1930's The Arts | Important Events in the Arts, 1930–1939

1930

• Edna Ferber's Cimarron is the year's best seller.
• Sinclair Lewis is the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
• 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.
• The "Golden Age" of radio begins.
• Grant Wood's painting American Gothic, in which he portrays his sister and his dentist as farmers, helps launch the American Regionalism style of painting. Other regionalist painters include John Curry, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O'Keefe, and Edward Hopper.
• Charles Sheeler, archetypal Precisionist, paints American Landscape.
• On January 7, Children of Darkness, by Edwin Justus Mayer, opens at New York's Biltmore Theater.
• On January 14, Bobby Clark and Red Nichols' band—including Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy...