1937 was another year of firsts at the movies, giving viewers the first full-length animated feature, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White was the top money maker in 1938 and was also the first film with an official soundtrack, and the first film to release a motion picture soundtrack album. The year also saw the first film pairing of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and the first appearance of Daffy Duck in animator Tex Avery’s “Porky’s Duck Hunt”. Louise Ranier won the first back-to-back acting Oscar for her performance in 1937’s The Good Earth, following her Best Actress win in 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld.
Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow died at age 26 due to uremic poisoning on June 7, 1937, before the completion of filming for Saratoga with Clark Gable. Clark Gable and Myrna Loy were crowned the King and Queen of Hollywood and Gable and Shirley Temple were the two top box-office stars.
In the United States, the average cost of a new house was $4,100.00 and the average wage per year was $1,780.00. The average unemployment rate was 14.3 percent. A gallon of gas cost about 10 cents.
In the the news, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared after taking off from New Guinea during Earhart’s attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. American popular composer George Gershwin died in Los Angeles of a brain tumor at age 38. The German airship Hindenburg burst into flame in Lakehurst, New Jersey killing dozens on board..
Guernica by Pablo Picasso, completed June 1937The rumblings of war continued to intensify in the rest of the world. The Condor Legion of the Nazi German Luftwaffe, in support of the Francoists in the Spanish Civil War, bombed Guernica, destroying three-quarters of the town and killing hundreds. The Soviet Union commenced one of the largest campaigns of the Great Purge to “eliminate anti-Soviet elements.” During the seige of Nanjing, Japanese soldiers killed over 300,000 Chinese in 3 months. This is remembered as the “Nanking Massacre”. Germany, in a note to Brussels, “guaranteed” the inviolability and integrity of Belgium so long as the latter abstained from military action against Germany. In the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler held a secret meeting and stated his plans for acquiring “living space” for the German people (recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum).
The 1937 movies I will try to watch are listed here: http://www.imdb.com/list/YQrx2nQOaQg/
Hindenburg Disaster – British Pathe newsreel footage
