1930's: Overview - About | Important Events of the 1930s

1930

Movies: Abraham Lincoln, directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Walter Huston and Una Merkel; All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Lew Ayres; Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown and starring Greta Garbo; The Big House, directed by George Hill and starring Wallace Beery; The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh and starring John Wayne (in his first role); The Dawn Patrol, directed by Howard Hawks and starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Hell's Angels, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Ben Lyon and Jean Harlow; Lightnin', directed by Henry King and starring Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, and Joel McCrea; Little Caesar, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson; The Royal Family of Broadway, directed by George Cukor and Cyril Gardner and starring Frederic March and Ina Claire; Tom Sawyer, directed by John Cromwell and starring Jackie Coogan and Mitzie Green.
Fiction: Max Brand, Destry Rides Again; Pearl Buck, East Wind, West Wind; Edward Dahlberg, Bottom Dogs; John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Edna Ferber, Cimarron; Michael Gold,asp-server-03asp-server-03asp-server-03 Jews Without Money; Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon; Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy; Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas.
Popular Songs: "Beyond the Blue Horizon," by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling, lyrics by Leo Robin; "Georgia on My Mind," by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Stuart Gorrell; "It Happened in Monterey," by Mabel Wayne, lyrics by Billy Rose; "My Baby Just Cares for Me," by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson; "Sing You Sinners," by W. Franke Harling, lyrics by Sam Coslow; "Three Little Words," by Harry Ruby, lyrics by Bert Kalmar.

Americans go to the movies in unprecedented numbers as the Vitascope widens screens and the new talkies provide an added dimension to the viewing experience.
Grant Wood's painting American Gothic, in which he portrays his sister and his dentist as rural farmers, helps launch American Regionalism.

7 Jan.: Children of Darkness, by Edwin Justus Mayer, opens at New York's Biltmore Theater.
14 Jan.: Bobby Clark and Red Nichols's Band—including Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack Teagarden—perform songs by George and Ira Gershwin, such as "I've Got a Crush on You," in Strike Up the Band, which opens at New York's Times Square Theater. The musical is based on the book by George S. Kaufman.
18 Feb.: Simple Simon, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, opens at New York's Ziegfeld Theater. Songs include "Ten Cents a Dance" and "I Still Believe in You."
21 Feb.: Marc Connelly's play Green Pastures, an adaptation of a 1928 collection of tales by Roark Bradford depicting God and heaven as envisioned by a black country preacher, opens at New York's Mansfield Theater and runs for 640 performances.
28 Mar.: Walter Piston's Suite for Orchestra is first performed at Boston's Symphony Hall.
14 Apr.: Philip Barry's Hotel Universe, starring Ruth Ford, Glenn Anders, Earle Larimore, and Morris Carnovsky, opens at New York's Martin Beck Theater.
3 May: Ogden Nash publishes his poem "Spring Comes to Murray Hill" in The New Yorker. Shortly thereafter he joins the magazine's staff and becomes famous for his light verse.
24 Sept.: The play Once in a Lifetime, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart and starring Spring Byington, opens at New York's Music Box Theater and runs for 401 performances.
14 Oct.: Girl Crazy, starring Ethel Merman, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Walter Donaldson and Ira Gershwin, opens at New York's Alvin Theater and runs for 272 performances. Songs include "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," and "Little White Lies."
16 Oct.: The Garrick Gaieties, starring Sterling Holloway, Rosalind Russell, and Imogene Coca, opens at New York's Guild Theater. Songs include "I'm Only Human After All," by Vernon Duke with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and Ira Gershwin.
22 Oct.: Ethel Waters and Cecil Mack's Choir perform songs such as Eubie Blake's "Memories of You" in Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930, which opens at New York's Royale Theater.
13 Nov.: W. A. Drake's play adaptation of the Vicki Baum novel Grand Hotel, starring Henry Hull and Sam Jaffe, opens at New York's National Theater and runs for 459 performances.
18 Nov.: Bob Hope, Marilyn Miller, Eddie Foy, and Fred and Adele Astaire star in the musical Smiles, which opens at New York's Ziegfeld Theater.
8 Dec.: The New Yorkers, starring Hope Williams, Ann Pennington, Jimmy Durante, Lew Clayton, and Eddie Jackson, and with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, opens at New York's Broadway Theater. Songs include "Love for Sale."

1931

Movies: An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Sylvia Sidney, Phillips Holmes, and Frances Dee; City Lights, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; Dishonored, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich; Dracula, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi; Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff; Monkey Business, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring the Marx Brothers; Public Enemy, directed by William Wellman and starring James Cagney, Jean Harlow, and Mae Clarke; Scarface, directed by Howard Hawks and starring Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak; Skippy, directed by Norman Taurog and starring Jackie Cooper; Street Scene, directed by King Vidor and starring Sylvia Sidney and William Collier Jr.; Svengali, directed by Archie Mayo and starring John Barrymore.
Fiction: Pearl Buck, The Good Earth; Louis Colman, Lumber; James Gould Cozzens, S.S. San Pedro; William Faulkner, Sanctuary; Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key; Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer; Nathanael West, The Dream Life of Balso Snell.
Popular Songs: "All of Me," by Seymour Simons and Gerald Marks; "Dream a Little Dream of Me," by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt, lyrics by Gus Kahn; "Heart-aches," by Al Hoffman, lyrics by John Klenner; "I Don't Know Why (I Just Do)" by Fred E. Ahlert, lyrics by Roy Turk; "I Love a Parade," by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler; "I Surrender, Dear," by Harry Barris of the Rhythm Boys, lyrics by Gordon Clifford; "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You," by Sam Theard; "Lazy River," by Hoagy Carmichael and Sidney Arodin; "Love Letters in the Sand," by J. Fred Coots, lyrics by Nick and Charles Kenny; "Mood Indigo," by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Albany "Barney" Bigard and Irving Mills; "Out of Nowhere," by Edward Heyman and John Green; "Sweet and Lovely," by Gus Arnheim, Harry Tobias, and Jules Lemare; "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," by Leon Rene, Otis Rene, and Clarence Muse; "When I Take My Sugar to Tea," by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal and Pierre Norman Connor; "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)" by Fred E. Ahlert with lyrics by Roy Turk, performed by Bing Crosby.

