138/107)

SEP1936 Thalberg’s death came at a time when MGM’s total dominance of the movie industry was seemingly unassailable. Metro’s profits in 1935 had been $7.5 million, more than the rest of the Big Eight movie companies combined. Metro’s take surpassed $10 million in 1936. (p174/129)

20OCT1936 William Powell and Myrna Loy, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

29OCT1936 Crossroads of the World, the world’s first planned outdoor shopping mall opens at 6671 Sunset (2/2) (14/178)

1936 By OCT1936, the FBI, in a secret report on Communist influence on the Screen Actor’s Guild, had – without basis – listed Bogart as being of 21 member “with strong CP leanings.”…Also on the list were (actor) J. Edward Bromberg, Melvyn Douglas, James Cagney, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Robert Montgomery, Pat O’Brien and Knute Rockney. (76/30)

02NOV1936 Sardi’s destroyed by fire. http://www.latimemachines.com/new_page_23.htm http://nfo.net/usa/niteclub.htm

NOV1936 95% of Americans polled said they were opposed to another European war. WWI had ended less than 20 years earlier, and memories of the over 116,000 American soldiers who had died were still fresh. (155/p. 33)

DEC1936 In 1936, the U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on land transferred from the military. The Gold Vault was completed in December 1936 at a cost of $560,000, or about $7.5 million in 2007 dollars. The site is located on what is now Bullion Boulevard at the intersection of Gold Vault Road. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bullion_Depository

02DEC1936 Los Angeles premiere of The Garden of Allah, with Marlene Dietrich.

20DEC1936 Deanna Durbin’s first movie, Three Smart Girls, is released and becomes a runaway hit, launching Durbin as a major star.

1936 Lew Wasserman joins MCA at the age of 22. By 1950, MCA is the dominant agency in Hollywood and Wasserman its most important agent. (p479/129)

1936 Tyrone Power is signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1936 as an answer to MGM’s big star Robert Taylor. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000061/bio

1936 Bette Davis refuses bad role and is put on suspension by Warner Bros. so she goes to Britain for a 2-picture deal she’d signed with entrepreneur Ludovic Toeplitz. But Warner Bros. sues for breach of contract and the British courts sided with Warner Bros. forcing Bette Davis to return to California. Warner Bros. pays all the court costs and makes a more concerted effort to provide her with better scripts. (41/66)

1936 In 1936 only 58 out of 5500 and 20 out of 6500 women averaged 3 or more days work a week; the 1500 children registered, only 4 days work per year. Extras earned $3.25 to $35 a day depending on their wardrobes and special talents, appendages and fearlessness. (41/95)

1936 Route 66 is officially extended from the corner of Broadway and 7th St in downtown Los Angeles to the Santa Monica pier.

1936 A dozen directors break away from the Academy to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later renamed the Director’s Guild of America, (p65/114)

1936 The El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard switches from live plays to movies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Capitan_Theatre however (108/51) said this happened in 1941.

1936 In 1936, Max Factor is crossing Highland Ave for a drink at the Hollywood Hotel when a delivery truck strikes him, crippling him severely. (p239/113)

1936 Hollywood Reporter moves into its own 3-story building at 6715 Sunset Blvd (28/9)http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/about_us/history.jsp

1936 Pope Pius XI issues a Pontifical Encyclical that recommends the boycotting of indecent films and congratulates the American Catholic Church’s “Legion of Decency” on their activities. http://www.pictureshowman.com/timeline_1930_1939.cfm#1930top

1936 Billy Wilkerson walks into the Top Hat Café and spots Lana Turner. (28/7)

1936 Sheila Graham arrives in Hollywood. (1/?)

1936 Samuel Colt patents the Colt revolver

1936 Dale Carnegie publishes How to Win Friends and Influence People. (56/200)

1936 King Edward VII abdicates. (23/326)

late 1936 Louis B. Mayer’s first public onslaught against Communism in San Francisco at a Fire Prevention Week speech. (19/290)

1936 After having been invented by General Mills in 1921, Betty Crocker got a face. Artist Neysa McMein brought together all the women in the company’s Home Service Department and “blended their features into an official likeness.” The widely circulated portrait reinforced the popular belief that Betty Crocker was a real woman. One public opinion poll rated her as the second most famous woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/sidelights/crocker.html

1936 Rome-Berlin Axis is proclaimed (Japan to join in 1940). http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html

1936 Spanish civil war begins. Hundreds of Americans join the “Lincoln Brigades.” (Franco’s fascist forces defeat Loyalist forces by 1939, when Madrid falls.) http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html

1936 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) debuts the world’s first television service with three hours of programming a day. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html

1936 The Boulder Dam, which creates the largest artificial reservoir in the U.S. and provides power to 1.5 million people, is completed. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html

1936 The first successful helicopter flight is made. http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html — however

79/7 says it happened with a Sikorsky VS-300 in Hartford CT on 15MAY1940

1936 Life magazine is taken over by Henry Luce, publisher of Fortune and Time, and transformed into a news picture magazine. (23/327) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_magazine

end’36 to Fall’38 GWTW: The search for Scarlett (13/41)

1937

Top Stars: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor (21/134)

Top grossing films of 1937

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Conquest
Damaged Lives
Parnell
La Grande Illusion
Annapolis Salute
Pépé le Moko
Green Fields
The Good Earth
Dead End

Books Published in 1937 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1937/1937fr.html

You Have Seen Their Faces, Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White
Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Northwest Passage, Kenneth Roberts
Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
The Good Society, Walter Lipmann
The Citadel, A. J. Cronin
The Rains Came, Louis Bromfield
Drums Along the Mowhawk, Walter D. Edmunds

Songs Released in 1937 – http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1937/1937fr.html

Terraplane Blues, Robert Johnson
Donkey Serenade, Allen Jones
Marie, Tommy Dorsey
Dipsy Doodle, Russ Morgan
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon, the Andrews Sisters
Boo Hoo, Guy Lombardo
They Can’t Take That Away From Me, Fred Astaire
The Joint is Jumpin, Fats Waller
Carelessly, Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday
If You ain’t Got the Dough Re Mi, Woody Guthrie (recorded by Alan Lomax 1940)
Goodnight My Love, Benny Goodman

JAN1935 After seeing Errol Flynn in a British B picture Murder at Monte Carlo, Warner Bros. signs the young actor and brings him to Hollywood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Blood_%281935_film%29#Casting

JAN1937 A Hollywood flu epidemic peaking in the middle of the month delays over 30 productions and fells many of the top stars. (21/134)

20JAN1937 Clark Gable Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

22JAN1937 After a lengthy production with numerous retakes, Camille is released. Despite being ill during most of the shoot, Garbo’s beauty is breathtaking in the film. She wins another New York Film Critics Award and is nominated for the Academy Award. She loses this time to Luise Rainer. http://hiwaay.net/~oliver/timeline4.htm

01FEB1937 A young Judy Garland sings “Dear Mr. Gable” at Clark Gable’s 36^th birthday and gets such a reaction that she is put into Broadway Melody of 1938 – it becomes her big break, (168/107)

FEB1937 In anticipation of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Jack Warner tears up Errol Flynn’s contract and signs him to a long-term deal at $2250 per week. Meanwhile de Havilland was learning that Warners was still very much a man’s world. She was set to play Maid Marian but her $500-per-week contact of April 1936 remained intact. (p210/129)

05FEB1937 “Modern Times” premieres in theatres. http://www.themovietimeline.com/page19#1937

FEB1937 Selznick had been leasing the RKO-Pathe facility in Culver City but he decides to take over the entire facility in FEB 1937 when he planned on shooting Gone with the Wind. (p181/129)

MAR1937 By acquiring Warner’s sound patent rights, RCA-Photophone completes its domination of movie sound reproduction. (21/134)

MAR1937 Filming begins onConquest, the most expensive film of Garbo’s career. November 4, 1937Conquestis released but fails to recoup its expenses. http://hiwaay.net/~oliver/timeline4.htm

06MAR1937 Marlene Dietrich applies for US citizenship at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. (155/p48)

15MAR1937 The first blood bank is established. http://www.greenville-pa.com/History/MC_Timeline/MC_Timeline_1901_1950.htm

01APR1937 German consul in Hollywood, Georg Gyssling makes his boldest move yet. He sends letters to about 60 people involved in The Road Back (the proposed sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front) warning them that any films in which they participated in the future might be banned in Germany. The move creates an uproar. (VF)

07MAY1937 At 1825 local time, the German zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg catches fire while approaching a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, NJ. The flames first appear near the tail and, within 37 seconds, completely engulf the ship. Of the 97 people on board 35 are killed (Of these, 13 are passengers and 22 were crew members.) One member of the ground crew also died, bringing the death toll to 36. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

31MAY1937 Tyrone Power Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

05APR1937 Noel Langley completes the first script for The Wizard of Oz.

12APR1937 The Supreme Court declares the Wagner Act (the 1935 United States federal law that protects the rights of most workers in the private sector to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands) constitutional paving the way for the official re-forming of the Screen Writers Guild whose first open meeting took place on 11JUN1937. (72/99)

30APR1937 A massive jurisdictional strike in the movie industry starts, one issue of which dealt with whether or not movie makeup works would continue under the jurisdiction of the labor federation to which the painters beloned, or would they be taken over by the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees. (IATSE) (p119/120)

11MAY1937 Loretta Young adopts a baby girl, resurrecting speculation about an affair between her and Clark Gable at the beginning on 1937. (21/135)

MAY1937 Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow was the first film actress to appear on the cover of the popular Life magazine, in May 1937. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s.html

06MAY1937 First coast-to-coast radio broadcast

27MAY1937 The Golden Gate Bridge opens.

http://www.greenville-pa.com/History/MC_Timeline/MC_Timeline_1901_1950.htm

May 27, 1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic and one day later, after a ceremonial press of a button from Washington, D.C. by President Roosevelt, receives its first vehicles. It created a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1930.html

01JUN1937 20th Century Fox becomes the first studio to exploit radio to promote movies. They claim that the radio advertising and publicity increases the revenues for Wake Up and Live by 25%. (21/135)

03 JUN1937 Edward VII married Wallis Simpson at the Château de Candé, a castle located in France.

07JUN1937 Jean Harlow dies of uremic poisoning at 27yo (2/69) (19/296) (166/96)

09JUN1937 Approximately 10,000 fans attend Harlow’s funeral at Forest Lawn. (21/136)

11JUN1937 The Supreme Court declares the Wagner Act (the 1935 United States federal law that protects the rights of most workers in the private sector to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands) constitutional paving the way for the official re-forming of the Screen Writers Guild whose first open meeting took place on 11JUN1937 at the Hollywood Athletic Club and attended by over 400 writers, many of whom had been active in the old Guild. Dudley Nichols was the new President, Charles Brackett the vice-President, Frances Goodrich the secretary and John Grey the treasurer. Left-wing board members such as Donald Ogden Stewart, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker were balanced by right-wing board members: Mary McCall Jnr, Morrie Ryskind, Albert Hackett, and Brian Marlow. Young Philip Dunne and Ring Lardner Jnr were alternatives. (72/99)

26JUN1937 Mary Pickford married Buddy Rogers at Pickfair. (63/96)

JUN1937 Communist Party meeting at the Beverly Glen home of writer Martin Berkeley… “We were honored by the presence of many functionaries from downtown and the spirit was swell.” Berkeley named many people as having been at the meeting, including VJ Jerome, Harry Carlisle, Donald Ogden Stewart, Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, Dashiell Hammett, and Lillian Hellman. (72/90)

Summer 1937 Sheila Graham meets F. Scott Fitzgerald. (45/295)

16JUN1937 Over the summer of 1937, everyone everywhere believes that Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald would marry. So they were surprised when MacDonald announced that she would marry Gene Raymond and on 16JUN she did, with Eddy singing at the wedding. (168/96)

02JUL1937 Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear over New Guinea during Earhart’s attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937

09JUL1937 A massive fire at the Fox Film-storage facility in Little Ferry, NJ resulting in the loss of most of the silent films produced by the Fox Film Corporation before 1932. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire

JUL to AUG 1937 CBS Rdio’s “Shakespeare Theater” performed at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood. “Taming of the Shew” with Tallulah Bankhead, and “Twelth Night” with Orson Welles

11 JUL 1937 George Gershwin dies of a brain tumor. (45/169) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937

AUG1937 Warners’ The Life of Emile Zola premieres and is an immediate sensation. (p214/129)

AUG1937 David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock meet for the first time during Hitchcock’s trip to the US to celebrate his 38^th birthday. (p273/129)

27SEP1937 Mussolini’s son Vittorio arrives in Los Angeles to make a production deal with his host Hal Roach, much to the consternation of the Anti-Nazi League, headed by Fredric March and James Cagney. In the end only Walt Disney and Gary Cooper want to talk to him. (19/306) (21/136)

OCT1937 Jack Warner secures Henry Fonda for the male lead in Jezebel, with a start date of 25OCT1937 and a budget of $783,508. (p222/129)

17DEC1937 “The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show” premiers on NBC Radio and, under various sponsors, is on the air until 01JUL1956. (80/27)

25NOV1937 Nothing Sacred starring Fredrick March and Carole Lombard is released and is first feature film comedy filmed in three-strip Technicolor (and Lombard’s only Technicolor movie.)

21DEC1937 Premiere of Disney first full-length animated movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (21/137)

25DEC1937 An outside package was delivered to Selznick’s home by liveried messenger. Ribbons and paper were snipped away to disclose a replica of the novel in its dust jacket, out of which stepped a young girl in crinolines. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Selznick! I am your Scarlett O’Hara!” (13/36)

25DEC1937 “Tovarich” is the first Warner Brothers film to begin with the famous Warners fanfare, which was composed by Max Steiner. The fanfare had a bombastic beginning but no real end, as it was meant to transpose into the music of the picture it introduced, which led to new and creative chord modulations in each film in which it was featured. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0029685/trivia

1937 In 1937, Brown Derby owner Robert H. Cobb went into the restaurant’s kitchen to fix a late-night snack for Sid Grauman, operator of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. He browsed the refrigerator for ingredients, and chopped them up finely. Thus, the Cobb salad was born. From then on, Grauman often requested that a Cobb salad be prepared for him. Word soon spread about this creation throughout Hollywood, quickly increasing its popularity. It became such a hit that film stars started requesting “Cobb’s salad”, and it was eventually added to the menu of the Brown Derby restaurant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobb_salad

1937 MGM’s net reaches an all-time high of $14.2 million. Mayer takes the credit, although the momentum is generated by Thalberg project. By the end of the year, that momentum starts to wane, and MGM’s lead over the other majors begins to taper off. (p252/129)

1937 Mickey Cohen arrives in Los Angeles. (115/28)

1937 The first McDonald’s opened in Pasadena, California. https://timelines.ws/states/CAL1923_1961.HTML

1937 Marion Davies retires from the screen at the age of 40. (p261/130)

1937 Miniature golf becomes a huge new popular pastime. (71/230)

1937 A survey by FORTUNE magazine reveals the best-loved comics of the day, in order: 1…Little Orphan Annie…2…Popeye…3…Dick Tracy…4…Bringing Up Baby…5…The Gumps…6…Blondie…7…Moon Mullins…8…Joe Palooka…9…Li’l Abner…Tillie the Toiler

1937 With World War II brewing in 1936, Ray Ban designed anti-glare aviator style sunglasses, using polarized lens technology newly created by Edwin H. Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation. They also designed a slightly drooping frame perimeter to maximally shield an aviator’s eyes, which repeatedly glanced downward toward a plane’s instrument panel. Fliers were issued the glasses at no charge, and the public in 1937 was able to purchase the model that banned the sun’s rays as Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/sunglasses.htm

1937 MGM establishes its own animation department under the direction of Fred Quimby. (311/107)

1937 Marlene Dietrich gets kicked out of the Bar Of Music on Sunset for wearing slacks. (115/1)

1937 The roller skating craze hits big.

1937 John Howard Lawson was in essence the leader of the Communist Party in Hollywood from about 1937 to 1950, when he went to jail. (72/88)

1937 Louis B. Mayer (of MGM studios) has the highest salary in the US at $1.3 million. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s_2.html

1937 African-American leaders publicly called on the Hays Office to make roles other than doormen, maids, and porters available to blacks. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1930s_2.html

1937 In 1935, the medical community became aware of the stimulant properties of amphetamine, specifically dextroamphetamine, and in 1937 Smith, Kline, and French introduces tablets under the tradename Dexedrine.In the United States, Dexedrine was approved to treat narcolepsy, attention disorders, depression, and obesity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextroamphetamine

1937 Like his friend Longie Zwillman, Benjamin “Bugsy” Seigel seems to have visited the Coast several times in the MID-30s, making the move permanent at the end of 1937. (41/77)

1937 The East Coast mob sent Siegel to California to develop syndicate gambling rackets with Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Once in L.A., Siegel recruited gang boss Mickey Cohen as his lieutenant. Siegel used syndicate money to set up a national wire service to help the East Coast mob quicken their returns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Siegel#California

1937 Hollywood liberals, as the decade progressed, were actively anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi. For a fund-raising dinner at the Biltmore Hotel for the Anti-Nazi League around 1937, both Dorothy Parker and Marcus Connelly bought tickets for 2 tables, each seating 12 guests. Jews in particular were staunchly anti-Fascist because of the anti-Semitism then rampant in Europe. It was a time of frenzied political activity, a period of excitement for Hollywood Left-wingers, many of whom eventually joined the Communist Party. After the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, with the Soviet Communists joining forces with the German Nazis, it was suddenly not appropriate for American Left-wingers to be members of the Communist Party, especially for Jews. Communist Party members found themselves suspect, received coolly by their liberal friends who viewed their new pacifism with disfavor. (47/342)

The Hollywood Anti Nazi League was founded in 1937, in an effort to unite Jewish people and others in the Hollywood movie colony into organizing to combat Naziism on a local scale. In 1939, the Hollywood Anti Nazi League changed its name to Hollywood League for Democratic Action. They printed a newsletter under the name of “Hollywood Now” which was discontinued in 1940. The organization was financed by membership dues, contributions, motion picture producers, and prominent stage and screen stars. By 1942, this organization was no longer in existence. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/hollywoodleague.htm

1937 In 1937, LBM is earning $1,300,000 in salary and bonuses making him the highest paid man in the United States. (42/15) (47/20)

1937 Pandro S. Berman becomes production chief at RKO (until 1940s, when he moves to MGM.) (56/114)

1937 Disney distributes through RKO (until 1954.) (p56/114)

1937 Howard Hughes sets a coast-to-coast flying record of 7 hours, 28 minutes flying L.A. to Newark. (42/120)

1937 The first copy of the bi-weekly Look magazine is published.

1937 First pressurized plane. (71/156)

1937 By 1937 Central Casting was assigning about 600 players a day, with some 15,000 names on file. (41/92)

1937 Hormel introduces a canned pork-and-ham product called SPAM. (79/84)

1937 Chester F. Carlson invents the photocopier

1937 “Gone With The Wind” wins Pulitzer Prize

1937 Golden Gate Bridge is completed. (23/329)

1937 City purchases Mines Field for a municipal airport, now known as Los Angeles International Airport.

1937 Chasen’s Restaurant opens at 9039 Beverly Boulevard (2/38)

1937 First jet engine is built.

1937 After the Communist party decides to form alliances with non-revolutionary groups like the Democratic Party, Hollywood began to resemble a rain forest that teemed with lush varieties of political ideologies and activities. In this steamy atmosphere of the Popular Front, the distinctions between Communism and home-grown American liberalism tends to now blur. (26/274)

1937 By 1937, the Hearst empire is starting to crumble as a result of the Depression and the anti-Hearst movement. Their LAX, San Francisco, CA 941, CHII, Boston papers lose 10% circulation. (16/200)

1938

Top stars: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Sonia Henie. (21/139)

Films released in 1938

Alexander’s Ragtime Band
Angels with Dirty Faces
In Old Chicago
The Hurricane
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Marie Antoinette
Love Finds Andy Hardy
Boys Town

Songs released in 1936

A Tisket A Tasket, Chuck Webb and Ella Fitzgerald
Begin the Beguine, Benny Goodman
Bei Mir Mist Du Shon, The Andrews Sisters
Stompin’ at the Savoy, Benny Goodman
I Got Rhythm, Benny Goodman Sextet and Lionel Hampton
Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy, Slim and Slam (Slim Gaillard and Leroy Stewart)
Zing Went the Strings of my Heart, Judy Garland
The Blues ain’t Nothin’, Georgia White,
I’m Gonna Lock My Heart, Billie Holiday

Books released in 1938

The Importance of Living, Lin Yutang
Madame Curie, Eve Curie
Listen! The Wind, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Citadel, A. J. Cronin
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Benjamin Franklin, Carl Van Doren
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Northwest Passage, Kenneth Roberts
All This, and Heaven Too, Rachel Field

JAN1938 Sidney Howard’s first draft of Gone With The Wind is completed and then shelved.

JAN1938 Johnny Weissmuller and Lupe Velez’s last public dinner together was at Ciro’s. after loudly arguing in front of other patrons, Weissmuller dumped food onto Velez’s head and stalked out. The story was too juicy for the tabloids to ignore, so Strickling simply let the story run, and they were divorced a few months later.

JAN1938 Director Mervyn LeRoy brings Lana Turner to MGM (after having debuted her in his Warner Bros. film “They Won’t Forget”) where she is dubbed by Howard Strickling “the Sweater Girl”. (179/96)

JAN1938 MGM announces that Judy Garland would be cast in the role of “Dorothy” in the upcoming Wizard of Oz motion picture. Ray Bolger is cast as the “Tinman” and Buddy Ebsen is cast as the “Scarecrow”. At Bolger’s insistence, the roles are switched between the two actors. MGM announces Bert Lahr has been cast as the “Cowardly Lion” on July 25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_in_film

15JAN1938 Warner Bros. releases the movie Hollywood Hotel featuring the song “Hooray for Hollywood” which quickly became the city’s unofficial anthem. (108/12)

04FEB1938 Fred Astaire, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

04FEB1938 Hollywood talent agent Myron Selznick is banned from the 20th Century Fox lot. The studio felt Selznick, who was renegotiating actress Loretta Young’s contract, was undermining the industry by inflating actors’ salaries. He became an agent in 1928 and developed into one of Hollywood’s most powerful personalities until his death in 1944.

14FEB1938 Hedda Hopper’s first column appears in the Los Angeles Times. (21/140) Late 1930s, Hedda Hopper’s renewed exposure led to and offer from the Esquire Feature Syndicate to write a Hollywood column. She agreed and her byline began appearing in 13 newspapers in the late 1930s…When the L. A. Times picked up Hedda’s column in FEB38, the real batter began. Every producer in town read it. (45/297)

END FEB1938 By the end of FEB 1938 nearly 40% of studio employees were on the street. Paramount had laid off 1400 workers; MGM was virtually shut down for 6 weeks. The Universal writing staff was pared to 14, half of them contract writers. (72/114)

02-06MAR1938 Los Angeles River flood. (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/1916/laflood.html) The floods and resulting landslides cause 144 deaths in SoCal, and 1000s of homes are destroyed, a loss of $60 million in property (23/329)

Severe flooding claims 78 lives and causes almost $25 million in damage. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins channeling the Los Angeles River with concrete. http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01g.htm (28/94)

MAR1938 Louis Epstein opens the Pickwick Bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. (66/259)

MAR1938 Edward R. Murrow gives his first CBS radio “News Roundup” http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1938/1938fr.html

04MAR1938 Republic Studio’s The Lone Ranger serial premieres. (21/140)
http://www.geocities.com/cheeksilver/mgmjsa1.htm

10MAR1938 The names of the Oscar winners is kept secret for the first time. (21/140) The tenth Academy Awards was postponed for a week because torrential rains in Los Angeles caused major flooding. The Awards were held on Thursday, March 10, 1938 at the Biltmore Bowl of the Biltmore Hotel. http://history1900s.about.com/library/misc/blaa1937.htm

10MAR1938 The first Irving G. Thalberg Award is presented during the 10^th Academy Awards at the Biltmore Hotel to Darryl Zanuck.

10MAR1938 Warner Bros.’ Jezebel starring Bette Davis premieres in New York.

12MAR1938 German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4830

MAR1938 Travis Banton leaves Paramount and Edith Head is made chief designer. (p42/122)

21APR1938 As a result of the Jackie Coogan suit against his mother to regain the $4 million he earned but never received, the Supreme Court declares that at least half of the salaries of child stars must be put into a trust fund. (21/141)

APR1938 An April 1938 Gallup poll had shown that 54 percent of Americans had felt “the persecution of Jews in Europe has been partly their own fault,” with 11 percent saying it was “entirely” their own fault. (155/p 64)

30APR1938 CBS’s Columbia Square radio studios open with a full day of special broadcasts culminating in the star-studded evening special, “A Salute to Columbia Square” featuring Bob Hope, Al Jolson and Cecil B. DeMille. Their KNX radio station becomes the CBS network’s West Coast flagship.

03MAY1938 On May 3, 1938, the the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) published a now infamous full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter which labeled stars like Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Kay Francis, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, and Katharine Hepburn, as box office poison. Harry Brandt, who wrote the ad on behalf of ITOA, criticized movie studios for putting stars, “whose dramatic ability is unquestioned, but whose box office draw is nil,” in major productions. https://hollywoodrevue.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/box-office-poison-the-ad-that-started-it-all/

14MAY1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn has its U.S. premiere. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029843/releaseinfo

At a cost of $2 million, The Adventures of Robin Hood was Warners Bros’ most expensive film to date. It made also $4 million at the box office during its original release.

