1930s - Part 2
Year
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Event and Significance
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1934
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Frank Capra's It Happened One Night became the first film to sweep the Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The same feat would be repeated with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
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1934
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Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.
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1934
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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. The era of 'separate beds' was inaugurated.
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1934
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The Catholic Church formed the Legion of Decency to boycott any film that didn't use the Production Code as a guideline.
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1934
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Louis de Rochemont began the documentary newsreel film series, The March of Time.
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1934
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Warner Bros. became the first studio to shut down its German distribution office to protest the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies.
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1934
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The first use of 3-strip Technicolor in a live-action sequence (in the film's final scene), was in MGM's musical/romance operetta adaptation The Cat and the Fiddle, starring Jeanette MacDonald (in her MGM debut film) and Ramon Novarro.
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1934
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RKO's 2-reel short La Cucaracha was the first live-action film to use a three-strip Technicolor process.
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1935
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Color movies were first widely shown in the late thirties, although hand-tinted or toned films were standard practice in the 1910s and 1920s, and two-strip Technicolor had emerged in the late 1920s. Technicolor sequences were included in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923), MGM's Ben-Hur (1925) and Universal's The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and various early sound musicals included two-strip Technicolor production numbers as spectacular highlights. Walt Disney was the first to use the new and improved three-color (three-strip) Technicolor system in his animated shorts Flowers and Trees (1932) and The Three Little Pigs (1933), while RKO's and Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935) was the first feature-length Technicolor film - a milestone film dramatizing William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair with Miriam Hopkins in the title role.
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1935
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The first official Mickey Mouse film in color was released, Disney's 9-minute The Band Concert.
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1935
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British director Alfred Hitchcock became an internationally-famous figure for his thrillers including The 39 Steps and later The Lady Vanishes (1938).
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1935
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Century Pictures and Fox Film merged to form 20th Century-Fox.
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1935
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The U.S. Treasury Department upheld a Commissioner of Customs decision to prohibit the import of the notorious Czechoslovakian film Ecstasy (1933) (aka Extase) with Hedwig Kiesler (Hedy Lamarr), because it contained nudity and sexual situations (intercourse and simulated orgasm). This marked the first time customs laws were used to prevent a film from entering the US.
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1935
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The first trade paper Oscar advertisement appeared to promote MGM's coming-of-age comedy, Ah, Wilderness!
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1935
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In the Warner Bros.' film G-Men, James Cagney didn't play the typical "tough guy gangster" as usual but took the role of a federal lawman. The film industry's new censorship laws only allowed gangsters on the screen if they were being captured or killed by FBI men. This new heroic image signaled a shift in Hollywood's portrayal of the government agent, mostly due to the propagandastic intentions of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (who ruled the agency from 1924 until his death in 1972).
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1935
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Pricewaterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) has managed the Academy Awards balloting process since 1935 - all but the first six years of the Oscars.
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1935
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Director Leni Riefenstahl's controversial, historically-important documentary film The Triumph of the Will (aka Triumph des Willens, Germ.) was an effective propagandistic effort documenting the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and rally in Nuremberg.
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1935
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John Ford's American film The Informer had an impressive, emotionally-moving, Academy Award-winning musical score (with an Irish flavor) written by famed composer Max Steiner, and encouraged the future development of musical soundtracks and accompaniments.
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1935, 1936
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Dudley Nichols, the screenwriter for Ford's The Informer, became the first winner to refuse his Oscar award on political grounds, during a union boycott that was being held during the awards ceremony.
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1936
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Chaplin's Modern Times, mostly silent although with various sound effects, commented upon the effects of the Great Depression.
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1936
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The Negro Improvement League protested The Green Pastures, the first all-black film since King Vidor's Hallelujah! (1929). It was a reenactment of Bible stories set in the world of black American folklore and filled with cliches and racial stereotypes of the time. The organization criticized it as "insulting, degrading and malicious" and perpetuating unacceptable stereotypes.
