1939 Hit Parade

Popular films included: 
   
Destry Rides Again starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich
    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
    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur
   
Stagecoach directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Claire Trevor
   
The Wizard of Oz directed by Victor Fleming and starring Judy Garland
   
Wuthering Heights directed by William Wyler and starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
    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
    Drums Along the Mohawk directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert

Fiction included:  Sholem Asch’s The Nazarene, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Josephine Herbst’s Rope of Gold, Norman MacLeod’s You Get What You Ask For, John P. Marquand’s Wickford Point, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, Robert Penn Warren’s Night Rider, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and Thomas Wolfe’s The Web and the Rock.

Popular songs included:  “Heaven Can Wait” by Jimmy Van Heusen and 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 and lyrics by Jane Brown Thompson, “In The Mood” by Joe Garland and Andy Razaf, “The Lady’s In Love With You” by Burton Lane and Frank Loesser, “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller and Mitchell Parish, “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, and “Three Little Fishies” by Sadie Dwell.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York showed the work of the Bauhaus.

Valentina designed Katherine Hepburn’s costumes for Philip Barry’s play The Philadelphia Story.

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) became famous after art collector Louis Caldor bought her paintings and exhibited them at the Museum of Modern Art.

The New York World’s Fair was televised by RCA, including speeches by President Roosevelt and RCA president David Sarnoff.

February:  The Golden Gate World’s Fair in San Francisco opened.  It cost $40 million to construct.

February 15:  The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman opened at the National Theater in New York.

March 18:  The New Yorker published “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber.

April 9:  Black contralto opera singer Marian Anderson performed to an audience of seventy-five thousand at the Lincoln Memorial.

June 1: The first televised prize fight in Yankee Stadium between Lou Nova and Max Baer ended with Nova winning in 11 rounds.

July-August:  The New Deal programs were dismantled and 775,000 WPA workers were let go.

June 20:  The “Pirates of Penzance” musical was first broadcasted on regularly scheduled television by NBC.

August 20:  The first major league baseball game, featuring the Brooklyn Dodgers versus the Cincinnati Reds, was televised.

August 30:  The first college football game, Fordham versus Waynesburg, was broadcasted on television.

November 3:  Margin for Error by Clare Boothe Luce starring Otto Preminger premiered at New York’s Plymouth Theater.

November 23:  By presidential proclamation Thanksgiving Day was celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month rather than the last.