31MAY1938 The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel is the first feature film broadcast on television. NBC’s telecast can be seen within a radius of 40 miles from mid-Manhattan. (21/141)

MAY1938 The House Un-American Activities Committee is established. (4/92) HUAC is set up as a “special” (temporary) committee of the house at the behest of and under the chairmanship of Martin Dies. (64/362)

06JUN1938 National Periodical Publications (later known as DC Comics) releases ACTION COMICS #1; featuring the four-color debut of Jerry Siegel‘s and Joe Shuster‘s SUPERMAN. It is a near-instantaneous sell-out, from coast to coast; single-handedly giving birth to an entirely new adventure sub-genre: that of the costumed super–hero. http://www.geocities.com/cheeksilver/mgmjsa1.htm

10JUN1938 Hollywood Park – officially the Hollywood Turf Club – opens. (21/142)

28JUN1938 Three polling places were set up for the 28JUN voting (to determine whether the Screen Writers Guild or Screen Playwrights would represent Hollywood writers in collective bargaining) – at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Singapore Room, for employees of Paramount, RKO, Columbia, Walter Wanger, Goldwyn, Monogram and Amour; 3855 Lankershim Boulevard for Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Republic and Trem Carr personnel; and the council chamber at Culver City Hall for those at MGM, 20th Century Fox, Selznick and Hal Roach studios…The vote was more than 4-to-1 in favor of the guild. (72/129)

75/163 gives the individual numbers but in the end it was Guild-615 versus Screen Playrights-158

28JUN1938 The National Minimum Wage is enacted within the federal legislation known as the Fair Labor Standards Act. It established a minimum wage of $0.25 at the time (approx. $3.22 in 2005), as well as time and one half for overtime and the prohibition of most employment for minors. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1930.html

05JUL1938 Variety calls “revolutionary” a California theater owner’s plans to build a two-auditorium theater, each showing a different film. (21/142)

10-14JUL1938 Howard Hughes cuts Lindbergh’s New York to Paris flying time in half, setting an around-the-world record of 3 days, 19 hours, 17 minutes. (42/120) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes
Global speed record – July 10-14, 1938 – Howard Hughes (and crew: Harry Connor, Ed Lund, Richard Stoddard, Thomas Thurlow) in Lockheed 14—NYC, Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Fairbanks, Minneapolis, NYC—14,791 miles in 3d:19h:08m:10s. http://aerofiles.com/chrono.html

10JUL1938 An anti-trust suit is issued in the District Court of the USA by the Dept of Justice against Loew’s, RKO, Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, Universal & United Artists, charging them of combining and conspiring to restrain trade in the production, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures and with attempting successfully to monopolize such trade in violation of the Sherman Act. (22/416)

01AUG1938 MGM’s new admin building, the Thalberg Building named after Irving Thalberg is dedicated.

22AUG1938 James B Matthews, a former communist, testifies to the HUAC that Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Bette Davis, and Miriam Hopkins “unwittingly” serve the cause of communism. (21/143)

30AUG1938 Max Factor dies in his home, at the age of 61. (p122/121)

27SEP1938 A red-baiting Darryl Zanuck, addressing an American Legion convention, denounces Hollywood’s “pink shirts”. (21/144)

13OCT1938 Filming starts on The Wizard of Oz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_in_film

17OCT1938 NBC’s new radio studios (and later television) open on the northeast corner of Sunset Blvd and Vine St in Hollywood on land that used to house the Famous Players-Lasky studios.

28OCT1938 Du Pont introduces nylon to the public – nylons stockings go on sale in MAY1940. (79/62)

OCT1938 A move is afoot to establish a pension plan for old actors based on an idea proposed by Jean Hersholt to the Motion Picture Relief Fun Committee. (28/96)

18OCT1938 Mickey Rooney, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

30OCT1938 Invasion from Mars, Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of “War of the World” is broadcast and mistaken by 1000s of people to be the real thing. (16/217) (23/331) http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/wotw.html

02NOV1938 Luise Rainer engineers a letter to President Roosevelt from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League seeing his support as co-sponsor of Talent In Exile, a mass meeting to be held at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium on 03DEC. Sponsors include Miss Rainer herself, Ring Lardner Jnr, Bruni Frank, the writer who was working on a script for RKO’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Salka Viertel; and the directors Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang. (19/323)

09-10NOV1938 On the evening of 09-10NOV1938 the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht erupts across Germany, an outbreak of mob terror made vivid stateside by live radio reports, front-page headlines and wire photos. The event marked America’s tipping point from blind isolationist to national defense.

18NOV1938 3500 motion picture industry personnel pack a mass “Quarantine Hitler” rally at Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. In between impassioned speeches from actor John Garfield and director Frank Capra, and supportive messages from Joan Crawford, and exiled novelist Thomas Mann, the crowd unanimously voted to send a telegram, signed by Joseph Breen and dozens of other prominent Hollywood personalities to President Roosevelt: The Nazi outrage against Jews and Catholics have shocked the world. Coming on the heels of the Munich pact, they prove that the capitulation to Hitler means barbarism and terror. America as the foremost democracy has taken the lead in opposing this great to civilization. We in Hollywood urge you to use you presidential authority to express further the horror and the indignation of the America people. (77/210)

24NOV1938 German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl arrives in Hollywood just as the Los Angeles sky was red with forest fires and right after the news of the Jewish massacre known as Kristallnacht is known. Her host Georg Gyssling (Nazi Consul General to Hollywood) changed her original reservations at the Garden of Allah whose management had received death threats to the Beverly Hills Hotel where she stayed for 3 weeks. (19/325)

Late’38/early’39 GWTW: Featured parts are cast

DEC38 DeBeers creates an aid campaign entitled “Traditions” making diamond ring essential for engagement. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1938/1938fr.html

02DEC1938 Last day of airing for Louella Parsons’s radio show, Hollywood Hotel. http://www.otrsite.com/logs/logh1022.htm

10DEC1938 The burning of Atlanta scene in Gone With The Wind is filmed and Selznick sees Vivien Leigh. (13/54)

25DEC1938 Gone With The Wind director George Cukor tells Vivien Leigh she has the role of Scarlett (13/??)

22DEC1938 New York premiere of Sweethearts, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy – MGM’s first feature in full, three-strip Technicolor. (292/107)

25DEC1938 Earl Carroll’s “Most Beautiful Girl in the World” theater opens at 6230 Sunset with a cast of 60 girls and is the most dazzling and star-studded event/opening Hollywood had yet seen. (2/8) (14/218) 6200 feet of blue and gold neon tubing…30 foot columns of light flanking the stage…the ladies room in soft peach lamb’s wool…for the investors and members of the inner circle, a $1000 membership free guaranteed a lifetime cover charge and a reserved seat. First-nighters included Clark Gable & Carole Lombard, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Sonja Henie, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Jack Benny, Claudette Colbert, Robert Taylor, Constance Bennett, Daryl Zanuck, Jackie Googan, Franchot Tone, Errol Flynn, David O. Selznick, Louis B Mayer, Dolores del Rio, Edgar Bergen, Jack Warner, WC Fields, Don Ameche, Walter Pidgeon, Jimmy Durante, and dozens more. (40/171) During the war years it had special priced shows to accommodate the war-effort swingshifters. When Earl Carroll died in a plane crash in 1948 the place closed. (40/219)

26DEC1938 The Earl Carroll Theater opens with seating for 1160 patron, 160 more than the Cocoanut Grove. (8/105)

Late 1930s After the state of California clamped down on floating casinos and other gambling haunts in the late 1930s, the Hollywood Reporter‘s Billy Wilkerson had the vision in the immediate post-World War II era of building a ritzy resort playground in the desert with his original plans for Las Vegas’ Flamingo hotel. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/about_us/history.jsp

1938 J. Edgar Hoover and Winchell became friends in 1938 following the death of J. Edgar Hoover’s mother. (99/216)

1938 There were 18,000 theaters in America. Weekly attendance had held at 60 million since 1934, down from the record-breaking ninety million of 1929. What a movie fan paid at any given theater was determined by the Exhibitors’ Price-and-Time-Fixing Plan. The A pictures opened in movie palaces like the Loew’s State in downtown Los Angeles or the Pantages in Hollywood. Because of their opulent settings and deluxe presentation, these theaters charged 50 cents general admission, and 65 cents for loges. After 21 days, an A picture moved to a 40-cent neighborhood theater. After 42 days, the picture moved to a 30-cent theater; after 63 days, to a 25-cent theater; after 96 days to a 20-cent theater; and, after 126 days, to a 15-cent theater, which was probably on skid row. (“Majestic Hollywood” by Mark Vieira)

1938 Tony Cornero converted a 41-year-old brigantine into a gambling ship and called the Rex. It had a superstructure especially designed as a luxury gambling casino. His investment, rumored to be $600,000, was financed by Bugsy Siegal and George Raft. He towed his boat exactly 3.1 miles offshore, and announced by radio and newspaper advertisements that he was open for business. He offered a challenge, a $100,000 reward to anyone who could show that any game on the Rex was rigged.

1938 By 1938, the Depression had begun to ease . . . Bugsy Siegel put Mickey Cohen to work. Using his fists and guns, the fiery young Angeleno began raiding the protected gambling clubs and brothels controlled by local racketeers. (115/p39)

1938 Screen Director’s Guild created (eliminating working Saturdays and Sundays without compensation). (47/78)

1938 George Hurrell decides to close his studio in order to be exclusive to Warner Brothers as their head of portrait photography. Two years later he resigned and went back to freelance work.

1938 The Thalberg Building on the MGM lot is inaugurated. (145/107)

1938 All gambling and prostitution in Hollywood is shut down. (39/28)
1939 – New attorney general of California, Earl Warren, outlaws all oceangoing gambling off the California coastline.
1940 – Legal gambling in California restricted to horse racing tracks.

??? Selznick paid Ben Hecht $3000 a day to rewrite Gone With The Wind. (CON/358)

1938 Fueled by increased revenues, The Broadway department store at Hollywood and Vine constructed a seven-story addition to the building’s south side providing 52,000 square feet of additional retail space. (http://www.broadwayhollywoodsales.com/)

1938 Pickwick book store opens on Hollywood Boulevard. (67/43)

1938 Bugsy Siegel opens a speakeasy at the Castillo del Lago mansion on Hollywoodland’s Durand Drive.

1938 “Wilkerson sold the Trocadero in 1938. Underworld figures Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen took over, and in 1940 the Trocadero was raided twice for illegal gambling. Not wanting that publicity, the stars moved on to other venues. After one more change of ownership, the Trocadero closed in 1946.” http://nfo.net/usa/niteclub.htm

1938 The ballpoint pen invented by Ladislo Biro. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa122299a.htm

1938 Roy J. Plunkett invents tetrafluoroethylene polymers or Teflon. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa122299a.htm

Late 1930s May Rindge finally allows residents to purchase the beach front Malibu property that she had only allowed them to lease. (28/51)

Late 1930s Washing machines that could spin-dry AND agitate did not appear until the end of the 1930s. (56/63)

1938 DuPont markets the first nylon product – a toothbrush. (23/330)

1938 Nescafe or freeze-dried coffee is invented. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa122299a.htm

1939

Top stars: Mickey Rooney, Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy (21/139)
Top grossing films of 1939

Gone with the Wind
Ninotchka
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
The Wizard of Oz
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Another Thin Man

1939 SONGS:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Deep Purple
Beer Barrel Polka
It Takes a Worried Man
Tuxedo Junction, Glenn Miller
Jim Jam Jump. Ella Fitzgerald
Three Little Fishies, Kay Kyser
I Got Rhythm, The Five Spirits
It Aint What You Say, Sy Oliver
I Hear the Angels Sing, Benny Goodman and Martha Tipton
It’s a Blue World Glenn Miller
South of the Border, Shep Fields

1939 BOOKS:

Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Adventures of a Young Man, John Dos Passos
The Wild Palms, William Faulkner
Captain Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forester
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Carl Sandburg
Captain Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forester

Pulitzer Prize Fiction: The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Late 1930s Louella Parsons is at the height of her powers, and being heard by millions on her Hollywood Hotel radio show. (6/124)

JAN1939 Photoplay publishes an article called “Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives” and causes a near scandal. 184/96 says it was published DEC1938 and written under a pseudonym by Sheilah Graham. “Unwed couples they may be termed…but they go everywhere together and do everything in pairs…build houses near each other…mother and father each other’s kids…to the world their official status is ‘just friends’. No more.” The article caused shock waves through the studios, exposing the private lives of Gable and Lombard, Taylor and Stanwyck, Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, and Constance Bennett and Gilbert Roland.

JAN1939 Ria Langham divorces husband, Clark Gable, helping Las Vegas earn the title of “Divorce Capital of the World.” http://www.lasvegassun.com/history/timeline/

JAN1939 Hedda Hopper devotes her entire column to condemning the fact that Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard won starring roles in Gone with the Wind. She reports receiving a phone call informing her that “Mr. Selznick had decided upon his Scarlett, Vivien Leigh, and Leslie Howard for Ashley. “Now, why call me?” Hopper asked. “Why not the House of Parliament in England, and say: ‘Well, you’ve won again.’ ” She went on to criticize Selznick’s two-year search for “his Scarlett” and considered it an insult to “every girl born here” that “out of millions of American girls couldn’t find one to suit him.” (p69/152)

05JAN1939 In the AUG1938 deal signed with Selznick, MGM promises to “deliver” Gable for the part of ‘Rhett Butler’ on January 5, 1939. http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=1840

26JAN1939 Principal photography for “Gone With The Wind” commences with the movie’s opening

01FEB1939 An unprecedented level of security was required for the seven-week shoot of Warner Bros.’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy, February 1 to March 18, 1939. After Germany invaded Poland in September, the gestapo rounded up seven cinema owners who had screened the movie and hanged them. (155/p59 & 60)

13FEB1939 Cukor leaves “Gone With The Wind” (13/80) (21/145)

20FEB1939 The Nazi-aligned German American Bund counted 25,000 members, many of whom attended a swastika-draped rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. (155/p34)

Late FEB1939 Ben Hecht rewrites Fleming’s script for “Gone With The Wind” (13/86)

MAR1939 The filming of the Atlanta Railway Station scene from “Gone With The Wind.” (13/105)

03MAR1939 Selznick and Hitchcock sign an exclusive 7-year deal paying Hitchcock at $40,000 per picture. On 15MAR1939, Selznick announces their project will be Rebecca. (p277/129)

16MAR1939 Principle filming finished on The Wizard of Oz. (21/148)

28MAR1939 Madrid falls to the Fascists and Roosevelt recognizes the Franco government on 01APR. (26/291) (72/149)

01APR1939 Spanish Civil War comes to an end when the last of the Republican forces surrendered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939

01APR1939 Warner Bros. transports 350 people including Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart to Dodge City, Kansas for the premiere of the movie Dodge City. (21/148)

20APR1939 Newly-signed to David O. Selznick, Ingrid Bergman arrives in New York. Selznick wants her to change her name because it sounds too German, but she refuses. (21/148)

30APR1939 The New York World’s Fair, “Building The World of Tomorrow,” opens to the public attracting 206,000 visitors on what was once a marshy wasteland in Flushing Meadows, just east of the great metropolis. President Roosevelt was on hand for the opening, and his speech was televised to 200 TV screens set up across the fair, making him the first U.S. president to appear on television.