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1936
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Composer and Warners' animation department musical director for over two decades, Carl W. Stalling chose "Merrily We Roll Along" (mostly used for Merrie Melodies) and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" (mostly used for Looney Tunes) as the distinctive theme songs for Warners' cartoons.
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1936
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The romantic drama The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first three-strip Technicolor feature shot entirely on location (away from the studio). It was directed by outdoor action-adventure, western, drama, and war film director Henry Hathaway, and starred Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, and Sylvia Sidney.
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1937
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Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies short animated film, The Old Mill, was the first cartoon to be produced with the multi-plane camera, which gave an increased sense of movement and depth. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1938.
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1937
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The first full-length animated feature, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released - made for a budget of $1.5 million. It was the top moneymaker in 1938, when it made an astronomical $8 million.
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1937
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The first film pairing of young stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland was in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry.
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1937
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Luise Rainer won the second of her back-to-back Best Actress Oscars for her performance as the strong and silent O-Lan, a self-sacrificing Chinese peasant farm wife in The Good Earth. Her first win was for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). She became the first multiple Oscar winner, and was the first to win an award two years in a row.
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1937
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The musical comedy A Damsel in Distress (with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and based on a P.G. Wodehouse story) was best known as the first Fred Astaire/RKO film to not feature Ginger Rogers (non-dancer/singer Joan Fontaine was substituted), after they famously teamed up together in Flying Down to Rio (1933) through their last previous joint appearance in Shall We Dance (1937). It was also the first Astaire film to be a box-office flop. To make up for their miscalculation, RKO quickly recast the celebrated dance team of Astaire and Rogers in the next year's Carefree (1938).
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1937
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Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow was the first film actress to appear on the cover of the popular Life magazine, on May 3, 1937, only a month before her tragic death at age 26 due to uremic poisoning on June 7, 1937, before the completion of filming for Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable.
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1937
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Louis B. Mayer (of MGM studios) had the highest salary in the US at $1.3 million.
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1938
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For the first time, a group of movie stars organized a committee, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, to support a political party.
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1938
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African-American leaders publically called on the Hays Office to make roles other than doormen, maids, and porters available to blacks.
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1938
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The first appearance of an early prototype of Bugs Bunny, possibly the greatest cartoon character of all-time, as Porky Pig's antagonist in Warners' Porky's Hare Hunt. He would appear fully-developed and in his first starring role in Tex Avery's Oscar-nominated A Wild Hare (1940).
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1938
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The first and only on-screen kiss between the memorable dancing-singing partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was in their 8th RKO film, Carefree.
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1938
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Russian director Sergei Eisenstein directed the epic film Alexander Nevsky (aka Aleksandr Nevskiy, Russ.), a nationalistic film that presented the medieval story of the 13th century Russian prince Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov) -- enhanced with a score by Sergei Prokofiev. The film's most memorable battle scene was on the ice (that started to crack) at frozen Lake Peipus in 1242 between the invading barbaric Teutonic knights and the Russian army - both wielding spears and axes.
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1938
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The California Child Actor's Bill, better known as the Coogan Law (after 21 year old Jackie Coogan who sued his parents for mismanaging and exploiting his career and spending his acquired fortune as a young star) was enacted. To protect the earnings of child actors, it required that fifteen percent of a child's earnings be set aside in a trust that cannot be tapped without a court order until the child comes of age. Various child labor laws and other similar acts have since been established. Later, Coogan became known for playing Uncle Fester on The Addams Family television show.
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1938-1939
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Spencer Tracy won his second Best Actor Oscar in early 1939. He had won the 1937 Oscar for his role in Captains Courageous and then this 1938 award for Boys Town. This was the first time that an actor had won the Oscar in consecutive years.
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1939
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This year has often been called the "greatest year in film history" by film buffs, movie historians, and critics, chiefly due to the inordinate number of classic films. Some of the greatest films ever made were released in 1939, including Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz and Wuthering Heights. In France, both Marcel Carné's Daybreak (aka Le Jour Se Lève) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (considered by some to be the greatest film of all-time, but banned during the German occupation) were released. Other major classic films in 1939 included Beau Geste, Dark Victory, Destry Rides Again, Love Affair (later remade as An Affair to Remember), Only Angels Have Wings, Gunga Din, Midnight, Of Mice and Men, The Women, Young Mr. Lincoln, and many more.