U.S. movie theaters begin showing double features to increase business. Many unemployed workers spend their afternoons at the movies.
The Whitney Museum of American Art is founded by railroad heiress-sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

26 Jan.: Green Grow the Lilacs, by Lynn Riggs and starring Helen Westley, Lee Strasberg, and Franchot Tone, opens at New York's Guild Theater,
3 Mar.: Congress votes to designate "The Star Spangled Banner" the national anthem.
3 Apr.: In a concert celebrating the Boston Symphony's fiftieth anniversary, Paul Hindemith's Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass Instruments is first performed at the Symphony Hall.
1 May: Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith, who has played comic fat-girl roles on Broadway and performs in a singing role at New York's Palace Theater, makes her radio debut singing "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain."
19 May: Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt, starring Rose's wife, Fanny Brice, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Rose and Mort Dixon, opens at New York's Forty-fourth Street Theater.
3 June: Fred and Adele Astaire make their final appearance together on the first revolving stage to be used in a musical in The Band Wagon, which opens at the New Amsterdam Theater.
l July: The Ziegfeld Follies, starring Helen Morgan, Ruth Etting, and Harry Richman, with music by Walter Donaldson, Dave Stamper, and others, and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and others, opens at New York's Ziegfeld Theater.
27 July: Naked chorus girls are a part of the lineup for Earl Carroll's Vanities, which opens at the new three-thousand-seat Earl Carroll Theater on Seventh Avenue at Fiftieth Street in New York City. In 1932 the show is modified and moved to the Broadway Theater, starring Milton Berle and Helen Broderick.
5 Oct.: The House of Connelly, by Paul Green and starring Stella Adler, Franchot Tone, Clifford Oders, and Rose McClendon, opens at New York's Martin Beck Theater,
13 Oct.: Everybody's Welcome, starring Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Ann Pennington, and Harriet Lake (Georgia Sothern), opens at New York's Shubert Theater. Songs include Herman Hupfield's "As Time Goes By."
26 Oct.: Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, starring Alia Nazimova and Alice Brady, opens at New York's Guild Theater, where it runs for 150 performances.
22 Nov.: Ferde Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite" is first performed at Chicago's Studebaker Hall in a concert by Paul Whitman and His Orchestra.
26 Dec.: With music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, Of Thee I Sing, starring Victor Moore and William Gaxton, opens at New York's Music Box Theater and runs for 441 performances. Songs include "Love is Sweeping the Country" and the title song.

1932

Movies: The Big Broadcast, musical directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Kate Smith, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Cab Calloway, Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers, and the Boswell Sisters; A Bill of Divorcement, directed by George Cukor and starring John Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn; Blonde Venus, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, and Cary Grant; Grand Hotel, directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, and Jean Hersholt; Horse Feathers, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring the Marx Brothers; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Paul Muni; Million Dollar Legs, directed by Edward Cline and starring W. C. Fields and Jack Oakie; Trouble in Paradise, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, and Herbert Marshall.
Fiction: Sherwood Anderson, Beyond Desire; Fielding Burke, Call Home the Heart; Edward Dahlberg, From Flushing to Calvary; John Dos Passos, 1919; James T. Farrell, Young Lonigan: A Boyhood in Chicago Streets; William Faulkner, Light in August; Erie Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Velvet Claws (first Perry Mason detective novel); Grace Lumpkin, To Make My Bread; Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods.
Popular Songs: "How Deep is the Ocean?," by Irving Berlin; "I'm Gettin' Sentimental over You," by George Bassman, lyrics by Ned Washington; "(I Don't Stand) A Ghost of a Chance (with You)," by Victor Young, lyrics by Bing Crosby and Ned Washington; "(I'd Love to Spend) One Hour with You," by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Leo Robin; "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing)" by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills; "I Wanna Be Loved," by John Green, lyrics by Billy Rose and Edward Heyman; "Minnie the Moocher," by Cab Calloway with lyrics by Irving Mills & Clarence Gaskill; "Say It Isn't So," by Irving Berlin; "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," by Al Dubin and Harry Warren; "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine," by Gene Autry and Jimmy Long; "Willow Weep for Me," by Ann Ronell.

Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway's extended essay on bullfighting, is published.
Painter Ben Shahn produces Sacco and Vanzetti, the first of twenty-three gouaches inspired by the 1927 execution.
Polaroid film, the first synthetic light-polarizing film, is invented by Harvard College dropout Edwin Herbert Land.
Sculptor and painter Alexander Calder's motorized and hand-cranked "stabiles" are exhibited in Paris.
Sculptor Joseph Cornell exhibits his first boxes containing found objects in New York City.
Washington's Folger Library opens. Its vast William Shakespeare collection is funded by the late Standard Oil chairman Henry Clay Folger,

Feb.: Weston Electrical Instruments commercially introduces the Photronic Photoelectric Cell, the first exposure meter for cameras, developed by William Nelson Goodwin Jr.
4 Apr.: George Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good, starring Beatrice G. Lilly, Hope Williams, and Claude Rains, opens at New York's Guild Theater.
30 Apr.: Walter Piston's Suite for Flute and Piano is first performed at the artists' colony Yaddo, outside Saratoga Springs, New York.
22 Oct.: Dinner at Eight by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, and starring Constance Collier, opens at New York's Music Box Theater and runs for 232 performances. The next year the play is made into a movie, directed by George Cukor and starring John Barrymore and Jean Harlow.
8 Nov.: Music in the Air, starring Al Shean and Walter Slezak, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, opens at New York's Alvin Theater.
29 Nov.: Fred Astaire and Claire Luce star in Gay Divorce, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, which opens at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater and runs for 248 performances.
12 Dec.: Biography, by S. N. Behrman, starring Earle Larimore and Ina Claire, opens at New York's Guild Theater and runs for 283 performances.
27 Dec.: Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City's Rockefeller Center.
29 Dec.: Composer Roy Harris's From the Gayety and Sadness of the American Scene is first performed in Los Angeles.

1933

Movies: 42nd Street, musical directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, and Dick Powell; Counsellor-at-Law, directed by William Wyler and starring John Barrymore and Bebe Daniels; Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey and starring the Marx Brothers; Flying Down to Rio, musical directed by Thornton Freeland and starring Dolores Del Rio, Ginger Rogers, and Fred Astaire; Footlight Parade, musical directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell; Gold Diggers of 1933, musical directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, and Dick Powell, with songs including "We're in the Money," by Al Dubin and Harry Warren; International House, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and starring W. C. Fields, George Burns, and Gracie Allen; King Kong, directed by Ernest Schoedsack and starring Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot; Little Women, directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett; Man's Castle, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young; Penthouse, directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy; Queen Christina, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert; She Done Him Wrong, directed by Lowell Sherman and starring Cary Grant and Mae West (as Diamond Lil, who speaks the line "Come up and see me sometime"); Sons of the Desert, directed by William A. Seiter and starring Laurel and Hardy.
Fiction: Erskine Caldwell, God's Little Acre; Jack Conroy, The Disinherited; James Gould Cozzens, The Last Adam; Josephine Herbst, Pity Is Not Enough; Meyer Levin, The New Bridge; Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts.
Popular Songs: "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?," by Harry Revel and Mack Gordon; "Everything I Have Is Yours," by Burton Lane, lyrics by Harold Adamson; "I Like Mountain Music," by Frank Weldon, lyrics by James Cavanaugh; "Lazybones," by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Johnny Mercer; "Let's Fall in Love," by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler; "Love Is the Sweetest Thing," by Ray Noble; "It's only a Paper Moon," by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and Billy Rose; "Sophisticated Lady," by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish; "Stormy Weather," by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler.

Justice John M. Woolsey of the U.S. District Court in New York rules that James Joyce's Ulysses, previously banned for reasons of obscenity, is acceptable for publication in the United States.
Diego Rivera produces the mural Man at the Crossroads, which is destroyed because it portrays Russian Communist leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, for New York's Radio City Music Hall.
Darryl Zanuck of Warner Bros. and other Hollywood executives organize 20th Century Pictures.
An animated feature by Walt Disney, The Three Little Pigs, with songs such as "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf," by Frank E. Churchill, captures the imagination of children and adults.

24 Jan.: Noël Coward's Design for Living, starring Coward, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne, opens at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater and runs for 135 performances. That year the play is made into a film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and stars Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins.
27 May: To celebrate the Century of Progress, fan dancer Sally Rand appears at the Chicago World's Fair, attracting thousands.
30 Aug.: Samuel Barber's School for Scandal Overture is first performed at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell.
26 Sept.: The Group Theatre production of Sidney Kingsley's Men in White, starring Morris Carnovsky, Luther Adler, and Elia Kazan, opens at New York's Broad-hurst Theater, where it runs for 367 performances.
30 Sept.: Based on the book by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart, the musical As Thousands Cheer, with music and lyrics by Berlin, Edward Heyman, and Richard Myers, opens at New York's Music Box Theater on Broadway. The show, starring Marilyn Miller, Clifton Webb, and Ethel Waters, runs for 400 performances.
2 Oct.: Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness, opens at New York's Guild Theater and stars George M. Cohan, William Post Jr., Elisha Cook Jr., and Gene Lockhart. The play runs for 289 performances.
24 Oct.: Mulatto, by Langston Hughes, opens at New York's Vanderbilt Theater and stars Rose McClendon.
18 Nov.: Ray Middleton, George Murphy, Bob Hope, and Fay Templeton star in Roberta, which opens at New York's New Ambassador Theater. With music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Otto Harbach, songs include "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "The Touch of Your Hand."
4 Dec.: Jack Kirkland's adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel Tobacco Road, starring Henry Hull, opens at New York's Masque Theater and runs for 3,182 performances.

1934

Movies: Babes in Toyland, directed by Gus Meins and Charles R. Rogers and starring Laurel and Hardy; Bright Eyes, musical directed by David Butler and starring Shirley Temple, who sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert; It's A Gift, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring W. C. Fields; The Lost Patrol, directed by John Ford and starring Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff; Man of Aran, documentary by Robert Flaherty; She Loves Me Not, musical directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Bing Crosby, Miriam Hopkins, and Kitty Carlisle; Stand Up and Cheer, musical directed by Hamilton McFadden and starring Shirley Temple, who sings "Baby Take a Bow"; Tarzan and His Mate, directed by Cedric Gibbons and Jack Conway and starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan; Treasure Island, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper; Twentieth Century, directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard; What Every Woman Knows, directed by Gregory La Cava and starring Helen Hayes and Brian Aherne.
Fiction: James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice; Robert Cantwell, The Land of Plenty; Edward Dahlberg, Those Who Perish; James T. Farrell, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night; Waldo Frank, The Death and Birth of David Markand: An American Story; Daniel Fuchs, Summer in Williamsburg; Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man; Josephine Herbst, The Executioner Waits; Edward Newhouse, You Can't Sleep Here; John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra; Henry Roth, Call It Sleep; William Saroyan, Daring Young Man; Tess Slesinger, The Unpossessed; Irving Stone, Lust for Life; Rex Stout, Ferde-lance; Jerome Weidman, I Can Get It for You Wholesale; Nathanael West, A Cool Million.
Popular Songs: "The Beer Barrel Polka," (Roll Out the Barrel) by Czech songwriters Jaromir Vejvoda, Wladimir A. Timm, and Vasek Zeman; "Blue Moon," by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart; "Deep Purple," by Peter De Rose, lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "I Only Have Eyes for You," by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin; "Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day," by Mabel Wayne, lyrics by Maurice Sigler and Al Hoffman; "Love Thy Neighbor," by Harry Revel, lyrics by Mack Gordon; "Miss Otis Regrets," "The Object of My Affection," by Pinky Tomlin, Coy Poe, and Jimmy Grier; "On the Good Ship Lollipop," by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Sidney Clare; "Solitude," by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Eddie De Lange and Irving Mills; "Stars Fell on Alabama," by Frank Perkins, lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," by Bob Nolan; "The Very Thought of You," by Ray Noble; "Winter Wonderland," by Felix Bernard, lyrics by Richard B. Smith; "You Oughta Be in Pictures," by Dana Suesse, lyrics by Edward Heyman.

The Berkshire Music Festival has its first season in Lenox, Massachusetts, on the 210-acre Tappan family estate, which accomodates fourteen thousand concertgoers.
Thomas Hart Benton produces several paintings, including Lord, Heal the Child; Homestead; Ploughing It Under; and Going Home.
Chicago clock maker Laurens Hammond patents the Hammond organ, the world's first pipeless organ—an invention that leads to a whole generation of electrically amplified instruments.
Harlem's Apollo Theater is opened by Leo Brecher and Frank Schiffman, who allow black patrons and book blues singer Bessie Smith, making the Apollo the leading showcase for black performers.
Fritz Lang, director of the acclaimed films Metropolis (1926) and M (1931), continues his career in the United States after fleeing Germany to avoid collaboration with the Nazi government.

4 Jan.: The New Ziegfeld Follies, starring Fanny Brice, Jane Froman, Vilma and Buddy Ebsen, and Eugene and Willie Howard, opens at New York's Winter Garden Theater and runs for 182 performances.
18 Jan.: Eugene O'Neill's Days Without End, starring Earle Larimore, Stanley Ridges, and Ilka Chase, premieres at Henry Miller's Theater in New York City and runs for only fifty-seven performances.
26 Jan.: Symphony-1933 by Roy Harris is first performed at Boston's Symphony Hall.
20 Feb.: Gertrude Stein's opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, with music by Virgil Thomson, opens at New York's Forty-fourth Street Theater, adding to Stein's popularity with her use of bewildering lines.
1 July: The Hays Office, created by the U.S. film industry's Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), hires former postmaster general Will H. Hays to administer an industrywide production code that will curtail on-screen displays of sexuality.
7 Nov.: Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra is first performed in Baltimore in a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
20 Nov.: The Children's Hour, by Lillian Hellman, premieres at Maxine Elliott's Theater in New York City, disturbing audiences with its references to a lesbian relationship.
21 Nov.: Anything Goes, by Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and starring William Gaxton, Ethel Merman, and Victor Moore, opens at New York's Alvin Theater and runs for 420 performances. Songs include "The Gypsy in Me" and "I Get a Kick Out of You."
24 Nov.: S. N. Behrman protests Nazi treatment of German Jews in Rain from Heaven, which opens at New York's Golden Theater.
25 Dec.: Samson Raphaelson's Accent on Youth, starring Constance Cummings, premieres at New York's Plymouth Theater.