03MAY1939 Los Angeles’ Union Station opens on land that was once the city’s Chinatown.

04MAY1939 Carmen Miranda signs a movie contract with Hollywood and arrivss in the US on 4 May 1939with her band, the Bando da Lua. By 1946 she is Hollywood’s highest-paid entertainer and top female tax payer in the United States,earning more than $200,000 that year (=$2.2 million in 2010 adjusted for inflation), according to IRS records. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Miranda#Career

06MAY1939 Ingrid Bergman arrives in LA and stays at Selznick’s home until a house can be leased for her during the filming of “Intermezzo”. She leaves early AUG1939 by train to return to Sweden. (104/65)

22MAY1939 GWTW: The legendary scenes of Scarlett wandering through the train shed and out into the railroad yard, surrounded by thousands of squirming, bleeding, wounded Confederate soldiers, were captured using an oversize construction crane (no film crane in the world would have been tall enough to accommodate the 90-foot elevation required). Unfortunately, it was discovered that this crane’s hacking motor caused the camera on-board to vibrate. And so, the ever-resourceful Ray Klume eliminated that motor entirely by having the entire contraption, which weighed in at ten tons, instead pushed down a concrete ramp 150 feet long while, again manually, jacking the jib into the sky and over the extras. Those Confederate extras, and who really knows how many there were that day, were supplemented with another eight hundred articulated mannequins. (161/p??)

27JUN1930 Principle photography on Gone with the Wind finished. Sort of. There are many reshoots still to be done, but this was the “official” last day of filming. Also – this is the day the “Frankly my Dear” scene was filmed though at the time. “Frankly” was not included, nor was the word “damn.” This would be one of the last reshoots, stemming from disappointed feedback from two test audiences. (Facebook “GWTW…But Not Forgotten”)

28JUN1939 The first regular transatlantic passenger air service begins when PanAm flies its Dixie Clipper with 22 passengers from Long Island, New York to Lisbon, Portugal. http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7E1930s2/Time/1938/1938fr.html (79/16)

JUN1939 Garbo meets nutritionist Gayelord Hauser, who will become a major influence in her life. She begins work on Ninotchka. November 9, 1939 –Ninotchka is released and is a triumphant success. Garbo will garner her final Academy Award nomination for the film. She will lose to Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind.

01JUL1939 Principal photography for “Gone With The Wind” is finished. (13/137)

18JUL1939 Los Angeles preview of The Wizard of Oz after which execs decide to take out “Over the Rainbow”. (21/149)

20JUL1939 Orson Welles arrives in Hollywood and checks into the Chateau Marmont. (21/149)

21JUL1939 Orson Welles and Houseman sign their contract with RKO. (58/1)

AUG1939 James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March and screenwriter Philip Dunne tell the HUAC at its San Francisco hearings that they are not communists. (21/15)

15AUG1939 The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman’s (21/149) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939

17AUG1939 New York premiere at Loew’s Capital of The Wizard of Oz. It was accompanied during its Capital run by a stage show with Garland and Rooney. This is the first time in almost five years that the Capitol offers a live act along with a feature film, and the added entertainment undoubtedly contributes to the box-office records Oz sets during its initial weeks. On opening day it plays to a phenomenal 37,000 paid admissions. By week’s end it had generated $93,000 at the Capitol, but despite its quick start, Oz slowed in the hinterlands and ran out of steam in its initial release. (p268/129)

21AUG1939 Orson Welles signs 2-picture deal with RKO. (21/150)

23AUG 1939 Hitler and Stalin sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to divide Europe between themselves (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and eastern Poland to the USSR; Lithuania and western Poland to Germany) so they would not have to fight on two fronts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939#August, (75/170) The news is made known on 24AUG and sends a shockwave around the world, especially in Hollywood where it had the effect of shattering the informal coalition between Communist Party members and progressive-minded, liberal writers, actors and directors. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League lost most of its important members and was forced to change its name.

The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League changed its name to Hollywood League for Democratic Action. They printed a newsletter under the name of “Hollywood Now” which was discontinued in 1940. The organization was financed by membership dues, contributions, motion picture producers, and prominent stage and screen stars. By 1942, this organization was no longer in existence. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/hollywoodleague.htm

Late AUG 1939 Retakes of opening scenes on Tara’s front porch for Gone With The Wind. (13/??)

31AUG1939 Premiere of ‘The Women’ at Grauman’s. (21/150)

01SEP1939 Germany invades Poland. (23/330)

03SEP1939 Following Britain’s final ultimatum to Germany, war breaks out in Europe with The United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia declaring war on Germany. (19/333), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939#September

05SEP1939 The United States declares its neutrality in the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939#September

05SEP1939 Ginger Rogers, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

07SEP1939 The May Co. department store on the northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd and Fairfax Ave opens.

SEP1939 2-week heatwave

09SEP1939 GWTW: surprise previews held at the Fox Theater in Riverside. (21/146) (51.??)

24SEP1939 Carl Laemmle dies of a heart attack.

30SEP1939 The first televised football game (Fordham vs. Waynesboro College) airs.
http://www.greenville-pa.com/History/MC_Timeline/MC_Timeline_1901_1950.htm

10OCT1939 Judy Garland, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

18OCT1939 David O. Selznick holds a second preview of Gone With the Wind at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara. That audience was just as wild with excitement as the September 9 Riverside audience had been.

20OCT1939 1939 David O. Selznick sends a memo to Will H. Hayes at Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. requesting permission to include the word “damn” in his film of Gone with the Wind. He receives approval as well as a $5000 fine. Selznick says it was some of the best money he’d ever spent.

21OCT1939 Hedda Hopper outscoops Louella Parsons for the first time with the announcement that the President’s son – Jimmy Roosevelt – was getting a divorce. … The opening shots had been fired, and the feud had officially begun. (15/210)

OCT1939 Hedda Hopper broke a story that made the front page of the Los Angeles Times and her career as a gossip columnist. In an “ exclusive ” interview with James Roosevelt , eldest son of President Roosevelt and a producer and executive vice president at Samuel Goldwyn Studios , Hopper confronted “ Jimmy ” about the state of his marriage. “ Is it true,” she asked, “that you and your wife are going to be divorced?” Roosevelt “refused to deny or affirm” the truth of Hopper’s question, and her story went on to detail his geographic separation from his wife, his public appearances with another woman, and his moves toward divorce. (p17/152)

OCT1939 Lana Turner is the first Hollywood star reported to be wearing nylons. (21/151)

25OCT1939 Betty Grable signs with 20th Century Fox. (21/151)

27OCT1939 David O. Selznick receives permission from the Hays Office’s board of directors to use a controversial word – “Damn” – in Rhett Butler’s final farewell to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Selznick only got permission to use that take by paying $25,000, which represented the fine for violating the section of the 1934 Production Code covering obscenity and profanity.

06NOV1939 The radio show Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood debuts with Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host (the show ran until 1951 and made Hopper a powerful figure in the Hollywood elite). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939

16NOV1939 Al Capone is freed from Alcatraz. https://timelines.ws/states/CAL1923_1961.HTML

22NOV1939 The murder of Harry Greenberg takes place for which Ben Siegel and accomplice Frankie Carbo, goes on trial MAY1942. (39/66)
Ben Siegel’s invasion of Hollywood was resented by local racketeers, and gangland warfare flared intermittently. One of the first victims of the underworld feuding was Harry (Big Greenie) Greenberg, who was cut down in front of his flat at 1804 Vista Del Mar Ave. Nov. 22, 1939. (JP)

NOV1939 Streamline Modern Academy Theater opens at 3141 West Manchester Boulevard, Inglewood. (51/96) http://cinematreasures.org/theater/7/

30NOV1939 Winter War begins: Soviet forces attack Finland and reach the Mannerheim Line, starting the war, three months after the invasion of Poland by Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939

05DEC1939 Orson Welles submits his prelim budget for “Heart of Darkness” – $1,057,761 (58/12)

12DEC1939 Douglas Fairbanks Sr dies of a heart attack at his beach house at the age of 56. His wife at the time – Sylvia Ashley will later become the 4^th Mrs. Clark Gable. (p250/130)

15DEC1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone With The Wind.

DEC1939 After attending a preview of Gone with the Wind, Hopper backs off from her criticism of the casting and instead used the film to make an argument against intervention in the European war. After seeing Vivien Leigh’s performance in the film, Hopper had to “do something I dislike very much. And that is, chew my own words . In January , I devoted a whole column in a seething, scornful denunciation of David O . Selznick because he couldn’t find in this country a Scarlett — therefore chose an English girl. And now, by golly, I’ve got to congratulate him and everyone concerned for picking Vivien Leigh. It’s an incredible, unbelievable performance.” (p71/152)

16DEC1939 The renovated (by the Hollywood Reporter’s Billy Wilkerson) Arrowhead Springs resort opens with a celebrity-packed gala. (p171/145)

28DEC1939 Gone With The Wind Hollywood premiere at Carthay Circle. (21/146) See 28/119 for description of the night.

Late 1930s Adrian at MGM is earning $75,000 a year – the same as the president of the United States. (47/214)

1939 Imported by David O. Selznick, Alfred Hitchcock arrives in Hollywood to make Rebecca. (48/21) (77/270)

1939 Raymond Chandler publishes The Big Sleep, the first of his detective novels set in Los Angeles. https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/blog/historical-timeline-los-angeles

1939 Joe DiMaggio was nicknamed the “Yankee Clipper” by Yankee’s stadium announcer Arch McDonald, when he likened DiMaggio’s speed and range in the outfield to the then-new Pan American airliner.

1939 Howard Hughes buys Transcontinental and Western Air (the precursor to TWA) and asks Dave Chasen to make it the first airline to serve passengers hot food – on good china and linens – instead of the usual boxed sandwiches. (48/36)

1939 A new category is added to the Oscars: Special Effects. (p67/114)

1939 Busby Berkeley moves from Warner Bros. to MGM. (215/107)

1939 While planning his American film debut – Rebecca – Alfred Hitchcock has his first run-in with Joseph Breen. (77/109)

1939 By the end of the 1930s, France and Great Britain were the only major European countries with democratic governments. (79/13)

1939 New attorney general of California, Earl Warren, outlaws all oceangoing gambling off the California coastline. (39/28)

1939 The Hollywood Anti Nazi League was founded in 1937, in an effort to unite Jewish people and others in the Hollywood movie colony into organizing to combat Naziism on a local scale. In 1939, the Hollywood Anti Nazi League changed its name to Hollywood League for Democratic Action. They printed a newsletter under the name of “Hollywood Now” which was discontinued in 1940. The organization was financed by membership dues, contributions, motion picture producers, and prominent stage and screen stars. By 1942, this organization was no longer in existence. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/hollywoodleague.htm

1939 Partnering with Simon & Schuster Robert de Graafissues line of books in the U.S. similar to Britain’s successful Penguin Books, called the Pocket Books imprint. The term “pocket book” became synonymous with paperback in English-speaking North America. Booksellers were initially reluctant to buy his books. But Woolworths, placed a large order on the books, and the books sold extremely well. After this initial success, booksellers were no longer reluctant to stock paperbacks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperback_books#History

1939 Jolly Time popcorn

1939 Igor Sikorsky invents the first successful helicopter

1939 Douglas Fairbanks Snr dies of heart attack at 56yo at 705 Palisades Beach Rd, Pac Palis (2/54)

1939 Walt Disney builds studio at 500 S. Buena Vista St, Burbank on 51 acres he paid $100,000 for. (2/70) and moves in 1940. (http://www.americassuburb.com/timeline.html)

1939 The future rival to film — television — was formally introduced at the New York World’s Fair in Queens. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) unveiled a display of its first TV sets for sale to the American public. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones11939 Nylon stockings are sold for the first time. (23/333)

1939 Mulholland Highway renamed Mulholland Drive. http://www.studiocityresidents.org/history.php

1939 Baseball game is first televised. (23/333)

1940

Top stars: Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable (21/153)

Top grossing films of 1940

Pinocchio
Fantasia
Boom Town
(tie)Rebecca and Santa Fe Trail
Strike up the band
Strange Cargo
Buck Benny Rides Again
Kitty Foyle
Northwest Passage
Arizona

Pulitzer Prize Fiction: The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

1940 SONGS: (71/242)

I’ll never smile again
When you wish upon a star
Imagination
Fools rush in
When the swallows comes back to Capistrano
Blueberry hill

1940 population of the U.S. is about 132 million; California is the 5^th most populous state with 5.7 million people (79/5)

1940 In 1940 scarcely more than half of all U.S. homes had hot and cold running water, bathtubs and indoor toilets.

1940 In 1940 less than half the population belonged to the institutionalized churches, but by the late 1950s over 63% were officially enrolled. (89/85)

1940s The most popular box-office stars of the entire decade were: James Cagney, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Wallace Beery, Gene Autry, Gary Cooper, Greer Garson, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman. http://www.filmsite.org/40sintro2.html

08JAN1940 The Screen Writers Guild adopts a resolution forbidding its members to advertise in the trade papers. (22/67)

16JAN1940 Police raided Lee Francis’s house of prostitution and arrested dozens of customers, prostitutes, and the grandmotherly Frances. The only arrest in her 40-year career put her out of business. (96/96)

21JAN1940 Ciro’s opens (Hollywood’s largest and grandest nightclub) by W.R. Wilkerson (who also owned the Troc). 1942 to 1957 owned by Herman Hoover. Closed 1957. Opened in 1983 as the Comedy Store. (21/154) (2/34) It was not an immediate success but after a few years and a shift of management, it soon became the choice venue of several classic entertainers. (67/42) (175/145)

31JAN1940 A hardy Vermonter named Ida May Fuller becomes the cery first retiree to receive a monthly Social Security benefit check, that totalled $22.54 (Vanity Fair, April 2009)

07FEB1940 Walt Disney’s animated film Pinocchio is released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_in_film

10FEB1940 Tom & Jerry, created by Hanna & Barbera, debut in MGM’s Puss Gets the Boot. (Tom was called Jasper and Jerry didn’t have a name yet.) http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1940s.html (21/154)

14FEB1940 The cancellation of the Screen Playrights contract is formally announced, a few months after the studios had reported themselves ready to negotiate with the Screen Writers Guild on the basis of a minimum contract running 5 years instead of 7. (72/157)

19FEB1940 Mdelivery of the Citizen Kane script. … During MAR, APR and early MAY the first installments of “Citizen Kane” were written at a guest ranch in Victorville, California. (58/17)

20FEB1940 Tom and Jerry make their debut in the animated cartoon Puss Gets the Boot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_in_film

28FEB1940 Oscars ceremony where Gone With The Wind sweeps the night.