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1939
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Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, was premiered. This big-screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel was a 222-minute Civil War epic drama that went on to profitably gross $192 million. Its casting call for the lead female role of Scarlett O'Hara ended up being one of the biggest ever with multiple actresses being considered for the highly desired role. It was nominated for thirteen Oscars, and won eight statues (including Best Picture) - a record for its time, and two special awards in the awards ceremony in early 1940. It was the first color film to win Best Picture. Best Supporting Actress Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American performer to win an Oscar (she was also the first African-American nominee for an Oscar, and the first African-American guest at the awards ceremony).
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1939
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John Ford's classic western Stagecoach was the first film that the director shot in Utah's Monument Valley -- the site would repeatedly be used as the locale for most of his other Westerns.
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1939
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With his supporting roles in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You (1938) as Donald and Gone With the Wind as Uncle Peter, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson became the first black performer to appear in more than one Oscar-winning Best Picture. This led to his top billing in the MGM musical Cabin in the Sky (1943).
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1939
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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.
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end of the 1930s
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The eight largest US film studios raked in 90% of US film profits at the end of the 1930s.
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1940s - Part 1
Year
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Event and Significance
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1940
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Disney released its animated feature film masterpiece Pinocchio - one of the best examples of the studio's animation talent. This was Disney's second feature-length animated film, following after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
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1940
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Disney's groundbreaking Fantasia introduced a "Fantasound" 'stereo-like', multi-channel soundtrack (an optical 'surround-sound' soundtrack printed on a separate 35mm reel from the actual video portion of the film). It cost about four times more than an average live-action picture.
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1940
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The first of the seven Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "Road" films (spanning 1940-1962) was released: Road to Singapore.
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1940
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The first agents began to assemble creative talent and stories in exchange for a percentage of the film's profits.
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1940
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Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, Rebecca, won Best Picture at the awards ceremony in 1941. It competed against another Hitchcock film - Foreign Correspondent.
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1940
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John Ford directed The Grapes of Wrath, his most famous black and white epic drama - the classic adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1940 Pulitzer Prize-winning, widely-read 1939 novel. This film was the most popular left-leaning, socialistic-themed film of pre-World War II Hollywood.
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1940
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Actor/director/producer/writer/composer Charlie Chaplin released his first 'talkie' feature film, The Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin was the first to ever receive three simultaneous nominations, as producer, actor, and screenwriter for the film.
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1940
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Famed cartoon character Bugs Bunny first said his famous line ("Eh, what's up, Doc?" voiced by Mel Blanc) in his fourth, Oscar-nominated Tex Avery cartoon, A Wild Hare (1940) - the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon with Elmer Fudd as a rabbit hunter (and noted for Elmer's first use of his 'wabbit' voice). Bugs finally received his identifiable name by his fifth cartoon, Elmer's Pet Rabbit (1941).
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1940
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Tom & Jerry, created by Hanna & Barbera, were debuted by MGM in Puss Gets the Boot. (Tom was called Jasper and Jerry didn't have a name yet.)
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1940
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Many sources have claimed that director Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor was the first full-featured film noir. It starred Peter Lorre as the sinister 'stranger' (cast due to his creepy performance in M (1931)), in a story about the nightmarish after-effects of circumstantial testimony. See also 1941.
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1940
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Howard Hawks' speedy and hysterically funny, modern-style screwball comedy His Girl Friday, was one of the best examples of its kind in film history. Although it had a 92-minute running time, the breath-taking, fast-paced film had more than enough dialogue for a 3-hour movie. It was best remembered for its overlapping dialogue and simultaneous conversations - and it marked one of the earliest instances in which characters would deliberately (and realistically) talk over the lines of other characters.