1935

Movies: Anna Karenina, directed by Clarence Brown and starring Greta Garbo and Fredric March; The Bride of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and starring Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff; David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor and starring Freddie Bartholomew, W. C. Fields, and Lionel Barrymore; Gold Diggers of 1935, musical directed by Busby Berkeley and starring Dick Powell, with music by Henry Warren and lyrics by Al Dubin, including "Lullaby of Broadway"; The Good Fairy, directed by William Wyler and starring Margaret Sullavan and Herbert Marshall; The Informer, directed by John Ford and starring Victor McLaglen; Lives of a Bengal Lancer, directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone; The Man on the Flying Trapeze, directed by Clyde Bruckrnan and starring W. C. Fields; Mississippi, musical directed by A. Edward Sutherland and starring Bing Crosby, W. C. Fields, and Joan Bennett, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart; Mutiny on the Bounty, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone; A Night at the Opera, directed by Sam Wood and starring the Marx Brothers; Ruggles of Red Gap, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, and Charles Ruggles; The Story of Louis Pasteur, directed by William Dieterle and starring Paul Muni; Top Hat, musical directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with music by Irving Berlin, including "Cheek to Cheek,"
Fiction: Nelson Algren, Somebody in Boots; James T. Farrell, Judgment Day; Tom Kromer, Waiting For Nothing; Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here; Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat; Clara Weatherwax, Marching! Marching!; Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River and From Death to Morning.
Popular Songs: "About a Quarter to Nine," lyrics by Al Dubin, music by Harry Warren; "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," by Fred E. Ahlert, lyrics by Joe Young; "I'm in the Mood for Love," by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields; "I Won't Dance," by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II; "In a Sentimental Mood," by Duke Ellington; "(Lookie, Lookie, Lookie) Here Comes Cookie," by Mack Gordon; "Moon Over Miami," by Joe Burke, lyrics by Edgar Leslie; "The Music Goes Round and 'Round," by Edward Farley and Michael Riley, lyrics by "Red" Hodgson; "Red Sails in the Sunset," by Hugh Williams, lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy; "She's a Latin from Manhattan," lyrics by Al Dubin, lyrics by Harry Warren; "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Arts Projects are created, giving artists jobs to decorate post offices and other federal buildings.

5 Jan.: Waiting for Lefty, by Clifford Odets, premieres at New York's Civic Repertory Theater and runs for 168 performances. On 26 March the play is moved to Longacre Theater in a Group Theatre production, with the top price of $1,50 per seat.
19 Feb.: Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! premieres at the Belasco Theater, starring Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky, and John Garfield. The show will run for 209 performances.
Apr.: The radio show Your Hit Parade debuts with a lineup of top song hits.
17 July: The show-business newspaper Variety headlines its issue with a report that rural audiences do not support movies that portray country folk and bucolic settings.
21 Aug.: Bandleader Benny Goodman's career takes a dramatic turn for the better when he opens at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, where he is dubbed the "King of Swing."
25 Sept.: Maxwell Anderson's Winterset, starring Burgess Meredith and Richard Bennett, opens at New York's Martin Beck Theater. The play is based on the Sacco Vanzetti case.
10 Oct.: The opera Porgy and Bess, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, opens at the Alvin Theater in New York, where it runs for 124 performances. Songs include "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," and "Summertime."
12 Oct.: With music and lyrics by Cole Porter and songs that include "Begin the Beguine" and "Just One of Those Things," Jubilee, starring Melville Cooper, Mary Boland, and Montgomery Clift, opens at New York's Imperial Theater.
16 Nov.: Jimmy Durante stars in Jumbo with a live elephant at the New York Hippodrome. With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs include "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."
27 Nov.: Boy Meets Girl, by Bella (Cohen) and Samuel Spewack, and starring Jerome Cowan, Garson Kanin, and Everett Sloane, opens at New York's Cort Theater and runs for 669 performances.

1936

Movies: Born to Dance, musical directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring James Stewart and tap dancer Eleanor Powell, with songs by Cole Porter including "I've Got You Under My Skin"; Camille, directed by George Cukor and starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, and Lionel Barrymore; Dodsworth, directed by William Wyler and starring Walter Huston and Paul Lukas; Follow the Fleet, musical directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, and Betty Grable, with songs by Irving Berlin including "Let's Face the Music"; Fury, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy; The Great Ziegfeld, directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy; Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, directed by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur; Modern Times, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin; My Man Godfrey, directed by Gregory La Cava and starring Carole Lombard and William Powell; Petrified Forest, directed by Archie Mayo and starring Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart; The Prisoner of Shark Island, directed by John Ford and starring Warner Baxter; San Francisco, musical directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy; Show Boat, musical directed by James Whale and starring Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne, and Helen Morgan; Swing Time, musical directed by George Stevens and starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, including "The Way You Look Tonight"; Theodora Goes Wild, directed by Richard Boleslawski and starring Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas.
Fiction: Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Thomas Bell, All Brides Are Beautiful; James M. Cain, Double Indemnity; John Dos Passos, The Big Money; Walter D. Edmonds, Drums Along the Mohawk; James T. Farrell, A World I Never Made; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Munro Leaf, The Story of Ferdinand; Henry Miller, Black Spring; Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind; John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle.
Popular Songs: "Cool Water," by Bob Nolan; "Goody—Goody," by Matt Malneck and Johnny Mercer; "I'm an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)," by Johnny Mercer; "Moonlight and Shadows," by Frederick Hollander and Leo Robin; "The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful," by Dana Suesse, lyrics by Billy Rose and Irving Kahal; "Pennies From Heaven," by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke; "Ramblings on My Mind," by Robert Johnson; "Sing, Sing, Sing," by Louis Prima; "Stompin' at the Savoy," by Benny Goodman, Edgar Sampson, and Chick Webb, lyrics by Andy Razaf; "Walkin' Blues," by Robert Johnson.