FEB1940 HUAC chairman Martin Dies, in “The Reds in Hollywood” in Liberty magazine, charges that Communists have powerful positions in the industry. The Hollywood Reporter (Feb 10)and Variety (Feb 21) attack his article. (21/155)

03FEB1940 Max Factor’s ad in the Hollywood Reporter announce his “pan-cake” make-up, replacing greasepaint. (21/155)

02MAR1940 Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the short Elmer’s Candid Camera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940

Early APR1940 First draft of Citizen Kane is completed. It’s more than 250 pages long. (58/18)

09APR1940 The Nazis sweep into Denmark and Norway, crushing their defenses like so many sand castles. (64/4) http://www.neveragain.org/1940.htm

MAY1940 Nylon stockings hit the stores and women go wild for them – they last longer, look more attractgive and fit better than silk. (79/62)

09MAY1940 Citizen Kane second draft is finished. (58/24) The prelim budget submitted 14JUN1940 comes in at just over $1 million which is twice the amount specified in Welles’s contract. (58/29)

10MAY1940 Germany invades Belgium, Holland, and France. Blitzkrieg against Great Britain begins. Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill & http://www.neveragain.org/1940.htm

10MAY-22JUN1940 The Invasion of France. http://worldwar2database.com/html/france_40.htm

MAY1940 MGM announces extensive salary and staff cuts (150 staff members go). (19/340)

Late MAY/early JUN1940 The beginning of the most heroic and tragic maneuvers in military history – the evacuation from Dunkirk across the Channel to England. (64/4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dunkirk

10JUN1940 Italy declares war on Britain and France. http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212881/italdewa.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Italy_%281861%E2%80%931946%29

14JUN1940 During the Battle of France, Paris surrenders to the Nazis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France

14JUN1940 MGM’s first movie to criticize the Nazis and support pro-American intervention in the war – The Mortal Storm – opens. (189/107), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032811/

15JUN1940 Mayor Fletcher Bowron, actor Gene Autry, and other dignitaries dedicate the Cahuenga Pass Freeway. A precursor to the Hollywood Freeway, its two frontage roads and eight concrete lanes were divided by two sets of trolley tracks.

22JUN1940 France surrenders. (70/116)

24JUN1940 5th and final draft of Citizen Kane ready for the mimeograph. (58/30) It’s revised estimate comes in at $737,740. (58/31)

27JUN1940 Bugs Bunny makes his official debut in the animated cartoon A Wild Hare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_in_film

29JUN1940 Shooting on Citizen Kane commences. The projection room sequence is the first to be shot. (58/69)

JUL1940 In order to strengthen defenses against possible any threat from overseas, Congress approves funds for the construction of new warships and fighter planes. Even before the fall of France, Congress had voted an increase of more than a billion dollars in military spending. (79/20)

10JUL-31OCT1940 Series of intense raids directed against Great Britain by the German air force after the fall of France during World War II.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9016507?query=battle%20of%20britain&c= aka The Battle of Britain (64/4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain

27JUL1940 Billboard magazine published its first chart ranking the sales of recorded songs.

11AUG1940 Battle of Britain begins with devastating fury. (64/40)

mid-AUG1940 Germany bans MGM movies and 20th Century Fox movies. (21/156)

18AUG1940 Ben Siegel is arrested for the murder of Harry Greenberg while hiding in his attic. He is freed from the County Jail four months later, following a series of scandals which caused the ouster of Dr. Benjamin Blank as jail physician and the removal of a jailer for permitting the suspect many privileges denied less affluent prisoners. (JP)

AUG1940 The astounding success of Selznick International Pictures spells the end of the company. Without a major studio set-up to back him, Selznick has no place to re-invest his tremendous profits and thus faced a huge tax burden. In August 1940, the stockholders vote to dissolve Selznick International Pictures. Selznick immediately form David Selznick Productions but, understandably exhausted after the strain of Gone with the Wind, he is unable to match his earlier success. http://www.hollywood.com/celebrity/David_O_Selznick/196263

28AUG1940 Laurence Olivier’s divorce from Jill Esmond is finalized, freeing him up to marry Vivien Leigh. (GWTW…but not forgotten)

05SEP1940 John Barrymore’s Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

07SEP1940 – 10MAY1941
The London Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the “Blitz” hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 nights in a row. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombingand more than a million houses destroyed or damaged in London alone. London was not the only city to suffer bombing during the Blitz. Other important military and industrial centers, such as Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, Hull, Manchester, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Southampton, were among the cities to suffer heavy air raids and high numbers of casualties.

04SEP1940 Several isolationist leaders formed the America First Committee. The committee’s founders included well-known politicians, writers and entertainers. At the committee’s first big rally in Chicago in SEP, 1000s of people cheered speakers who accused Roosevelt of being a warmonger. Within a year, the committee had a membership of about 800,000 people. (79/23) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee

Early SEP1940 President Roosevelt announces the ‘Destroyers for Bases’ deal which allows the U.S. to build bases in British territory in the Caribbean region and off the Atlantic coast of Canada for 50 (mostly WWI-era) destroyers. It was the Roosevelt administration’s boldest move thus far in its support of Britain. To isolationists, it was a big step closer to U.S. involvement in the war in Europe. (97/19)

14SEP1940 The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, was passed by the Congress of the United States on September 14, 1940, becoming the first peacetime conscription in U.S. history when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law two days later. This Selective Service Act required that men between the ages of 21 and 30 register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made liable for military service, and all men aged 18 to 65 were required to register. (56/298) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Training_and_Service_Act_of_1940
79/22 says that if called up for military service, draftees would be required to serve for one year, but they could not be sent overseas.

16SEP1940 Congress initiates a massive buildup of the armed forces by authorizing the first peacetime draft in history. Polls show 71% of Americans supports the move. (70/13 & 116)

11OCT1940 20th Century-Fox’s Down Argentine Way opens four days before the premiere of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. It will go on to gross $2 million at the box office, making it one of the top ten films of the year, and a star of Carmen Miranda, who will be voted the third most popular star of 1940 and invited to perform for President Roosevelt. (155/p85)

15OCT1940 The Great Dictator, a satiric social commentary film by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_in_film

16OCT1940 Proclamation 2425: “1. The first registration under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 shall take place on Wednesday, the sixteenth day of October, 1940, between the hours of 7 A.M. and 9 P.M.”

OCT 1940 Ultra-left-wing writer Dalton Trumbo joins the MGM payroll to write We Who Are Young (19/347)

23OCT1940 Principle photography on Citizen Kane is completed, however additional retakes continues for several weeks. (58/85) The next day Welles leaves on a 3 week lecture tour through the Southwest and Midwest. (58/87)

27OCT1940 The New York World’s Fair closes its doors after 25 million visitors since 30APR1939. (79/25)

29OCT1940 The first drawing for military service takes place in the blue and gold Departmental Auditorium on Constitution Ave in Washington. (64/75)

31OCT1940 Hollywood Palladium opens at 6215 Sunset, across the street from the Earl Carroll Theater). (14/221). Lana Turner broke ground with a silver shovel. (67/81)
Hollywood Palladium opens at 6215 Sunset, build by L.A. Times publisher Norman Chandler (2/7)
Built be L. A. Times publisher Norman Chandler for $1.6 million, it quickly became the place to dance and to hear the big bands of the day, and performers like Judy Garland, Doris Day, Glenn Miller, Harry James and even Marilyn Monroe. (67/43)
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and its vocalist, the soon to become legendary Frank Sinatra, opened the Hollywood Palladium to rave reviews. Over 6,500 people attended each show during its peak, filling the dance floor, dining areas, and mezzanine. http://hollywoodheritage.org/newsarchive/spring01/palladium.html
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Palladium it opened 23SEP1940
According to http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.lapl.org/pqdweb?index=4&did=410480981&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1211921442&clientId=13322 it opened 31OCT1940

05NOV1940 Election Day – Roosevelt gets 55% of the vote, Willkie gets 45% (64/42) (79/24)
November 5, 1940 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt continues his dominance of presidential politics with a 449 to 82 Electoral College victory over Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie, winning his third presidential election. Roosevelt becomes the first man to hold office for three terms. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1940.html

10NOV1940 Walt Disney agrees to spy on Hollywood subversives for the FBI. (21/156)

13NOV1940 World premiere of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, the first film to be released in a multi-channel sound format (see Fantasound). The film also marked the first use of the click track while recording the soundtrack, overdubbing of orchestral parts, simultaneous multi-track recording and lead to the development of a multi-channel surround system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_in_film

Early 1940s The feud between Louella Parsons and Hedda Hoppa reaches its most sensational peaks. (16/237)

DEC1940 The price of gasoline in Rhode Island was 9 cents a gallon plus 4.5 cents tax per gallon. (97/17)

11DEC1940 Bugsy Siegel walks away Scott free from an indictment for murdering mob turncoat Ralph Greenberg. The same day writer Flora Muir uncovered a $50,000 contribution from Siegel to John Dockweiller, who replaced the corrupt DA Buron Fitts. A year later, as Dockweiller began an investigation in the L.A. police, he died at his desk of pneumonia. Strangely he wasn’t reportedly ill at the time. (190/96)

16DEC1940 Newspapers across the country carry on their front pages a notice that any man between 21 and 35 must register today for selective service. (64/71)

19DEC1940 Romanoff’s – opens at 325 (326?) North Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills. When “Prince Michael Romanoff” (aka Harry Gerguson) decided to open a restaurant, he asked Garden of Allah’ers Benchley, Parker, Jock Whitney and others to chip in. (1/83) In 1951 he moved to 240 S. Rodeo – south of Wilshire – to expand but it was never the same The restaurant prospered through the late 50s but it became hard to fill the room. It also didn’t help that he became ultra Republican in a Democratic community. The restaurant closed New Year’s Eve 1962. (49/53)

21DEC1940 F. Scott Fitzgerald dies at Sheilah Graham’s home. (1/63)

29DEC1940 President Roosevelt gives his “arsenal of democracy” speech in the form of a fireside chat. It is his boldest challenge yet to the resistant forces of isolationism, which was a diminishing but still potent influence in American public opinion. (64/141)

30DEC1940 The Arroyo Seco Parkway opens, modeled after “parkways” built in the east, it is Los Angeles’ first “freeway;” today more commonly known as the Pasadena Freeway. Late 1940/early 41 Controversy over Citizen Kane swells.

1940 A six-mile stretch of the Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway) is opened, becoming the first freeway in the western United States. http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01g.htm

1940 to 1944 780,000 new immigrants moved to Southern California. (42/118)

1940 Hedda Hopper moves her column, Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, from the Esquire Features Syndicate to the Des Moines Register – Tribune Syndicate. (Later, in 1942, she signs with the much larger Chicago Tribune – New York News Syndicate , nearly tripling the number of her readers. (p18/152)

1940 ‘Original Screenplay’ category is added to the Academy Awards. (189/107)

1940 Wallichs Music City opens on the northwest corner of Sunset Blvd and Vine St. It will be there until 1978. Owner Glenn E. Wallichs, along with Tin Pan Alley songsmith Johnny Mercer and ex-Paramount movie producer Buddy De Sylva will go on found Capitol Records in a small office on Vine Street in 1942. In 1946, they move to larger offices above the store. After Capitol Records moved to the Capitol Tower in 1956, the offices became the home of Dot Records.

1941

Top stars: Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Abbott & Costello (21/156)

“Blithe Spirit” play… “Citizen Kane”… “The Maltese Falcon” movie…
Top grossing films of 1941: Sergeant York…2 Buck Privates, starring Abbott and Costello…3 Tobacco Road…4 Dumbo…5 How Green Was My Valley

1941 SONGS: I hear a rhapsody…There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of dover…Chattanoog Choo Choo…Intermezzo…Till Reveille (71/242)

1941 BOOKS: Sales of the bible increased 25% through out the war…The White Cliffs of Dover by Alice Miller…My Friend Flicker by Mary O’Hara (71/247)

JAN1941 Bette Davis becomes the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals. Faced with their disapproval and resistance, Davis resigns, and is succeeded by her predecessor, Walter Wanger. (Wikipedia)

02JAN1941 The Andrews Sisters record “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” on Decca Records. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2811

03JAN1941 The Mocambo opens at 8588 Sunset. Closed 1958 (2/33) (21/158)

Owned by Charlie Morrison (former agent) and Felix Young. (8/118) – Closes 1958, shortly after Morrison’s death. (14/217)

03JAN1941 When an advance leak in the Hollywood Reporter described the showing of a rough cut of Citizen Kane as a showing for “a group of friends”, Welles is forced to apologize to Hedda Hopper and invite her also because of a long-standing promise that she would be the first to see the film. (58/111

06JAN1941 President Roosevelt delivers his state of the union address at the opening of the 77^th Congress in which he announces his Four Freedoms. (64/198

13JAN1941 A front page story in the Hollywood Reporter carried a claim, attributed to “authoritative Hearst sources” that Hearts papers were about to begin a series of editorials attacking Hollywood’s practice of hiring refugees and immigrants jobs that could be held by Americans. The deliberate aim, the article went on, was to bring pressure on the other studios to force RKO to shelve Citizen Kane. Meanwhile Louella Parsons began waging a one-person campaign of intimidation by telephone. The strategy worked: in a short time. George Schafer was approached by Nicholas Schenck, head of MGM’s parent company with an offer on behalf of Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood execs to reimburse RKO its total picture cost if it would destroy the film. (58/111)

21JAN1941 RKO gives its official reply to the offer (see above): Citizen Kane would be released as scheduled with one of the largest publicity campaigns in the studio’s history. (58/112)

JAN1941 20th Century-Fox’s Darryl Zanuck is commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Signal Corps reserve. (155/p101)

Early 1941 Howard Hughes launches a huge publicity build up for his latest protégée Jane Russell and her movie ‘The Outlaw’ (which wouldn’t be released until 1943. (77/136 and 251 and onward)

13FEB1941 The final cut of Citizen Kane – approved by the lawyers – is shipped from Hollywood with a running time of 1 hour 59 minutes 16 seconds. (59/113)

13FEB1941 Abbott and Costello have their first starring roles in Buck Privates. (21/158)

27FEB1941 For the first time, the winners’ names of the Academy Awards are sealed in an envelope. The ceremony was at the Biltmore; President Roosevelt addressed the crowd via radio. (21/158) (44/69)

FEB&MAR1941 There were special previews in RKO’s screening rooms throughout FEB and MAR, sometimes more than one the same evening. The guest lists were studded with Hollywood royalty. This one for 06MAR included Cary Grant, David O. Selznick, Roy Disney, Walter Wanger, Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn, director Leo McCarey, Harry Cohn, and William Wyler. (58/115)

21MAR1941 After first bringing it to the people in a radio speech on 29DEC1940 and debating through the early months of 1941, Roosevelt’s ‘Lend-Lease’ bill is passed through both houses of Congress. (79/27)

21MAR1941 The ‘Motion Picture Society for the Americas’ is chartered by organized the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), a U.S. government agency lead by Nelson Rockefeller, which worked with the Hollywood studios during the 1940s to illuminate how government agencies, Latin American artists and performers, business interests, and popular culture industries worked together to shift both international policies and perceptions of Latin America. (77/168)

24MAR1941 Carmen Miranda, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

28MAR1941 Radio show Hollywood Premiere, hosted by Louella Parsons, debuts on CBS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_in_radio

06APR1941 Hearst papers played up an attack by the American Legion on a Welles radio show, “His Honor, the Mayor” (“The Free Company”, CBS, April 6) as un-American and subversive; not coincidentally, a Heart reporter was publicity chief for the Legion. Radio City Music Hall decided not to open Citizen Kane after all; Schafer told Kael it was because of an implied threat by Louella Parsons to Nelson Rockefeller that a defamatory story on his grandfather in Hearst’s American Weekly might be a possible consequence. For fear of retaliation, other exhibitors also refused to handle the film, so that Schaefer and his sales organization were forced to line up what theaters they could on their own. (58/115)

11APR1941 Roosevelt creates the Office of Price Administration to plan wage and price controls. (70/116)

25APR1941 Joseph Breen quits his $50,000 job at the Hays Office to take a $100,000 general manager job at RKO. By APR1942 he’s back at the Hays Office. (77/132)

Spring 1941 The Buffalo Springs Airport opens on Santa Catalina Island. (Until then, all air transport took place with seaplanes.) Later that same year, the US Army took it over and managed it, for all the branches, during WWII. Commercial flights resumed in 1946.

01MAY1941 Citizen Kane shown for the first time at the RKO Palace in NY. (21/159) It opened in Chicago on 06MAY and in Los Angeles on 08MAY. (58/115)

http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1940s.html

15MAY1941 After what is delicately termed “an amicable agreement on certain revisions” a Code Seal is issued for ‘The Outlaw’…but Howard Hughes keeps the film in statsis. (77/254)

23MAY1941 George Brown (Mafia-controlled union leader who later became President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) and Willy Bioff (along with Paul Ricca, Frank Nitti, Nick Circella, Charlie Gioe, and Phil D’Andrea) were indicted for extortion and tax evasion. (75/211) http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_208.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Bioff

27MAY1941 Germany’s mighty battleship the Bismarck is attacked and sunk by the Royal Navy after it had sunk the British battlecruiser Hood on 24MAY1941. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERchron.htm (79/29)

28MAY1941 Walt Disney fires two-dozen staffers he considers agitators, possibly Communists. He did not want a union shop, no matter what. The next day, more than two hundred, out of the over six hundred, employees of the studio went on strike. The strike lasted most of the summer of 1941.

MAY1941 The Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) is created to assist people to prepare for air raids. (79/35)

MAY1941 Glenn Miller’s two week engagement at the Hollywood Palladium attracted throngs of crowds, with 5200 dancers crowding the floor on opening night. (82/50)

15MAY to 17JUL 1941 Joe DiMaggio – aka the Yankee Clipper – hits 56 games in a row. (79/36)

18JUN1941 Nine years after the Guild had organized, the Screen Writers Guild have their first contract. (72/173)

22JUN1941 Roosevelt declares unlimited state of emergency. (70/116)

22JUN1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the most dramatic turning points of WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_22

25JUN1941 President Roosevelt signs executive order 8802, which bars discrimination in federal defense industry work. (82/20)

JUN1941 Even after Dunkirk, the fall of France, and the Blitz in the year to come, by June 1941, a Gallup poll found 79 percent of the American public remained opposed to entering the war. (155/p62)

JUL1941 Japan invades Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchia). (70/14)

JUL1941 U.S. troops land on Iceland (whose Danish government had been conquered by Germany in April) to prevent German forces from using it as a base. (79/28)

25JUL1941 Roosevelt embargoes shipments of scrap iron and gasoline to Japan and freezes all Japanese assets in the U.S. (70/117) (79/33)

28JUL1941 Harry Cohn ends his 18-year marriage to Rose. Three day later, he married Joan Perry at the St Regis in New York. (p182/141)

07AUG1941 Cecil B. DeMille, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

15AUG1941 The New York Times announces Roosevelt and Churchill have secretly gotten together and draft their 8 peace aims. (64/200) They met aboard a warship off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The resulting agreement – called the Atlantic Charter – was no a military or political alliance between the U.S. and Britain but it pledged the 2 nations to achieve a common end. (79/31)

23AUG1941 Ava Gardner and her sister arrive in L.A. with a 7-year, $50-a-week MGM contract in hand. They stay at the Plaza Hotel at Hollywood and Vine for a week at MGM’s expense and after that, they’re on their own. (Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner.)

11JUL1941 The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel opens.

11SEP1941 Ground is broken for The Pentagon in Washington, DC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon

09SEP1941 During WWII, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was besieged by Nazi Germany and co-belligerent Finland. The siege lasted 872 days from SEP1941 to JAN1944. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of major cities in modern history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad#History

27SEP1941 The Tripartite Pact, also called the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany by Saburo Kurusu of Japan, Adolf Hitler of Germany, and Galeazzo Ciano (foreign minister) of Italy entering as a military alliance and officially founding the Axis Powers of World War II that opposed the Allied Powers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Pact (79/32)

03OCT1941 The Maltese Falcon premieres at the Strand. (21/159)

OCT1941 A U-boat torpedoes the U.S. destroyer USS Kearny, which was protecting a convoy sailing south of Iceland. Two weeks later another German torpedo sinks the destroyer USS Reuben James, causing the loss of 115 men. The President gives the U.S. Navy orders to attack any German planes for vessels in the safety zone.

OCT1941 Due to insufficient funding, the Mt Rushmore sculptures are completed, having been begun in 1927. (23/334) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore

OCT1941 Future Confidential publisher Bob Harrison publishes a front runner Beauty Parade magazine. (88/7)

05NOV1941 Dory Schary signs a 1-year deal for $1750 per week as the Executive Producter of MGM’s B-movie operation. (p368/129)

30NOV1941 What turns out to be Greta Garbo’s final movie, the George Cukor directed Two Faced Woman is released with a Production Code Administration seal of approval but is condemned by the Legion of Decency – it is the first studio release to be condemned by the Legion. (77/144) and is a flop.

In Two Faced Woman Garbo’s role was ill-suited to her. It attempted to Americaize her since the war makes it impossible for the studios to reap its usual European profits from a Garbo film. (194/107)

18NOV1941 Much of the provisions of the Neutrality Acts were repealed on November 17, 1941: merchant vessels were allowed to be armed and to carry any cargoes to belligerent nations. (72/174) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Act

07DEC1941 Japanese launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor at 0755…by 0945 it’s over. The United States enters World War II.

Neighborhood movie business reports a 50% drop in attendance as people stay home to listen to radio bulletins about Pearl Harbor. (21/160) (23/336) (64/49)

On orders from Roosevelt martial law is declared throughout the Territory of Hawaii at 4.30pm (64/52)

Many Americans first heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor when news bulletins interrupted the popular Sunday afternoon radio broadcast of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra’s conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was a refugee from Fascist Italy. (79/37)

08DEC1941 Roosevelt delivers his “day of infamy” speech. The US officially declares war on Japan.
China officially declares war on Japan. The Netherlands declares war on Japan.
Japan launches invasions in Hong Kong, Malaya, Manila, and Singapore.

Japan launches invasions in the Philippines we started beginning of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines from the Filipino, American and Allied forces in the Philippines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941

09DEC1941 Roosevelt’s Fireside chat on radio: On the Declaration of War with Japan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_in_radio

MID DEC1941 in the days immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, newspaper throughout the West Coast fanned the public’s fears with graphic maps and details which specifically emphasized that the Hawaiian Islands were only 2550 miles away from California. As fear mounted, rumors quickly proliferated. The most frequent object of these rumors were Japanese Americans. Japanese gardeners would allegedly be discovered in a nearby California town or city cleverly trimming lawn bushes into directio0nal markers for that soon-to-come Japanese air attack. Of course such rumors could never be verified. (82/14)

12DEC1941 (72/179) Three days after Pearl Harbor, the Hollywood Victory Committee, operating out of Beverly Hills, was organized as a clearing house for the volunteer war efforts of all Hollywood talent. The “soldiers in greasepaint” – performers from stage, screen and radio – toured hospitals, USO camps, and fighting fronts and sold War Bonds in fevered drives. The Hollywood Victory Committee was chaired by actor Kenneth Thompson, with director Mark Sandrich as vice-chairman and MGM publicity head Howard Strickling as secretary. The board also featured people such as James Cagney, Howard Eastabrook and Eddie Mannix.

The Actors Committee was a coalition that included Charles Boyer, Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, Cary Grant, John Garfield, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers, Merle Oberson, Rosalind Russell, and Adolphe Menjou who, although he had been Hitler’s guest at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, had transferred his devotion to the American cause.

The material for these patriotic efforts was being provided by the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, a group organized within a week after the Pearl Harbor bombing…It was, theoretically, a pool of writer talent to fill the needs of the Hollywood Victory Committee and of the government…The members of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization were interested in doing anything they could for the war effort, from writing camp shows to writing political speeches.

DEC1941/JAN1942 There were people so terrified of an attack by Japanese planes that they sold their houses or simply left for inland safety. Suddenly real estate in the Pacific Palisades was cheap. (72/176)

20DEC1941 U.S. freighter the Emidio is attacked by Japanese submarine off the coast of Eureka/Santa Cruz coast. The Emilio was torpedoed and floated up the coast and finally came to rest in the Crescent City harbor. http://www.triplicate.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=3452

(42/115) http://www.militarymuseum.org/Agwiworld.html

Three other freighters – the Larry Doheny, the Agwiworld and the H. M Storey were also fired upon almost within sight of the shoreline.

22DEC1941 Japanese subs attack and sink the Union Oil Tanker Montebello off the central California coast (near San Luis Obispo. … That same day, Life magazine hit newsstands and includes a “helpful” issue captioned with illustrated photos on how to tell “Japs from Chinese.” (82/11)

25DEC1941 The first public performance of the song “White Christmas” was by Bing Crosby on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall. Bing records it on 29MAY1942 and it’s released on 30JUL1942 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the musical film Holiday Inn, which opened in New York on 04AUG1942. The song was initially overshadowed by Holiday Inn‘s first hit song: “Be Careful, It’s My Heart”. By the end of OCT1942, “White Christmas” topped the Your Hit Parade chart, where it remained until well into the new year. Its mix of melancholy with comforting images of home resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II.

