Popular films
included:
Babes in Toyland starring Laurel
and
Hardy
Bright Eyes starring Shirley
Temple
It Happened One
Night
directed by Frank Capra and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert
Tarzan
and His Mate starring Johnny
Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan
Treasure Island directed by
Victor Fleming and starring Wallace
Beery
and Jackie Cooper.
Fiction included: James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice,
James T. Farrell’s The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, Waldo Frank’s The Death
and Birth of David Markand: An American Story, Daniel Fuchs’ Summer
in Williamsburg, Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, John
O’Hara’s Appointment in
Samarra, Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep, William Saroyan’s Daring
Young Man, Tess Slesinger’s The Unpossessed, Irving Stone’s
Lust
for Life, Rex Stout’s Fer-de-lance, Jerome Weidman’s I
Can
Get for You Wholesale, and Nathanael West’s A Cool Million.
Popular songs included: “The Beer Barrel Polka” by Vejvoda, Timm
and Zeman, “Blue Moon” by Rodgers and Hart, “Deep Purple” by De Rose
and
Parish, “I only Have Eyes For You” by Warren and Dubin, “Little Man,
You’ve
Had a Busy Day” by Mabel Wayne, lyrics by Sigler and Hoffman, “Miss
Otis
Regrets” and “The Object of My Affection” by Pinky Tomlin, Coy Poe and
Jimmy
Grier, “On The Good Ship Lollipop” by Whiting and Clare, “Solitude” by
Duke
Ellington and De Lange and Mills, “Stars Fell on Alabama” by Frank
Perkins
and Mitchell Parish, “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” by Bob Nolan, “The Very
Thought
of You” by Ray Noble, “Winter Wonderland” by Felix Bernard and Richard
B.
Smith, and “You Oughta Be in Pictures” by Dana Suesse and lyrics by
Edward
Heyman.
The Berkshire Music Festival premiered in Lenox, Massachusettes.
Thomas Hart Benton painted Lord, Heal the Child; Homestead; Ploughing
it Under and Going Home.
The Apollo
Theater in Harlem opened.
In the Plains states 300 million tons of soil blew away in the “black
blizzard.”
Huey Long received more mail than any other person in America this year.
The FCC was created to moderate U.S. telephone, telegraph, and radio
communications.
February 20: Four Saints in
Three Acts by Gertrude Stein opened in New York City.
May 28: The Dionne
quintuplets were
born.
July 1: The Hays
Office was created
by Will H. Hays to institute a production code for films.
July 5: Two San Francisco waterfront
workers were shot and killed.
November 20: Lillian Hellman’s The
Children’s Hour premiered at Maxine Elliott’s Theater in New York
City.
September 8: The S.S.
Morro Castle
sank in the Atlantic, 125 lives were lost.
November 21: Anything Goes
with music by Cole Porter opened at the Alvin Theater.