The Flowering of New England, a study of U.S. literary history by Van Wyck Brooks, is published.
Public-speaking teacher Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People is published.
Carl Sandburg's poem "The People, Yes" is published.
Songs such as "Good Night, Irene" by traveling blues singer Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter are collected by Alan and John Avery Lomax and published in Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly.
Folksinger Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is hired by the Department of the Interior to promote nationalistic feeling in the Northwest by traveling and performing his songs such as "Roll On, Columbia" and "Those Oklahoma Hills." Instead of his usual hitchhiking, he is chauffeured through several states and writes twenty-six songs in twenty-six days.

17 Feb.: S. N. Behrman's End of Summery starring Ina Claire, Osgood Perkins, Mildred Natwick, Van Heflin, and Sheppard Strudwick, opens at New York's Guild Theater.
14 Mar.: Triple-A Plowed Under, a Living Newspaper written for the WPA Federal Theatre Project by the Living Newspaper staff, opens in New York at the Biltmore Theater.
29 Mar.: Robert Sherwood's antiwar Idiot's Delight opens at New York's Shubert Theater and runs for three hundred performances.
11 Apr.: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II collaborate on music and lyrics for On Your Toes, which opens at New York's Imperial Theater, starring Ray Bolger, Tamara Geva, and George Church.
9 July: The Women, by Clare Boothe Luce and starring Ilka Chase, Jane Seymour, Arlene Francis, Doris Day, and Marjorie Main, opens at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater and runs for 657 performances.
21 Sept.: George Kelly's Reflected Glory, starring Tallulah Bankhead, opens at New York's Morosco Theater.
22 Oct.: Stage Door, by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, and starring Margaret Sullavan and Tom Ewell, opens at New York's Music Box Theater and runs for 169 performances. The next year it is made into a movie directed by Gregory La Cava and starring Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball, and Ginger Rogers.
27 Oct.: It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt, produced under the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, opens simultaneously in seventeen cities across the nation.
29 Oct.: Songs such as "De-Lovely" highlight Cole Porter's music and lyrics for Red, Hot and Blue, which opens at New York's Alvin Theater and stars Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Grace and Paul Hartman, and Bob Hope.
6 Nov.: Symphony No. 3 in A minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff premieres at Philadelphia's Academy of Music.
14 Dec.: George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Cant Take It With You opens at New York's Booth Theater, where it runs for 837 performances.
16 Dec.: Brother Rat, by John Monks Jr. and Fred F. Finklehoff, and starring Eddie Albert, Frank Albertson, Ezra Stone, and José Ferrer, opens at New York's Biltmore Theater and runs for 577 performances.

1937

Movies: The Awful Truth, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant; Captains Courageous, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew; A Day at the Races, directed by Sam Wood and starring the Marx Brothers; History is Made at Night, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur; The Hurricane, directed by John Ford and starring Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, and Raymond Massey, The Life of Emile Zola, directed by William Dieterle and starring Paul Muni; Lost Horizon, directed by Frank Capra and starring Ronald Colman, Sam Jaffe, and Thomas Mitchell; Make Way for Tomorrow, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi; The Prisoner of Zenda, directed by John Cromwell and starring Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Shall We Dance, musical directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, including "They Can't Take That Away from Me"; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature by Walt Disney, with music by Frank Churchill and lyrics by Larry Mose, including "Heigh-Ho," "Some Day My Prince Will Come," and 'Whistle While You Work"; A Star Is Born, directed by William A. Wellman and starring Fredric March and Janet Gaynor; They Won't Forget, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Claude Rains and Lana Turner; Topper, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Constance Bennett, Cary Grant, and Roland Young.
Fiction: James M. Cain, Serenade; Daniel Fuchs, Low Company; Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Meyer Levin, The Old Bunch; John Phillips Marquand, The Late George Apley; Wallace Stegner, Remembering Laughter; John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
Popular Songs: "Blue Hawaii," by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger; "The Dipsy Doodle," by Larry Clinton; "A Foggy Day" by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin; "Good Mornin'," by Sam Coslow; "Harbor Lights," by Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams; "Hell Hound on My Trail," by Robert Johnson; "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm," by Irving Berlin; "In the Still of the Night," by Cole Porter; "I Can Dream, Can't I?" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal; "The Joint Is Jumpin'," by Thomas "Fats" Waller, Andy Razaf, and James C. Johnson; "Me and the Devil Blues," by Robert Johnson; "The Moon of Manakoora,"' by Alfred Newman, lyrics by Frank Loesser; "Nice Work If You Can Get It," by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin; "Once in a While," by Michael Edwards, lyrics by Bud Green; "Rosalie," by Cole Porter; "Sweet Leilani," by Harry Owens; "That Old Feeling," by Sammy Fain and Lew Brown; "Too Marvelous For Words," by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards the newly inaugurated Thalberg Memorial Award to the late M-G-M producer Irving Grant Thalberg.
Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel) wins popularity with children learning to read with his imaginative rhyming and illustrations in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
The six-and-a-half-minute Porky's Hare Hunt, the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, is released by Warner Bros, and features the voice of Mel Blanc as both Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.
Arturo Toscanini, seventy years old, is replaced as conductor of the New York Philharmonic but is hired by the National Broadcasting Company to conduct the NBC Symphony.
Wallace Stevens's collection of poetry The Man with the Blue Guitar is published.