27DEC1941 Rubber rationing goes into effect. (71/233)
For more on ration/rations/rationed/rationing, see http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1674.html
and http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm

DEC1941 2 weeks after Pearl Harbor, the War Powers Act is passed, giving the president extraordinary powers to manage the nation’s industrial might. (70/21)

DEC1941 Ernst Lubitsch’s butler was picked up by the FBI and named as a relative of one of the top-ranking Nazis in Europe. He was “paymaster” for the US Nazi sympathizers. Lubitsch was shocked. (28/135)

Late DEC1941 Congress revised the Selective Service Act, making all men between the ages of 18 and 44 eligible to be called up for service. (79/44)

13DEC1941 Two Faced Woman is released. It receives the worst reviews of Garbo’s career, is condemned by the Catholic Church (who later reduce their judgments after some changes are made) and does poorly at the box office. http://hiwaay.net/~oliver/timeline4.htm

End DEC1941 By the end of DEC, Japanese forces had captures two U.S. Pacific islands, Wake and Guam, and landed in the Philippines. In the Philippines, U.S. Douglas MacArthur left the city of Manila and retreated to the Bataan Peninsular with about 75,000 U.S. and Filipino troops. (79/51)

End of 1941 President Roosevelt appoints former newspaperman named Lowell Mellett as the chief of the Office of War Information’s Bureau of Motion Pictures. (42/21)

1941 The Revenue Act of 1941 lowers the top tax bracket to only $200,000 That put someone earning a salary of $200,000 in the 90% tax bracket, resulting in take-home pay of only $20,000 after taxes. Hollywood’s highest-paid talent could avoid that tax bit only by decreasing their work load (and therefore their income level) or finding some alternative to a salaried income. Thus top talents grew wary of long-term contracts and salaried income; instead they pursued profit-sharing and one-picture deals whereby their salaries could be invested into a picture and taxed as capital gains at a rate of only 25%. These changing tax laws had a staggering effect on both the studio system and the star system. It’s worth noting that the Act posted a great a threat to the stability of the studio system as did the federal antitrust suits. (p299/129)

1941 The USO was founded in 1941 in response to a request from President Roosevelt to provide morale and recreation services to U.S. uniformed military personnel. Roosevelt was elected as its honorary chairman. This request brought together six civilian organizations: the Salvation Army, YMCA, YWCA, National Catholic Community Service, National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USO

1941 Mines Field was dedicated and opened as the official airport of Los Angeles in 1930, and the city purchased it to be a municipal airfield in 1937. The name was officially changed to Los Angeles Airport in 1941, and to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 1949. Prior to that time, the main airport for Los Angeles was the “Grand Central Airport” in Glendale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_International_Airport#The_.22X.22_in_LAX

1941 In 1941, the Vegas boom kicks of with the building of Tom Hull’s El Rancho Vegas. By 1945 there are 10 hotels and 13 casinos lit with neon. (39/33)

1941 Samuel Goldwyn distributes through RKO (until 1952) (p56/114)

1941 Ava Gardner arrives in Hollywood with her sister and an MGM contract in hand. They check into the Hollywood Plaza hotel but then move to the cheaper Wilcox Hotel on Selma Ave when the realities of a starlet’s low pay kick in. (p241/113)

1941 Adrian – MGM’s leading costume designer – leaves MGM (in a huff) to be replaced by Irene (nee Irene Lentz). (59/72) He opens his own couture salon, which he would maintain until 1952. (p49/122)

1941 During WWII there was a $5000 limit on the costs of movie sets. (57/126)

1941 The Hollywood Women’s Press Club debuts its Golden Apple Awards Christmas party. http://www.oscars.org/mhl/sc/hollywood_72.html

1941 Hearst cleared out some of his warehouses and put things up for sale – including his collection of arms and armor – at Gimbel’s department store in New York in 1941. (46/183)

1941 Photoplay (one of the first film fan magazine) merges with another fan magazine, Movie Mirror. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoplay

1941 Americans witness the highly publicized banter between Howard Hughes and the Production Code Administration over The Outlaw. (16/245)

1941 Aerosol spray cans invented by American inventors, Lyle David Goodloe and W.N. Sullivan.

1941 Reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo retires early at age 36, after the release of the disastrous box-office flop Two-Faced Woman. http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1940s.html

1941 Romanoff’s opens in Beverly Hills by Prince Michael Romanoff, whose real name was Harry Gerguson from Cincinnati who arrive in Hollywood in 1927. (6/167) Romanoff’s closed on New Years Eve, 1962.

1941 Workers at the Disney Studio call a strike because of abominably low salaries, poor working conditions, a series of lay-offs and Disney’s adamant refusal to sit down and negotiate. (22/182)

1941 The FCC authorizes TB broadcasting and by the end of the year, over 1 million sets have been sold. (23/337)

1941 Japan declares war on the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, NZ, and South Africa. (23/336)

1941 Germany increases its air attacks on England. (23/334)

1941 Water from the Colorado Aqueduct begins flowing. (23/33&

1941 Aerosol spray cans are introduced. (23/337)

1942

Top stars: Abbott & Costello, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper (21/164)

“Holiday Inn”/ “White Christmas”… “Yankee Doodle Dandy” movie…
Top grossing films of 1942: 1 Mrs. Miniver…2 Reap the Wild Wind…3 Random Harvest…4 Yankee Doodle Dandy…5 Road to Morocco…6 Holiday Inn

1942 SONGS: White Christmas…Deep in the heart of Texas…Don’t sit under the apple tree (71/243)

1942 BOOKS: The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck…The Robe by Lloyd Douglas (71/247)

Early 1942 Slacks explode in popularity among women, as much as 5 to 10 times higher than 1941. (71/170)

Early 1942 The practice of displaying banners in the window (with one to more blue stars, each star for each son serving in the military, a gold star meant a son had given his life) was started in WWI and began again early 1942. (79/70)

01JAN1942 In the Oval Office, the Declaration by the United Nations is signed by President Roosevelt and members of the signing countries. (64/208) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nation#History

02JAN1942 Manila falls to Japan causing MacArthur and troups to withdraw to Bataan, Philippine. (70/117)

06JAN1942 In his annual message to Congress, Roosevelt enunciates the Four Freedoms which he says must stand as the moral foundation of whatever role the nation might have to play in world affairs: Freedom of speech and expression, Freedom for every person to worship God in his own way, Freedom from want, Freedom from fear. (64/68)

10JAN1942 Unknown starlet, Ava Gardner, marries MGM’s top star, Mickey Rooney.

16JAN1942 Actress Carole Lombard is killed in a plane crash west of Las Vegas while returning home to Los Angeles from a War Bond tour. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942_in_film

JAN1942 Lowell Mellett Cover, appointed by the President as Coordinator of Motion Pictures, arrives in Hollywood for a meeting with the Industries War Activities Committee, which had been formed to mesh the industry’s production with government requests for the duration of the war.

JAN1942 The War Production Board is created. (79/54)

30JAN1942 The official Hollywood USO Club opens at 1531 Cahuenga Boulevard. By the time it closes in JUN1947, it will have entertained more than 10 million service men and women. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19640055/the_los_angeles_times/

30JAN1942 On January 30, 1942, the Emergency Price Control Act granted the Office of Price Administration (OPA) the authority to set price limits and ration food and other commodities in order to discourage hoarding and ensure the equitable distribution of scarce resources.
By the spring of 1942 – Americans were unable to purchase sugar without government-issued food coupons.
November 1942 – Vouchers for coffee were introduced in November
By March of 1943 – Meat, cheese, fats, canned fish, canned milk and other processed foods were added to the list of rationed provisions.
27APR1942 – All sales of sugar were halted. Grocers began selling sugar again on May 5, but only to customers who presented their new war-ration books. Provided the grocer even had sugar to sell, he would tear out the coupon valid for the current two-week period. The shopper would pay about 8¢ and receive one pound of sugar, his or her allotment for that 14-day period.

LATE JAN/EARLY FEB 1942 Ben Siegel goes on trial for the NOV1939 murder of Harry Greenberg. The high profile case attracts widespread attention in Los Angeles, and Siegel’s notoriety becomes impossible to ignore. When George Raft was called to testify, crowds flocked to the courtroom. Siegel’s preferential treatment in jail was a hot topic at Hollywood’s society parties. He refused to eat prison food and had Wilkerson arrange for Ciro’s finest meals to be delivered to his cell. He was allowed female visitors and was even granted leave for “dental visits”. Shortly after the trial began, witnesses against Siegel and his accomplice Frankie Carbo suddenly died, stripping the DA of his case and on 05FEB all charges are dismissed. (39/66)

09FEB1942 Production of civilian cars was halted by the government so that vehicles could be made for the military. (71/153)

15FEB1942 The first New York Times crossword puzzle was published in the Sunday edition of the newspaper.

19FEB1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order number 9066 ordering the internment of Japanese citizens. 35,000 Japanese-American citizens of Los Angles are sent to internment camps. (79/42)

19FEB1942 Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 gives the head of the Western Defense Command – General DeWitt – the authority to expel as many Japanese as he chose from the entire area under his command. DeWitt promptly orders all of them, aliens and citizens alike, eastward from the coast. (42/114)

23FEB1942 A submarine surfaces off the coast of Santa Barbara, Southern California and fired 25 shells at an oil refinery known as the Ellwood oil fields 12 miles north of Santa Barbara. Some shells landed a mile inland but did little damage. (70/28) (71/88) (82/18) http://www.militarymuseum.org/Ellwood.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwood_Oil_Field#World_War_II_shelling

26FEB1942 “The Battle of Los Angeles,” a false alarm of a Japanese attack, causes city-wide scare, including anti aircraft fire into the night sky. (82/18)

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t38381.html

http://www.militarymuseum.org/BattleofLA.html

28FEB1942 The first U.S. warship is sunk by enemy subs – the USS Jabob Jones off Cape May, NJ. (71/88)

17MAR1942 MacArthur withdraws to Australia in the wake of advancing Japanese forces. (70/117) 1000s of starving U.S. and Filipino troops die on their way into captivity in what became known as the Bataan Death March. (79/51)

SPRING 1942 The first gasoline rationing in the spring of 1942 was invoked less to conserve gasoline that to conserve tires. (64/152) There was a resurgence of pedestrianism among the populace who could not buy cars, gas or tires. (82/3)

SPRING1942 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps – WAAC – is created and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Army_Corps

Congress enacts measures forming women’s auxiliaries of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard. (23/338) (64/195) (70/39)

Week of 24APR1942 Sugar rationing commences. (71/82) The sale of sugar is totally prohibited, and it was strictly regulated afterwards. Because food was rationed, children were urged to join the Clean Plate Club, eating every bit of food on the plate. Nothing was to be wasted. (79/69) “Roses are red, violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, remember?” Walter Winchell (82/13)

APR1942 General DeWitt decrees the compulsory evacuation of 100,000 Japanese who live within 200 miles of the coast to 16 “assembly centers” – sports stadiums, fairgrounds, tent cities (including the Santa Anita racetrack). … Just as Hollywood had been mildly surprised at the disappearance of its gardeners, it now looked the other way as still more of its inhabitants looked the other way. (42/115+116)

18APR1942 The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo was the first air raid by the United States to strike the Japanese home island of Honshū during World War II. It demonstrated that the Japanese home islands were vulnerable to Allied air attack. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid

APR1942 To ensure that movies were patriotic and fully supported the war, in April 1942 the government created the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP), part of the Domestic Branch of the Office of War Information (OWI), the government propaganda agency. (70/59)

MAY1942 After quitting his job at the Hays Office 25APR1941 to take a general manager job at RKO, Joseph Breen returns to the Hays Office. (77/132)

04-08MAY1942 The Battle of the Coral Sea takes place and was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States and Australia. It was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other. It was also the first naval battle in history in which neither side’s ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. It is considered a tactical victory for Japan, since the U.S. lost fleet carrier USS Lexington in exchange for the light carrier Shōhō. At the same time, the battle was a strategic victory for the Allies because the Japanese abandoned their attempt to land troops to take Port Moresby, New Guinea. The engagement ended with no clear victor, but the damage suffered and experience gained by both sides set the stage for the Battle of Midway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Coral_Sea

MAY1942 Despite a commonly held view that woman’s place was in the home, Congress passed a law creating the Woman’s Auxiliary Army Corps. (WAAC) About 13,000 women volunteered immediately. A year later the WAAC became the Women’s Army Corps. (WAC)

15MAY1942 The closest thing to home for fighters on a Hollywood furlough was “Mom” Lehr’s Hollywood Guild and Canteen at 1284 North Crescent Heights Boulevard. To 1000s from all the allied nations who sought temporary refuge in Hollywood, “Mom’s” place was the nearest berth to heaven. On an average, 800 stayed there each week night, with as many as 1200 on weekends. (14/196+197)

MAY1942 The film industry organized the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a special train packed with entertainers scheduled to whistle-stop the county in May 1942. raising funds for Army and Navy relief. Over the next three years it raised over $2 million. On board was an array of film and radio stars: James Cagney, Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, Joan Bennett, Joan Blondell, Olivia de Havilland, Cary Grant, Merle Oberon, Pat O’Brien, Spencer Tracy, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr, Laurel and Hardy, Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby, Dezi Arnaz, and Bob Hope. From ‘Embattled Dreams’ by Kevin Starr

JUN1942 The Office of War Information (OWI) is formed under the directorship of CBS news analyst Elmer David as is tasked with coordinating wartime propaganda across the civilian media. (77/155)

04JUN1942 Mrs. Miniver, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, opens at Radio City Music Hall in New York, in what will become a record-breaking 10-week run. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942_in_film

04-06JUN1942 The Battle of Midway. (70/117)
June 4-7, 1942 – The Battle of the Midway is fought at Midway Islands in the Pacific with the Japanese fleet encountering its first major defeat of the war against the United States military. As the Battle of Midway comes to an end on June 7, Japan invades the Aleutian Islands, the first invasion of American soil in 128 years. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1940.html

06JUN1942 On June 6, 1942, six months almost to the day after Pearl Harbor, the Navy issues a list of bars in Los Angeles it was putting off limits to sailors; within days, the Army released a list of its own. As many as 62 bars, taverns and “cocktail resorts” were banned by both services. Both branches’ lists included the same three clubs in the county’s West Hollywood district, including two on the Strip – Café Internationale and Chez Boheme at 8950 Sunset – and Club Flamingo on La Brea Avenue.