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1940
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Director/scriptwriter Preston Sturges' political satire The Great McGinty was noted for its Oscar-winning Best Original Screenplay. Sturges was the first Hollywood scriptwriter to direct his own work - and he was also the first director to win the Academy Award for his own original screenplay. It was the first time a film in Hollywood opened with the credit: "Written and Directed By." He was able to retain greater control over and exercise greater protection of his own creations, signaling the days when a writer could also be the director and/or producer.
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1941
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Dave and Max Fleischer, in an agreement with Paramount and DC Comics, produced a series of seventeen Superman cartoons in the early 1940s. The first Superman short, Superman, introduced the terms "faster than a speeding bullet" and "Look, up in the sky!"
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1941
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24 year-old Orson Welles, called America's "boy wonder" or wunderkind, directed and acted in Citizen Kane, a movie about a powerful newspaper publisher named Charles Foster Kane (modeled after William Randolph Hearst). "Boy genius" Welles was the first to ever receive simultaneous nominations in four categories: as producer, actor, director, and writer. It has been the most highly-regarded film in cinematic history, with many ground-breaking film techniques. The controversial film, banned from advertising in all of Hearst's newspapers, was noted for its creative experiments with sound (i.e., overlapping dialogue and layered sound), for its numerous complex flashbacks (and non-linear storytelling), and for Gregg Toland's cinematography, including innovative camera angles (low-angle shots revealing ceilings), montage, mise-en-scene, deep-focus compositions, tracking shots, whip pans, lengthy takes, and dramatic or expressionistic low-key noirish lighting.
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1941
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Reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo retired early at age 36, after the release of the disastrous box-office flop Two-Faced Woman. She quit the film business, left Hollywood, and remained out of the spotlight until her death of natural causes in 1990.
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1941
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A Senate subcommittee launched an investigation of whether Hollywood was producing films to involve the United States in World War II. It was dissolved shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941.
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1941
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Bette Davis became the first female president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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1941
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The first, generally-acknowledged film noir was released, John Huston's directorial debut film The Maltese Falcon. It was the first detective film to use the shadowy, nihilistic noir style in a definitive way. The mystery classic was the privotal work of novice director John Huston. The cycle of classic film noirs with a recognizable visual style, would last until 1958.
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1941
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The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers was founded by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger. The Society aimed to preserve the rights of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by studios. Citizen Kane (1941) and Fantasia (1940) were among the acclaimed films produced by Society members.
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1941
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The first Hollywood musical to acknowledge that World War II (1941-1945) was occurring was MGM's and Busby Berkeley's Babes on Broadway, a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland teaming, in the film's special salute to Britain (then fighting valiantly against the Nazis) in the number Chin Up! Cherrio! Carry On!
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1941
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The longest uninterrupted screen kiss, clocking in at 3 minutes and 5 seconds, was found in the film You're in the Army Now, between Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey - a recod that held until it was replicated or broken by Big Top Pee-Wee (1988). The world record for the longest on-screen kiss was then surpassed by the 6 minute kiss in the film Kids in America (2005).
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1942
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Best Picture-winning Casablanca, based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s and set in 1941 war-time Morocco, premiered in New York. Altogether, its director Michael Curtiz made over 40 films in the decade of the 30s, and over 150 films in his entire career, from the silent era to the early 1960s.
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1942
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Jacques Tourneur's moody and intelligent Cat People, producer Val Lewton's first film at RKO, influenced future film-makers by showing how subtle and suggestive horror could be effectively generated.
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1942
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During the war, Nazis in occupied France banned English-language films -- Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) was the last film shown.
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1942
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The first of numerous Hollywood films to take up the U.S. cause of World War II was Wake Island, followed by other morale-boosting feature films such as Flying Tigers.
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1942
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Black actor Paul Robeson, who had starred in Show Boat (1936), said he wouldn't make any more films until there were better roles for blacks. His last film was Tales of Manhattan (1942).
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1942
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Tweety Bird, originally pink-colored, debuted in Tale of Two Kitties, a spoof on the popular comedy team of Abbott and Costello. Tweety Bird's first cartoon appearance with lisping cat Sylvester was in Tweetie Pie (1947) -- it won an Oscar for animator Friz Freleng. This was the first Warner Brothers cartoon to win an Oscar!