9 Jan.: Maxwell Anderson's High Tor, starring Burgess Meredith and Peggy Ashcroft, opens at New York's Martin Beck Theater.
21 Jan.: Ernest Bloch's Voice in the Wilderness Symphonic Poem for Orchestra and Cello Obligate is premiered in Los Angeles.
20 Feb.: "Having a Wonderful Time," by Austrian American playwright Arthur Kober, premieres at New York's Lyceum Theater.
14 Apr.: Songs such as "My Funny Valentine" and "The Lady Is a Tramp," by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, are showcased in Babes in Arms, which premieres at New York's Shubert Theater.
19 May: John Murray and Allen Boretz's Room Service, starring Sam Levine, Eddie Albert, and Betty Field, opens at New York's Cort Theater and runs for five hundred performances.
20 June: Walter Piston's Concertino is premiered in a CBS radio broadcast from New York.
23 Nov.: Golden Boy, by Clifford Odets, opens at New York's Belasco Theater. Starring Jules Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Maiden, and Elia Kazan, the play runs for 250 performances,
23 Nov.: John Steinbeck's stage version of his new novel Of Mice and Men is polished by director George S. Kaufman and premieres at New York's Music Box Theater while Steinbeck gathers material for his next novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Of Mice and Men is made into a movie released in 1939, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr.
27 Nov.: Pins and Needles, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome and sponsored by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), opens at New York's Labor Stage Theater and runs for 1,108 performances.

1938

Movies: The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, directed by Norman Taurog and starring Tommy Kelly and Jackie Moran; Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant; The Dawn Patrol, directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and David Niven; Hard To Get, musical directed by Ray Enright and starring Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, including "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"; Holiday, directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant; In Old Chicago, directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power and Alice Faye; Jezebel, directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, and George Brent; Pygmalion, directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard and starring Howard and Wendy Hiller; Sing You Sinners, musical directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, and Donald O'Connor, A Slight Case of Murder, directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Edward G. Robinson; Three Comrades, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Margaret Sullavan, Robert Taylor, and Franchot Tone; You Can't Take It With You, directed by Frank Capra and starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Lionel Barrymore.
Fiction: Taylor Caldwell, Dynasty of Death; John Dos Passos, U. S. A.; James T. Farrell, No Star Is Lost; Albert Maltz, The Way Things Are and Other Stories; Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent), The Man of Bronze; Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain; Allen Tate, The Fathers; Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children; Leane Zugsmith, The Summer Children.
Popular Songs: "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," by Ella Fitzgerald and Al Feldman; "Camel Hop," by Mary Lou Williams; "Cherokee," by Ray Noble; "F. D. R. Jones," by Harold Rome; "The Flat Foot Floogie," by Slim Gaillard, Slam Stewart, and Bud Green (who were forced to change the word "floozie" to "floogie" to gain radio airplay); "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart," by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills, Henry Nemo, and John Redmond; "Jeepers Creepers," by Harry Warren, lyrics by Johnny Mercer; "Love Walked In," by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin; "One O'Clock Jump," by William "Count" Basie; "Thanks for the Memory," by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin (title song for a film starring Bob Hope, who makes it his theme song); "That Old Feeling," by Sammy Fain and Lew Brown.

Thomas Hart Benton exhibits his painting Cradling Wheat.
The Cloisters, a medieval European nunnery filled with priceless art donated by the Rockefeller family to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opens in New York's Tryon Park.
Woody Guthrie releases his Talking Union album and makes appearances to support labor unions.
Glenn Miller forms his own big band and begins touring after breaking from playing trombone and arranging music for Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Ray Noble,
Cole Porter is injured in a fall from a horse and is left crippled.
The samba and the conga are introduced to U.S. dance floors.
Delmore Schwartz's first collection of poems, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, is published.

17 Jan.: Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, along with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and members of their orchestras, give the first jazz performance in Carnegie Hall
25 Jan.: Ian Hay's Bachelor Born opens at New York's Morosco Theater and runs for four hundred performances.
26 Jan.: Paul Vincent Carroll's Shadow and Substance, starring Cedric Hardwicke, Sara Allgood, and Julie Haydon, opens at New York's Golden Theater.
3 Feb.: On Borrowed Time, by Paul Osborn and starring Dorothy Stickney, Dudley Digges, and Dickie Van Patten, premieres at New York's Longacre Theater.
4 Feb.: Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, opens at Henry Miller's Theater in New York and runs for 336 performances.
26 Mar.: Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 3 is first performed in an NBC Orchestra radio concert.
30 Mar.: Walter Piston's The Incredible Flutist is premiered at Boston's Symphony Hall
22 Sept.: Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson delight audiences with their slapstick comedy in the musical Hellzapoppin', which opens at New York's Forty-sixth Street Theater and runs for 1,404 performances.
9 Oct.: The ballet Billy the Kid, with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Eugene Loring, opens at the Chicago Civic Opera House.
15 Oct.: Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois, starring Raymond Massey, opens at the Plymouth Theater and runs for 472 performances.
9 Nov.: Mary Martin simulates a striptease to Cole Porter's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" in Leave It to Me, which premieres at New York's Imperial Theater.
11 Nov.: On Armistice Day, Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" in a radio broadcast and later acquires exclusive air rights to the song, which Berlin originally wrote for his 1918 show Yip-Yip Yaphank but put aside.
7 Dec.: Philip Barry's Here Come the Clowns, starring Eddie Dowling, Madge Evans, and Russell Collins, premieres at New York's Booth Theater,