13JUN1942 The White House announces the creation of the Office of War Information and the appointment of its chief, Elmer Davis. (http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/st/~ksoroka/hollywood3.html)

27JUN1942 Press announces that FBI have arrested 8 German agents landed by submarines in NY and FL. (99/291)

JUL1942 The U.S. Navy establishes the Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in which 86,000 women served under the command of Lieutenant Commander Mildred McAfee. (79/50)

22JUL1942 The U.S. issues gasoline rationing coupons. (70/17)

24JUL1942 Henry Fonda, Rita Hayworth, Charles Laughton, Edward G. Robinson, and Charles Boyer, Grauman’s ceremony http://www.amug.org/~scrnsrc/chinese_theater.html

04AUG1942 Holiday Inn premieres and along with it, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. (21/166)

07AUG1942 to FEB1943 The battle of Guadalcanal http://worldwar2database.com/html/guadalcanal.htm (79/52)

The United States Marines land on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in the first American offensive of World War II. A naval battle would commence on November 12 for three days with the U.S. Navy able to retain control despite heavy losses. http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1940.html

AUG1942 The Sleepy Lagoon murder. The case arose from the homicide of Jose Diaz, whose body was found at the Sleepy Lagoon reservoir in southeast Los Angeles, California on August 2, 1942. Racial prejudice and press hysteria, primarily in the Herald-Express and The Los Angeles Times, resulted in the arrest of 600 Latino youths in connection to the murder and led to the criminal trial of 21 Latino young men; the convictions were reversed on appeal in 1944. The case is considered a precursor to the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepy_Lagoon_murder

AUG1942 The Bracero Program begins, allowing Mexican citizens to enter the U.S. to work on farms for specific periods of time. (79/63) (The program doesn’t end until 1964.)

12AUG1942 Clark Gable enlisted in California on Aug. 12, 1942, with the statement to the news media: “There is a war to win, and I consider it my right to fight.” (Carole Lombard died in January.) He was ordered to Miami for basic training. http://www.geocities.com/cactus_st/article/article122.html
The chain that held his dog tag also held a gold locket that enclosed the remnant of the earring Eddie Mannix found near Lombard’s body. The only solder allowed redesign his dog tag, Gable remade a box to hold Lombard’s picture. Mannix arranged for him to serve with MGM cameraman Andrew McIntrye who wouldn’t leave is side for 2 years. (208/96)

13AUG1942 Walt Disney’s animated film Bambi opens at Radio City Music Hall in New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942_in_film

19AUG1942 The fear of enemy attack during World War II led to all Hollywood premieres (and their bright lights) being banned for the duration. The last pre-war premiere was held on August 19, 1942 for Pride of the Yankees at the Pantages Theatre, and was attended by (among others) Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Jack Benny, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Victor Mature, Hedy Lamarr, Irene Dunne, Dorothy Lamour and Sam Goldwyn. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=186588844743613&story_fbid=381684751900687

20AUG1942 The entire Pacific Coast is ordered dimmed out: not more klieg light Hollywood premieres. (21/166)

28AUG1942 The Office of Price Administration (OPA) is established within the Office for Emergency Management of the U.S. Government by Executive Order 8875. The functions of the OPA were originally to stabilize prices and rents after the outbreak of WWII. (79/55) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_price_administration

28AUG1942 The premiere of The Talk of the Town and subsequent celebrations at Ciro’s raises $6500 for the Hollywood Canteen and breaks racial barriers for the first time in Hollywood. (p16/119)

SEP1942 The Hollywood War Activities Committee’s Sept “Stars Over America” was the culmination of a nine month drive by such big names as Bette Davis, Walter Pidgeon, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy, Ronald Colman, Janet Gaynor, Ginger Rogers, Edward Arnold, Gene Tierney, Andy Devine, James Cagney, Fred Astair, Dorothy Lamour, Jane Wyman, Greer Garson, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Irene Dunne, Paulette Goddard, Myrna Loy, and Charles Laughton. In SEP alone, “Stars Over America” sold $775 million worth of bonds, including $86 million raised at a huge rally at Madison Square Garden. (94/209)

03OCT1942 Bette Davis and John Garfield found the Hollywood Canteen at 1451 Cahuenga (on the corner of Sunset) at a former night-join called The Barn, with Eddie Cantor MC’ing (2/11) (6/178) (14/201) (28/137) Bolstered with funds donated by Ciro’s and Columbia. Studio artists and cartoonists decorated the walls, Cary Grant donated a piano, Jack Warner provided linoleum and countless hours of work by studios plumbers, electricians and plumbers into a cosy Western-themed nightclub. Opening night stars paid $100 a seat to watch the festivities and the parade of servicemen who crammed the hall. Among the people there were Bette Davis and John Garfield, Abbott and Costello, Kay Kyser, Rudy Vallee, Duke Ellington played for the dancers; and among the hostesses were Carole Landis, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth. (40/208) (41/108) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Canteen

08OCT1942 The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes premieres on radio sponsored by Camel cigarettes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_and_Costello#Radio

OCT1942 By October 1942, 2700 people or 12% of the Hollywood movie industry were in the armed forces. (p124/123)

NOV1942 Coffee rationing commences. (71/82)

NOV1942 Twentieth Century-Fox signs Alfred Hitchcock to direct Lifeboat at $300,000 for 18 weeks. (p326/129)

08NOV1942 The first American invaders swarm ashore in French North Africa, reviving the Allied hopes that the tide could be turned in their favor. (64/210) (70/50) (79/67) http://americasbesthistory.home.att.net/abhtimeline1940.html

26NOV1942 Casablanca premiere at the Hollywood Theater in NY. (21/166) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942_in_film

01DEC1942 Gas rationing begins on the West Coast, curbing the use of location shots. (21/167)

1942 Los Angeles’ Westlake Park at Wilshire and Alvarado is renamed MacArthur Park in honor of General Douglas MacArthur.

NOV1942 Tallulah was playing in “The Skin of Our Teeth” in Washington DC (104/263)

02NOV1942 Errol Flynn faces preliminary hearing on charges filed 16OCT42 by 17yo Betty Hansen that he had been intimate with her on 27SEP42 at the Bel-Air estate of British sportsman Fred McEnvoy. http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.lapl.org/pqdweb?index=3&did=416444101&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1178740114&clientId=13322

Errol Flynn was charged with three counts of statutory rape of teenagers Peggy LaRue Satterlee and Betsy Hansen, although later acquitted during his Los Angeles trial in 1943. His career and personal life suffered as a result. The risqué expression “In like Flynn” may have been derived from his alleged sexual indiscretions and womanizing.

http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1940s.html

www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/actors/errol-flynn/

DEC1942 As gasoline rationing commences, traffic noticeably thins out. With families unable to take their ritual Sunday drives or their long-distance vacations, many parks and tourist attractions close down. (71/82) See JAN1943

02DEC1942 Enrico Fermi achieves a chain reaction at the University of Chicago, splitting uranium atoms into a new form of matter called plutonium. He had found the key to unleashing the power of atomic energy, including the destructive potential of the atomic bomb. (70/52)

05DEC1942 War Dept announces that no men over the age of 38 will be inducted into the military.

19DEC1942 On the Pacific coast, a tanker ship was shelled by a Japanese submarine off Santa Cruz. Four other ships were also attacked along California, two of them sinking. (71/88)

25DEC1942 Premiere of Arabian Nights – Universal’s first foray into Technicolor. The movie is ambitious by Universal’s standards – its budget is just over $900,000 – but it goes onto gross over $4 million worldwide, and kickstarts a succession of exotic romances starring Jon Hall and Maria Montez. (p351/129)

1942 and much of 1943 The war was going against the U.S. in 1942 and much of 1943. (64/101) The national mood fluctuated inevitably according to the fortunes of war. During most of 1942 a bleakness overhung the military outlook as the Japanese rampaged across the Pacific and fascism scored almost unchecked triumphs in Europe and North Africa. (64/175)

31DEC1942 Sinatra opens at the Paramount Theater in NY. It is there that ‘Sinatramania’ really begins, an event which led Sinatra’s rival Bing Crosby to jokingly declare: “Frank’s the kind of singer that comes along once in a lifetime, but why did he have to come along in mine?” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra#Early_life
After a couple of years with Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra launches his solo career. (70/86)

WWII YEARS Ben Siegel’s personal income during this period is a mystery but it is said to be enormous, in the neighborhood of $20,000 a month from race tracks, races and race wire services. It is likely that he owned a small percentage of Agua Caliente and the Clover Club

1942 In his first move up the ladder, Mickey Cohen opens a bookie shop a block from the Warner studio. While his partners, Fred and Joe Sica, handled bookmaking operations in the film and aircraft factories, Cohen oversaw Dincara Stock Farm – a horse ranch with a casino. (115/p60)

1940s(?) Winchell’s readership in the NY Mirror reaches 48 million when Walter started broadcasting on Sunday night, he had reached 89 of 100 adults in the US. (99/218)

1942 Edith Head: “A directive that we referred to as L-85 had come from Washington, which drastically limited the amount of fabric that could be used in any garment construction—including Hollywood costumes. It meant to pleats, no cuffs, no ruffles, no long jackets, no extra frills. (p55/122)

1942 Bette Davis is the highest paid woman in America. (FB)

1942 By 1942 , Hedda Hopper had her column, articles appearing in movie fan and mainstream magazines, a radio gossip show, and more movie work. (In 1944 she earned an income of about $ 100,000 ( the equivalent of about $ 800,000 today.)

1942 Frank Ross, a producer at RKO buys the rights to The Robe before the book has even been released, but the movie version gets stuck in preproduction. Ten years later, in August 1952, Darryl F. Zanuck buys the rights, determined to reclaim the religious from Cecil B. DeMille. (p129/45)

1942 The shortage of tin cans during WWII encouraged the growth of frozen foods which could be packaged in paper, cellophane and cardboard which remained available during the war.

1942 V-Mail (Victory Mail) – a system of sending letters shrunk onto thumb-sized microfilm starts. (79/73) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail

1942 The first motion picture unit of the Army Air Forces was established in 1942. The position of the creative person in Hollywood was undergoing a change. Over the course of the next 3 years, 228 films were produced – educational films, orientation films, special psychological testing films. It was a cooperative set-up, with no credits listed. (72/189)

1942 After a year of renovation, the El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard re-opens as the Hollywood Paramount Theater where it remained the west coast flagship for Paramount Pictures until the studio was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the antitrust case U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures, et al. to divest itself of its theater holdings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Capitan_Theatre

1942 Spyros Skouras, a one-time Greek shepherd boy, becomes 20th Century Fox’s president, operating from New York. (47/51) Left in 1962 when he was replaced by Darryl Zanuck.

1942 During a shakeup in management, Wendell L. Willkie (the 1940 Republican nominee for President) succeeded Joseph Schenck as Chairman of Fox Film. https://centurycitycc.com/fox-studios-historical-timeline/

1942 Dave Chasen takes over the running of Saks Fifth Avenue’s rooftop restaurant on top of their Wilshire Boulevard store, changing the name from “Terrace Snack Bar” to “Chasen’s Atop Saks Fifth Avenue.” Following that he starts concessions at the Agua Caliente race track in Tijuana and El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. (48/35)

1942 Marion Davies moves out of her beachfront Santa Monica mansion, which has been her primary residence since 1929. She will sell in in 1947 for $600,000.

1942 By the end of 1942, all special curbs (8pm curfew) on California’s 58,000 Italian and 23,000 German aliens were dropped. (42/113)

1942 Fearing for his personal safety (perhaps from the gangsters and mobsters who came into regular contact with), Billy Wilkerson pays gambling ship proprietor Tony Conero $6500 for his allegedly bulletproof, custom-built, pale blue Cadillac. (39/65)

1942 As more and more women entered the industrial workforce, clothing manufacturers reported in 1943 that sales of women’s trousers rose by 500% over 1941 levels.

1942 Movie attendance reaches a record high of 80 million a week. A total of 488 features were made, a number never to be surpassed. (59/184)

1942 The Movie Theater – a theater devoted to silent movies – is built by John and Dorothy Hampton on Fairfax and opens. (22/427)

1942 Congress lowers the draft age to 18. (23/338)

1942 The Social Security system is adopted in 1935 and fully implemented in 1942. (56/139)

1942 US begins strict rationing of food and materials needed for the war effort: sugar, coffee, fuel oil, gasoline, butter, meats, and, finally, shoes. A coupon system begins in July. (23/339)

Timeline – 1934 to 1942