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1942
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During a War Bond tour, popular star and actress Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash.
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1942-1943
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The war years had a distinct influence on Hollywood. The Office of War Information (OWI) stated that film makers should consider seven questions before producing a movie, including this one: "Will this picture help to win the war?" The War Production Board imposed a $5,000 limit on set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions were imposed, prohibiting cuffed trousers and pleats. Klieg-lit Hollywood premieres were prohibited. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood turned out numerous anti-Japanese films, some of them quite racist, such as Fox's Little Tokyo, U.S.A.,which dealt with the controversial subject of Japanese internment. The OWI then cracked down on the artistic license of Hollywood beginning in 1943. The Office of Censorship prohibited the export of films that showed racial discrimination, depicted Americans as single-handedly winning the war, or painted our allies as imperialists.
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1942
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Orson Welles directed his second motion picture, The Magnificent Ambersons, noted for dialogue that was realistically spoken.
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1942
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences commenced with an award category for Best Documentary - Short Subject, won for the first time (in the 1942 awards ceremony) by the Canadian production Churchill's Island (1941).
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1942
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Lena Horne was the first African-American woman to sign a long-term contract with a major studio (MGM) as a specialty performer, meaning that she was initially cast in parts and subplots (usually separate singing scenes) that could be edited out for showings in Southern theaters.
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1942
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Errol Flynn was charged with three counts of statutory rape of two teenagers: 15 year-old Peggy LaRue Satterlee and 17 year-old Betsy Hansen, although later acquitted during his Los Angeles trial in 1943 since the girls were portrayed as morally-lax groupies. His career and personal life suffered as a result. The risque expression "In Like Flynn" may have been derived from his alleged sexual indiscretions and womanizing.
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1942
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Warner Bros' nostalgic, shamelessly-patriotic, entertaining black and white Yankee Doodle Dandy was one of the first computer-colorized films released by entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1985 (on George M. Cohan's alleged birthday July 4th - naturally!). James Cagney was the first Best Actor Oscar winner to take home the Oscar for an appearance in a film musical.
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1943
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20th Century Fox began distributing pinups of leggy actress Betty Grable.
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1943
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Columbia Pictures released its first Technicolor film, a western called The Desperadoes with Glenn Ford and Randolph Scott.
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1943
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Director Vincente Minelli's Cabin in the Sky opened, starring Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, and Ethel Waters. Stormy Weather, starring Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Fats Waller, was also released.
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1943
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The War Production Board ordered theaters to dim their marquee lights at 10 p.m.
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1943
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The UPA (United Productions of America) was formed by a group of animators who broke away from Disney, following a five months artists' strike in 1941. The intentions of the film production company were to promote freedom of expression in the field of animation.
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1943
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The precursor of Italian neo-realism was Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, the director's first film. Loosely adapted from James M. Cain's pulp novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, it enraged fascist censors and inspired the term neorealism. The movement would really take hold from the mid-40s to the mid-50s, with its main exponents being Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica.
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1943
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Female director Dorothy Arzner directed the war melodrama First Comes Courage, her last feature film, starring Merle Oberon.
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1943
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Influential Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein published The Film Sense, a film theory book that took a critical look at film and its impact, using his experiences in creating Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1927), Old and New (1929), and Alexander Nevsky (1938), and including a defense of his use of "montage".
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1943
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The 18-minute silent, surrealistic feminist film Meshes of the Afternoon, co-directed by husband and wife Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren (who also starred as the film's two major characters, The Man and The Woman) and shot in 16mm, was influential in ushering in the post-WW II American avant-garde (experimental) film movement. It was called a "dream" or "trance" film, due to the fact that its day-dream plot (filled with poetic imagery of the subconscious) was filmed without a script.
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1943
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Superhero Batman was the first DC Comics character to have his own serial - Batman (1943), a fifteen-episode wartime serial with cliffhangers, starring Lewis Wilson as smug playboy Bruce Wayne and alias Batman - "America's No. 1 crime fighter."
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