1939

Movies: Dark Victory, directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis; Destry Rides Again, directed by George Marshall and starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich; Drums Along the Mohawk, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert; Goodbye, Mr. Chips, directed by Sam Wood and starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson; Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and Olivia de Havilland; Gunga Din, directed by George Stevens and starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, and Sam Jaffe; The Hound of the Baskervilles, directed by Sidney Lanfield and starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by William Dieterle and starring Charles Laughton; Love Affair, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur; Only Angels Have Wings, directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Richard Barthelmess; Stagecoach, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Claire Trevor, The Stars Look Down, directed by Carol Reed and starring Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood; The Wizard of Oz, musical directed by Victor Fleming and starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan, and Margaret Hamilton, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, including "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," and "We're Off to See the Wizard"; Wuthering Heights, directed by William Wyler and starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
Fiction: Sholem Asch, The Nazarene; Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep; Josephine Herbst, Rope of Gold; Norman MacLeod, You Get What You Ask For; John P. Marquand, Wickford Point; Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn; Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider; John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun; Robert Penn Warren, Night Rider; Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust; Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock.
Popular Songs: "And the Angels Sing," by Ziggy Elman, lyrics by Johnny Mercer; "Ciribiribin (They're So in Love)" by composer A. Pestalozza, lyrics by Harry James and Jack Lawrence; "Heaven Can Wait," by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Eddie De Lange; "I'll Never Smile Again," by Ruth Lowe; "I Get Along without You Very Well (except Sometimes)," by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Jane Brown Thompson; "In the Mood," by Joe Garland, lyrics by Andy Razaf; "The Lady's in Love with You," by Burton Lane, lyrics by Frank Loesser; "Moonlight Serenade," by Glenn Miller, lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "Scatterbrain," by Kahn Keene, Carl Bean, Frankie Masters, and Johnny Burke; "Sent for You Yesterday (and Here You Come Today)," by Ed Durham, William "Count" Basie, and Jimmy Rushing; "South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)," by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, "Three Little Fishies (Itty Bitty Poo)" by Saxie Dowell; "Undecided," by Charles Shavers, lyrics by Sid Robin.

Austrian American Ludwig Bemelmans's new novel Hotel Splendide is soon overshadowed by the release of his children's book Madeline, which he has illustrated himself.
Thomas Hart Benton exhibits several paintings, including Persephone, Threshing Wheat, Weighing Cotton, and Susannah and the Elders.
Virginia Lee Burton's children's book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is published.
Dutch American painter Willem de Kooning exhibits his Seated Man.
Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) gains overnight fame for her primitivist paintings when art collector Louis Caldor buys her work and exhibits it at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.
The MOMA in New York City moves to a new building at 11 West Fifty-third Street.
New Jersey roadhouse singer Frank Sinatra joins a new band formed by Harry James but leaves within a year to join the Tommy Dorsey band.

10 Jan.: Paul Vincent Carroll's The White Steed, starring Barry Fitzgerald and Jessica Tandy, opens at New York's Cort Theater.
20 Jan.: Sonata No. 1 for piano and orchestra, by Charles Ives, is first performed at New York's Town Hall.
21 Jan.: The American Way, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart and starring Fredric March and Florence Eldredge, opens at New York's Center Theater in Rockefeller Center.
15 Feb.: Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, starring Tallulah Bankhead, Carl Benton Reid, Dan Duryea, and Patricia Collinge, opens at New York's National Theater and runs for 191 performances.
24 Feb.: Roy Harris's Symphony Number 3 premieres at Boston's Symphony Hall.
18 Mar.: The New Yorker publishes "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," by James Thurber.
28 Mar.: Katharine Hepburn, Lenore Lonergan, Shirley Booth, Van Heflin, and Joseph Cotten star in Philip Booth's The Philadelphia Story, which opens at New York's Shubert Theater.
13 Apr.: William Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands premieres at New York's Guild Theater and has a short run of forty-three performances.
19 June: The Streets of Paris, starring Brazilian Carmen Miranda singing "South American Way," opens at New York's Broadhurst Theater.
28 Aug.: The Three Stooges appear in the thirteenth and final version of George White's Scandals at New York's Alvin Theater. With music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Jack Yellen, songs include "Are You Having Any Fun."
18 Oct.: Desi Arnaz costars with Eddie Bracken, Van Johnson, Richard Kollmar, and Marcy Wescott in the New York Imperial Theater premiere of Too Many Girls. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's songs include "I Didn't Know What Time It Was."
25 Oct.: The Man Who Came to Dinner, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, opens at New York's Music Box Theater and runs for 739 performances.
William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, starring Eddie Dowling, Julie Haydon, Gene Kelly, and Celeste Holm, opens at New York's Booth Theater.
3 Nov.: Clare Boothe Luce's Margin for Error, starring Otto Preminger, premieres at New York's Plymouth Theater.
8 Nov.: Life With Father, a comedy by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse based on the book by Clarence Day, opens a run of 3,244 performances at New York's Empire Theater.
27 Nov.: Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo, starring José Ferrer, Paul Muni, and Uta Hagen, opens at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater.
6 Dec.: Du Barry Was a Lady, starring Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman, and Betty Grable, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, opens at New York's Forty-sixth Street Theater.